No 10 claims Starmer ‘positive, confident and determined’ despite resignation of two key aides in 24 hours – UK politics live
No 10 claims Starmer ‘positive, confident and determined’, despite resignation of two key aides within 24 hours
The No 10 lobby briefing has just finished. Here are the main points.
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Keir Starmer is “positive, confident and determined”, the PM’s spokespeson told journalists. He said:
The prime minister is getting on with the job of delivering change across the country. That was the tone and the content of his address to staff in No 10 this morning.
Asked about the PM’s mood, the spokesperson said:
He was upbeat, confident in his speech to staff this morning. He spoke about how he’s driven by the values of public service. He talked about how that was what brought him into politics later in life after a career, most recently as director of public prosecutions … [He was] positive, confident and determined.
When it was put to the spokesperson there were reports saying Starmer was very depressed at the end of last week, and that he was even contemplating resigning, the spokesperson replied:
That’s not the prime minister who appeared in front of staff this morning.
The question was referring to stories like this one in the Times on Saturday, which said: One cabinet minister predicted that Starmer could quit on Monday after he had taken the opportunity to reflect on the events of recent days with his wife, Victoria.
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The spokesperson played down suggestions that Allan was sacked, pointing out that Allan said in his statement (see 11.15am) he had decided to stand down.
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The spokesperson played down suggestions that Allan may have quit because he is worried about embarrassing messages between him and Peter Mandelson being released as a result of the humble address motion passed by MPs on Wednesday. It is understood that the process of finding information that will have to be disclosed has only just got underway.
Key events
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, is holding a press conference in Glasgow at 2.30pm. There is speculation that he may use this to call for Keir Starmer’s resignation. Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, has just told the World at One that Sarwar’s office have been offered the chance to say he won’t be doing that, but that they’re not replying.
Tim Allan does not seem to be working his notice. Here is the out of office on his WhatsApp.
Darren Jones expected to announce post-Mandelson tougher standards rules in statement to MPs this afternoon
Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the PM, will make a statement in the Commons later being billed as an “update on standards in public life”.
This is expected to include proposals that would beef up vetting procedures for people being appointed to the post that Peter Mandelson held, ambassador to the US.
In an article for the Guardian at the weekend, Gordon Brown, the former prime minister, set out his own proposals on this topic. He said:
This week’s events show why it is also imperative that the government bring in a fully accountable system for vetting major appointments such as those of Mandelson, and one that allows public scrutiny. Before the first world war, an incoming minister had to immediately put himself up for re-election as a constituency MP as a condition of taking up government office. A minister making executive decisions was seen as different from a legislator scrutinising them. It is because we have had since then no satisfactory means of vetting ministerial or other major appointments that mistakes are so easily made.
The way forward is to hold parliamentary hearings, similar to those in the US Senate, for newly appointed ministers to ensure the right questions are asked and answered in public about present and past interests and conduct. We already have formal parliamentary hearings for new members of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee. It is a system of formal vetting that should extend at a minimum to senior ambassadors. If it had been in place last year, it would have led to a very different ambassadorial appointment.
The Jones statement will start at around 4.15pm, after an urgent question on the sentencing of Jimmy Lai.
Green leader Zack Polanski says Starmer should resign for ‘totally unacceptable failure of leadership’
Zack Polanski, the Green party leader, has called for Keir Starmer’s resignation. In a statement, he said:
[Morgan] McSweeney needed to go, but so too does Starmer. He knew about Mandelson’s ongoing relationship with a convicted child sex offender. This was a totally unacceptable failure of leadership.
This whole saga also demonstrates how broken and compromised our politics is and that Labour can’t and won’t fix it. We need a different kind of politics – one where powerful, wealthy and corrupt men are shown the door, where exploitation is rooted out and inequality tackled. This is how we make hope normal again.
No 10 claims Starmer ‘positive, confident and determined’, despite resignation of two key aides within 24 hours
The No 10 lobby briefing has just finished. Here are the main points.
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Keir Starmer is “positive, confident and determined”, the PM’s spokespeson told journalists. He said:
The prime minister is getting on with the job of delivering change across the country. That was the tone and the content of his address to staff in No 10 this morning.
