Why Labour MPs are asking: If the Tories can get rid of Boris, surely we should dump Keir?

SPEAKING more in sorrow than in anger, a trade union official told me: ‘If Liz Truss calls a snap election, there’s nothing we can do. There’s no way our members would allow us to spend £10million of their money helping to fund Labour’s election campaign when we have no idea if Keir Starmer will stand up for union members’ interests.’

He went on to say witheringly of the Labour leader: ‘Unless we get a clear picture from Starmer about what he believes, and what he would do in government, we won’t be writing any more one-off cheques.’

The catalyst for what we are seeing in the breakdown of industrial relations within the heart of the Labour movement is the rapidly spiralling crisis over Sam Tarry, until last week Labour’s Shadow Transport Minister.

The East London MP was stripped of his brief after appearing on a picket line in support of striking rail workers.

A few hours after telling Channel 4 News, ‘If I lose my job for standing shoulder-to-shoulder with rail workers, then so be it’, he duly lost his Shadow Cabinet post when Sir Keir Starmer moved with uncharacteristic swiftness.

‘As a government in waiting, any breach of collective responsibility is taken extremely seriously and for these reasons Sam Tarry has been removed from the front bench,’ a Starmer spokesman announced.

At which point the Left of the party went into a predictable meltdown.

Corbynite MPs took to social media to condemn their comrade’s sacking and express solidarity. Trade union leaders joined in the chorus of condemnation. And – most tellingly – there was an ominous silence from Sir Keir’s deputy Angela Rayner, who is a close personal friend of Tarry’s.

Despite the backlash, on a narrow political level it seemed like a clever move from the Labour leader. As one party veteran who is not generally a Starmer admirer told me: ‘People can argue about the detail of how Keir’s handled this. But the reality is the public don’t take much notice of what the Leader of the Opposition does in summer. But what they will notice is a guy showing he’s different from Corbyn and prepared to stand up to the unions and the Left.’

He then wryly added: ‘I don’t think Keir’s turning into the new Tony Blair. But at least he’s showing he’s not the new Ed Miliband.’

But not being Ed Miliband isn’t exactly a high political bar. And as has happened so often in his leadership, by attempting to display strength, Sir Keir is again exposing chronic weakness.

If he had confronted the unions on behalf of hard-pressed taxpayers and commuters left without trains because of so many strikes, Sir Keir could have presented a clear and consistent strategy.

But he isn’t standing up to the unions. He’s just doing the equivalent of sticking his tongue out at them, then running away.

When asked about Tarry’s sacking, Sir Keir’s spokesman said: ‘This isn’t about appearing on a picket line.’ That was despite Sir Keir saying the previous day: ‘The Labour Party in opposition needs to be the Labour Party in power. And a government doesn’t go on picket lines.’

When the first round of rail strikes occurred, Sir Keir issued a direct order that no members of his frontbench team should be seen to be directly supporting them. Despite the instruction, about a dozen shadow ministers and parliamentary private secretaries turned up on the picket lines to show their solidarity. Sir Keir did nothing.

In reality, his sacking of Tarry was not the product of mature political calculation, but of petulance. Tarry was targeted not because of his offence – no different from that of a number of Shadow Cabinet colleagues – but, I believe, because of his association with Angela Rayner.

Initially, Sir Keir had a good working relationship with his deputy. But that quickly soured.

As one Rayner ally explained to me: ‘In the beginning, Keir made a point of wanting an equal relationship with her. He talked about “our policies” and “our strategy”. But his team told him that wouldn’t work. He had to assert himself. And that’s where the split began.

‘Now they look at Angela and see someone who’s authentic, funny and popular with the party’s grassroots. And they know that’s all the things Keir isn’t.’

By attempting to put Tarry and – by extension – Rayner in their places, Sir Keir has stirred a hornet’s nest. And, again, underlined a basic truth. He doesn’t really have a strategy. He doesn’t have any concrete political beliefs to act as a foundation for any potential strategy. As a result, he’s groping around in the political darkness.

A few months ago I was chatting to a Starmer aide, who recalled the time during his campaign for the party leadership when Sir Keir commented: ‘You know, I don’t get politics. I don’t understand it. And I don’t really like it.’

How has he got himself in this position? The Tory party is literally leaderless. The economy is teetering on the brink of recession. Airports and ports are in chaos. And yet Labour’s leader has somehow managed to launch a civil war against himself.

The unions won’t budge. I’m told the boycott of election funding represents only their first shot. A series of

motions are being prepared for the Labour Party conference that will not just censure Sir Keir, but bind him into supporting future industrial action.

Then, next year, moderate unions will start debating whether to break with the party completely. Or, at least, end the bankrolling of Labour in its current form and

begin the process of giving funds solely to those MPs who supposedly align with ‘union values’.

But it’s not just the unions losing patience. Centrist Labour MPs are tearing their hair out at Sir Keir’s mishandling of the summer of discontent.

As one told me: ‘It’s insane. You could see this coming a mile away. Why didn’t he get the policy sorted? There are people in the Shadow Cabinet now seriously asking if he’s deliberately trying to sabotage the party so it has to get wound up, and we have to start again.’

Another Labour MP told me something similar: ‘There’s going to be a leadership challenge to Starmer soon. It will come from the Right, not the Left. The old Blairites are just using him to drive through the reforms they want. After that’s done, they’ll dump him.’

If that’s true, they should get moving. For what, literally, is Sir Keir Starmer bringing to the party?

He’s made no real connection with the electorate. He’s another white, male, middle-class, North London liberal Labour leader straight out of central casting. His values – articulated during his leadership election through his ‘Ten Pledges’ – have, by his own admission, been junked. He has no new policies and he can’t articulate a coherent case as to where he stands on old ones, such as the nationalisation of rail and other utilities.

He has zero charisma. He has no political acumen. He isn’t Left-wing enough for the Left. He isn’t Rightwing enough for the Right. And the

His working relationship with Angela Rayner has quickly soured

He doesn’t have a strategy. He’s groping in the political darkness

centrists regard him as little more than their useful idiot.

During the time when Tory MPs were agonising about whether or not they should oust Boris Johnson, one wailed to me that the Conservatives didn’t have anyone else who could beat ‘Labour’s politically hypocritical, vacillating, selfrighteous shape-shifter’.

It now seems that a similar conundrum faces Labour. Is there really no one but Sir Keir Starmer? Is he the best the party has to offer?

Maybe there is nobody in Labour’s ranks who would offer it a better chance – even marginally – of ending the party’s decade in the political wilderness.

In which case, as soon as she’s seen off Rishi Sunak and become Prime Minister, Liz Truss should call a General Election.