Sir Keir Starmer heads into the Labour conference in what should be an impregnable position: a House of Commons majority of over 150 and a mandate stretching almost to the end of the decade. But beneath this mighty edifice, the foundations are crumbling.
Starmer leads a party whose poll ratings are at rock bottom and where talk of a leadership challenge is so febrile that serious attention has been paid to the ambitions of a regional mayor — Andy Burnham — who does not even hold a seat in parliament.
Starmer’s recent sweeping ministerial reshuffle has, in the words of one cabinet minister, created a “hotbed of anger” at Westminster, while his party yearns for him to tack to the left: taxing the wealthy, standing up to Israel, lifting the two-child benefit cap.
In such difficult times, a prime minister would normally turn to a core team of advisers and aides for support. In Starmer’s case it no longer exists.
In place of a diehard band of “Starmtroopers”, as they were once known, there is now a withered rump. Only six out of 20 unelected aides who helped bring Starmer to power are still working for or advising the prime minister, a remarkable rate of attrition.
Steph Driver, Starmer’s loyal director of communications, became the latest senior figure to leave Number 10 this week. Matthew Doyle, who previously handled Starmer’s media relations, left in March. His successor, James Lyons, departed after 10 months in Downing Street.
The exodus of people who should have formed the nucleus of the Starmer project includes: chief of staff Sue Gray; Lord David Evans, Labour general secretary; head of policy Ravi Athwal; Paul Ovenden, director of political strategy and Matt Faulding, Parliamentary Labour party secretary.
Sir Alan Campbell, government chief whip, was this month ejected from his role as Starmer’s enforcer as part of a clear-out of the whips office, blamed in Number 10 for failing to ram £5bn of welfare cuts through parliament.
“You’d have to say that the high level of turnover in the top team does not point to a particularly happy or high-functioning operation,” said one MP.
While Sir Tony Blair had a core team that stuck with him through all or much of his decade in Downing Street — including figures such as Jonathan Powell, Liz Lloyd, Baroness Sue Nye and Alastair Campbell — Starmer’s tenure has turnover more akin to a fast-food takeaway.
Morgan McSweeney, current chief of staff, is the biggest survivor and link to Starmer’s pre-election project. But he has been under pressure over a historic donations question and blamed by the Labour left for masterminding this month’s reshuffle that “rewarded Morgan’s mates”, according to one minister.
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Clive Lewis, a left-wing Labour MP, said: “Number 10 doesn’t just need a new policy, or phase 3. It needs a new political culture. If it wants to succeed, it must swap command and control for shared endeavour, trust its MPs and members, and give the public a real stake in change.”
Against this backdrop, Starmer is under huge pressure to deliver a confident message in his conference speech next Tuesday after a period when he has had a low profile.
“He needs to be upbeat,” said one minister. “I think you’ll hear the case for progressive patriotism — a rallying cry, not just attacks on the cheap politics of populism.”
Few Labour MPs expect Starmer to become a political visionary overnight; rather they expect him to list some of his achievements — notably in striking international trade deals — as evidence that his hard work is paying off. But they also recognise that if your political strength is supposedly “delivery” then the public expect more of it.
Sir Michael Barber, Tony Blair’s former efficiency adviser and now an adviser to Starmer, told the FT that the second year of any administration had to be “the year of relentless implementation” — the moment for tough decisions, while the prime minister should still have some political capital left and have worked out which levers to pull.
Looming over the conference are three big problems for Starmer. The first is the Budget on November 26, when chancellor Rachel Reeves could be looking to fill a fiscal hole of up to £30bn, having suggested a year earlier that further big tax rises would not be necessary.
Labour Together, a think-tank once led by McSweeney, has urged Starmer to make “contribution” a big theme of his speech, a celebration of those who go out and work, pay taxes or bring something to society and their communities.
The second is the potential threat posed by Burnham, although the Manchester mayor’s pre-conference interventions are deemed in Number 10 to have blown up in the insurgent’s face, notably his proposals for a surge in borrowing and assertion that Britain should stop being “in hock” to bond markets.
“The timing and the message were crass,” said one ally of Starmer. “You could see that from the public and private anger from many Labour MPs. This has galvanised them more than anything we’ve done in recent months.”
The third threat, which Starmer is expected to tackle head-on, is that posed by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. The prime minister, who has repeatedly claimed that aspects of Britain are “broken”, is being privately urged by cabinet colleagues to start sounding more optimistic and positive about the country he leads and the future it might have.
John McTernan, Blair’s former political secretary, said: “There has to be a story and every story has great villains. You have to name them. But you also need a sense of vigour and action. Starmer’s speech has to match the moment and it’s a moment of very many deep challenges.”