Asked about the PM’s mood, the spokesperson said:
He was upbeat, confident in his speech to staff this morning. He spoke about how he’s driven by the values of public service. He talked about how that was what brought him into politics later in life after a career, most recently as director of public prosecutions … [He was] positive, confident and determined.
When it was put to the spokesperson there were reports saying Starmer was very depressed at the end of last week, and that he was even contemplating resigning, the spokesperson replied:
That’s not the prime minister who appeared in front of staff this morning.
The question was referring to stories like this one in the Times on Saturday, which said: One cabinet minister predicted that Starmer could quit on Monday after he had taken the opportunity to reflect on the events of recent days with his wife, Victoria.
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The spokesperson played down suggestions that Allan was sacked, pointing out that Allan said in his statement (see 11.15am) he had decided to stand down.
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The spokesperson played down suggestions that Allan may have quit because he is worried about embarrassing messages between him and Peter Mandelson being released as a result of the humble address motion passed by MPs on Wednesday. It is understood that the process of finding information that will have to be disclosed has only just got underway.
The Conservatives are urging Labour MPs to replace Keir Starmer. In a statement about the resignation of Tim Allan, Matt Vickers, the Tory deputy chair, said:
The rats are abandoning the sinking ship that is Keir Starmer’s premiership.
Labour MPs should stop moaning and put him out of his misery. The country deserves so much better than this weak, chaotic government.
Jason Groves from the Daily Mail says he is surprised cabinet ministers have not been speaking in public today to defend Keir Starmer.
Distinct lack of cabinet ministers taking to the airwaves this morning to defend the beleaguered PM in his hour of need. Happy to leave it to unelected junior minister Jacqui Smith to try and put a positive gloss on things…
Where are the Cabinet? Not a peep out of any of them in public in the last 24 turbulent hours apart from Pat McFadden arguing there was ‘no point whatsoever’ in Morgan McSweeney resigning, shortly before he did
What commentators are saying about Starmer’s plight
You can read all the Guardian’s coverage of the crisis in No 10 here.
And here are extracts from articles by other journalists and commentators published overnight or this morning. These are all articles filed before it was announced that Tim Allan had resigned.
All that said, there are very few people near the top of this administration who respect the voters as McSweeney does and who dragged Starmer out of his soft-left, legalistic mindset to get tough on immigration or consider welfare reform, and what follows is much more likely to be a wishy-washy Old Labour tax-and-spend trend with Starmer, or whoever replaces him.
There is a parallel here with Theresa May and her twin ‘chiefs’, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill. After the 2017 general election, where May surrendered David Cameron’s hard-won majority, the cabinet demanded their heads. May was a creation of ‘Nick and Fi’ every bit as much as Starmer was a creature of McSweeney’s design. Removing the aides who gave her a vision and purpose did nothing for May, who stumbled on, disastrously for Britain, for two more years, shorn of purpose or political skills.
Any Labour MP who thinks they are in a better place to win an election or win over the voters now than they were yesterday needs their head testing. One way of replacing McSweeney would be to bring in Jonathan Powell as chief of staff, the role he performed for Tony Blair, but my understanding is he’s happier running foreign affairs.
Cabinet ministers believe the move will ultimately leave the prime minister “weaker” even if it buys him some time with furious Labour MPs.
“It’s his last card,” one said. “He can only do this once. He is so much weaker because he doesn’t have Morgan to bail him out any more.”
Another cabinet minister said: “We’re asking the question of whether he will be there at the end of the week. There’s a feeling he could stand down at any moment. The next 48 hours is going to be crucial.”
Confusion endures over what McSweeney, who joined Labour in 1998 after being inspired by the Good Friday agreement, truly represented. The man described to me by Blue Labour’s Maurice Glasman as “one of ours” is also cast as the protégée of Mandelson whose New Labour project was yesterday damned by Glasman as “an alien body that took over the party”.
But this apparent paradox is easily resolved: the long war against Corbynism and the Conservatives had the effect of uniting Labour’s right in a tactical alliance. As a consequence, tensions and contradictions went unresolved. A campaigning project was never developed into a governing one. There is no better proof of this than the government’s tax lock, a New Labour-inspired device that left it struggling to raise scarce amounts from pensioners, farmers and pubs, undercutting McSweeney’s supposed communitarian impulses. The appointment of Mandelson similarly reflected an administration better at restaging the past than at inventing the future.
