The BBC can breathe a small sigh of relief, for now – as No 10 has generously replaced stories of a crisis at the top of the UK’s national broadcaster with stories of a crisis at the top of its government, instead.
Multiple friendly newspapers, and the BBC itself, have been briefed that Keir Starmer and his Downing Street team are aware of plots to challenge and replace Starmer as prime minister. The line is that any challenger will be fought to the end, however damaging that would be.
Health secretary Wes Streeting is named as the likely culprit of these machinations in more than one of the stories. On Wednesday morning, he issued a non-denial denial that still managed to sound scathingly dismissive of Starmer and Morgan McSweeney, the controversial and deeply unpopular chief of staff blamed by many for the government’s rightward turn.
“Someone in Downing Street is definitely watching too much Celebrity Traitors,” Streeting said, adding “I am a faithful” and calling the stories the work of a “silly No 10 source”.
He added: “Trying to kneecap one of your own team when they are out making the case for the government and actually delivering the change that we promised, I think that is also self-defeating and self-destructive behaviour.”
The briefings were clearly coordinated, which sends a strong signal for those who know how to read such things: these headlines aren’t the result of one staffer speaking out of turn in the pub to a journalist. This is a deliberate communications strategy, however much Downing Street may claim otherwise – a story they have purposefully put out there.
Labour MPs think they know who is briefing, too: they are certain that once again it is McSweeney, believing it’s in his character to do so, and that it would take someone with his clout to get the story written up so prominently in multiple outlets at once.
McSweeney, who rose to prominence in a faction opposing Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, is focusing his attention inwards once again. These stories are targeted, by and large, at the government’s own MPs more than the public.
They are a bid to send a signal that No 10 is aware that they are unhappy, aware of the talk to replace Starmer, and that doing so would be incredibly painful and unpopular – maybe even causing a Liz Truss-style bond market crisis, or else further harming Labour’s already dismal chances in next year’s local elections.
Judging by the furious reaction of several Labour MPs and insiders, though, these efforts have backfired. “This shit is next-level ineptitude,” said one party source. “A pre-emptive leadership challenge against yourself two weeks before the budget, in the spurious claim that the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party) is up for it.”
The irony for McSweeney is that the next phase of this infighting will almost certainly be targeted against him personally, as the only consistent player in the chronic failing of No 10’s comms since taking power. Many believe his excision will be a tactical win and long overdue.
Labour might have a huge majority on paper, but Downing Street increasingly looks like a bunker. Almost no MPs are happy with the government’s performance, virtually none describe themselves as loyal, and most – when speaking off-the-record – believe it won’t get better while Starmer is still prime minister.
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However, while expecting the heat to be turned up on McSweeney, several MPs insist that any concerted effort to remove Starmer is still months away – and some accused No 10 of taking “obvious bait” on the story. There is a suggestion that junior minister Josh Simons – one of McSweeney’s successors at the Labour Together think tank – briefed him that some MPs supporting Streeting were plotting.
This was not, they suggest, because he was loyal, but because he hoped that Shabana Mahmood would be the next leader, and believed she needed more time to be a viable challenger. No 10 is said to have acted on that information, propelling a fresh Labour crisis story to the top of the headlines, because McSweeney is widely held to be at his happiest when engaging in Labour infighting.
Blair-era spin doctor Damian McBride, now working for Yvette Cooper, is also said to be stirring the pot on behalf of the foreign secretary. The theory is that if briefings about Streeting and Mahmood’s ambitions end up eradicating them as leadership challengers, the way will be clear for Cooper to emerge as a unity candidate when someone finally makes a run against Starmer.
As ever with Westminster rumours when parties are fractious, the reality might be quite different – but the stories Labour MPs are telling each other – and journalists – matter. This is the kind of infighting that usually takes place in the dying days of a government staring down electoral oblivion, not just 16 months after a landslide election win and before the government has had the chance to enact or bed in any major reforms.
The Conservative Party is ruthlessly effective, perhaps too effective, at removing its leaders once they are no longer an asset. The endless parade of prime ministers in recent years is testament to that.
Labour is different. Tony Blair arguably quit slightly earlier than he intended in 2007 as the result of internal pressure – but if you’re looking for a clear instance of a Labour leader being forced out by his MPs (there have been no women leading the party), you have to go back to 1935.
Labour is terrible at coups: its rule book is set up in such a way that makes them harder, and the party’s MPs have lacked the killer instinct. Some despairing MPs noted this last night, stressing that if potential candidates’ supporters start knifing each other while Starmer is still in office, they’ll just end up weakening each other and unintentionally supporting him to stay. None suggested this would be a good outcome.
The bad headlines for Labour this morning are deliberate and self-inflicted. On one level, No 10 isn’t wrong to be paranoid – Labour MPs really are furious, and really are talking about replacing Starmer.
But on the flipside, it is hard to see what they’ve gained by saying it. Backbenchers claim a challenge wasn’t imminent, and several are pointing to the briefing as evidence of everything that’s wrong with this No 10 operation – endlessly inward-focused, determined to pick fights with the left, and incapable of generating stories about anything else.
In attempting to stop a coup, they argue, McSweeney has produced more evidence of why it’s necessary.
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