Starmer should watch his back
INFAMY, infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” Sir Keir Starmer might be tempted to quote the words of Julius Caesar as played by Kenneth Williams in the classic screen comedy Carry On Cleo. Behind their leader’s back, the Labour plotters are sharpening their knives.
Less than a year after he succeeded the hard-Left Jeremy Corbyn, growing numbers in Labour ranks are asking whether Starmer is up to the job. Feuding factions are quietly mustering in expectation of another leadership contest.
One potential candidate even flagged up his ambitions this week. Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester Mayor, openly admitted hankering for the Leader of the Opposition’s office.
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have aspirations,” the former Blairite loyalist turned upstart King of the North said when asked if he wanted to be Labour leader.
“One day, if it became possible, but I’m not sitting here plotting a way to do so. I wouldn’t say never,” he added.
Burnham flopped as a contender in the last two Labour leadership elections but hopes to be third time lucky. He has studied Boris Johnson’s leap from city mayor to Downing Street with interest.
In a party that is struggling to reconnect with its lost North of England heartlands, the Aintreeborn politician has long played up his northern roots.
He launched one leadership bid in a rugby league stadium and once responded to a question about his favourite biscuit with the baffling reply: “Beer and chips and gravy.”
So far, Burnham is the only potential candidate to openly signal his desire to run. But further to the Left, soundings are being made to try to find a standard bearer for the Corbynites to rally around.
John McDonnell, who was shadow chancellor and architect of the party’s manifesto blueprint for Marxist state control of the economy at the last general election, is being talked of as the Left’s candidate. He has rubbished the speculation as “mischief” yet remains a formidable political operator with a hunger for turning Britain into a socialist society undimmed by the years of failure alongside his comrade Corbyn. Left-wingers in Labour ranks have been unable to contain their joy at the sight of Starmer floundering.
For all his forensic attention to detail, the Labour leader is failing to land blows at Prime Minister’s Questions and is struggling to make himself heard as the coronavirus pandemic dominates the news. Other potential contenders are being discussed within Labour ranks. Former leader Ed Miliband, who nudged his elder brother David aside for the job in 2010, has been talked about.
He appeared to damn Starmer with faint praise in one interview this week.
“Leaders have good weeks and bad weeks,” said Miliband, who had more bad weeks than good during his stint in the job.
RACHEL Reeves has been raising her media profile with interviews and speeches in recent weeks despite holding the largely pointless post of shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
For all the possible contenders, a contest for the Labour crown remains just chatter at present. Starmer’s allies must wrestle with how to rejuvenate his leadership at a time when the Government’s mass vaccination rollout has left the opposition with little to do than snipe from the sidelines.
Labour’s hard Left, which includes a younger generation of MPs elected under Corbyn, are thirsting for revenge after the former leader they idolised was suspended from the party in the row about anti-Semitism.
They would love to abandon any attempt to steer the party back towards the middle ground. With the Left scenting blood, Starmer had better watch his back.