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Rachel Sylvester at the Observer says, although the resignation of McSweeney offers Starmer a chance for a reset, it is probably too late.
This could be the chance for a “reset” if Starmer dares to take it, an opportunity for the prime minister to define his leadership on his own terms. He is also being urged by senior Labour figures to replace Chris Wormold, the cabinet secretary to improve the performance of the government.
It is unlikely to be enough. The Labour leader may have bought a little time by sacrificing McSweeney but he has also highlighted his vulnerability. Last week one former Cabinet minister told me: “If Morgan is in trouble then Keir is in trouble. Morgan created Keir and Keir is totally dependent on him, if he gets rid of Morgan it’s game over.”
Already MPs are asking why, if the chief of staff has resigned over his advice to appoint Mandelson, the prime minister is not quitting for actually taking the decision. “Morgan had to go,” one Labour peer said. “He’s been a disaster, everyone thinks he’s a genius but he’s been a third rate Mandelson, not nearly as clever as people think. He should have gone ages ago. But it’s not going to be enough to save Keir.”
-The extraordinary thing is Labour has decided to bury Starmer without any plan for a replacement or any credible successor. Rayner is seen as the frontrunner but Labour figures predict a free-for-all, tipping at least six others to go for the job, from Miliband to Shabana Mahmood and Yvette Cooper. It says it all that Al Carns is on runners and riders lists.
-An ally of Starmer warned that if Rayner or Miliband take over Britain would face a market and economic shock. They said if Starmer is ousted a new PM should call an election as they would have no legitimacy to lead the country.
-The Labour right is flailing as it tries to stop Rayner. Once upon a time they’d have backed Wes Streeting, but they’ve all fallen out and Streeting is now tainted by his own close links to Mandelson. Several suggested John Healey should take over. One pitched him as the only sane person left in the Labour party and the only one with any international credibility.
Starmer tells No 10 staff politics can be ‘force for good’ and says government moving forward ‘with confidence’
Keir Starmer has delivered a message to Downing Street staff telling them that he believes politics can be a “force for good” and that he wants the government to go forward “with confidence”.
From the extracts released by Labour, Starmer gave no indication that he intends to resign. But he did not seem to have a striking new message either, and he did not mention the departure of Tim Allan.
Here are the key quotes, from the briefing supplied to journalists.
The thing that makes me most angry is the undermining of the belief that politics can be a force for good and can change lives.
I have been absolutely clear that I regret the decision that I made to appoint Peter Mandelson. And I’ve apologised to the victims which is the right thing to do.
Starmer also told staff that they were united in having “public duty” as their “driving purpose”.
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Starmer paid tribute to Morgan McSweeney, saying he would not have been able to change Labour and win the election without his former chief of staff. He said:
I’ve known Morgan for eight years as a colleague and as a friend. We have run up and down every political football pitch that is across the country. We’ve been in every battle that we needed to be in together. Fighting that battle.
We changed the Labour party together. We won a general election together. And none of that would have been possible without Morgan McSweeney.
His dedication, his commitment and his loyalty to our party and our country was second to none. And I want to thank him for his service.
In just a few months, we start the work of lifting half a million children out of poverty. A massive thing to do in this country because that means that lives will be changed.
For decades to come, children who otherwise wouldn’t have fair chance and fair opportunity. Poverty holds children back like nothing else on earth. And so getting rid of child poverty opens up opportunities for so many.
We must prove that politics can be a force for good. I believe it can. I believe it is. We go forward from here. We go with confidence as we continue changing the country.
Here is our story, by Peter Walker and Pippa Crerar, about Tim Allan’s resignation.
Allan’s resignation leaves Starmer in need of his 5th No 10 communications chief since election
Keir Starmer now has to find his fifth No 10 communications director since he became prime minister. Before Tim Allan, he also had: Matthew Doyle, who is now a peer, but embroiled in a controversy about his support for a Labour friend who had been charged with having indecent images of young girls; James Lyons, a former journalist who had worked in comms jobs for NHS England and for TikTok; and Stephanie Driver.
The communications director job at No 10 is a political post, held by Labour figure.
Starmer also has a civil service spokespeson who briefs the lobby every day. And last year Starmer appointed the former Sun editor David Dinsmore as head of government communications, another civil service post.