Don’t hide away, Armando
Eat your heart out, Armando Iannucci. Even the grand master of political satire wouldn’t have risked a ‘Thick of It’ plotline to match the Labour / prime ministerial leadership machinations. No wonder the latest Private Eye cover features a cast mock up of the late Jilly Cooper’s returning TV bonkbuster ‘Rivals’ starring Starmer, Burnham, Streeting, Rayner, Miliband and Cooper. With headlines ‘FARCICAL PSYCHODRAMA RETURNS’ and ‘YES! THEY ARE BONKERS!’
Would Iannucci have dared to come up with a scenario in which a self-styled ‘King of the North’ fought a by-election on the express ticket of de-throning his own party’s prime minister but lost it to his party’s deadly political rivals? Potentially losing one of the country’s most important mayoralties in the process? Hopefully, Iannucci is quietly watching closely and taking notes.
For a dull bloke whose surname rhymes with drama, Sir Keir Starmer certainly has the knack of sparking a prime ministerial power struggle to rival those that ironically ripped the last Tory government apart and helped put him into Number 10 Downing Street via a ‘loveless’ landslide.
Does all this make Britain ungovernable now?, a question being asked by newspaper leader writers, political anoraks, bond market powerbrokers et al. A psychodrama being played out to a baffled, battered audience, aka the Great British public.
Showdown or shitshow?
If nothing else, it’s a non-stop showdown (shitshow?) dominating the newspaper headlines, the broadcasting bulletins and the wild west of cyberspace.
Uncomfortably – arguably fatally – for Keir Starmer, newspapers normally supportive of Labour increasingly portray him as that ‘dead man walking’ of this column’s last headline. But so far, according to my sources, the PM remains defiant, determined to dig in and fight for his political life.
Despite the growing number of allies suggesting the game’s up and it’s time to set a ‘dignified’ resignation timeline for the sake of both party and country and leave the stage for a likely Andy Burnham v Wes Streeting battle for the soul of Labour and the keys to Number 10. So much so that ousted chief of staff Morgan McSweeney is back on board advising on Starmer’s fight back via Zoom links.
A dogfight that is a psychodrama all of its own with Streeting’s weekend speech advocating an eventual return to the EU. Begging the question whether that was motivated by deep principle or a cynical ploy to damage rival Burnham’s chances in the Brexit stronghold of Makerfield. My own Labour MP contacts are pretty evenly divided on the ‘principle’ or ‘dirty trick’ question. It’s beyond surreal that both Burnham and Reform UK will be campaigning on a how to get rid of the prime minister platform!
The Brexit revisited by-election
Although Andy Burnham has in the past expressed a similar view to Streeting, he’s anxious to avoid the by-election being dominated by Brexit in a constituency where even the Greater Manchester Mayor’s personal popularity might not be enough to see off the challenge of Reform UK with Nigel Farage pledging to “throw the kitchen sink” into the campaign. Despite Burnham’s strong local links, a YouGov poll only gave him a 45% chance of winning.
On Monday, Burnham, campaigning hard even before being officially nominated Labour’s candidate, stressed to the media that be didn’t think the by-election, and by implication the prime ministerial contest to come, was the platform to revisit the Brexit referendum and effectively rounded on Streeting’s intervention.
You can bet Wes’s media offer to come to Makerfield and campaign for his rival will get short thrift. While Keir Starmer may have pledged ‘100 percent support’ for Labour’s by-election candidate, the fact that the candidate hadn’t officially been chosen at the time allowed him to avoid using Burnham’s name. Allies of Burnham stress that in the unlikely event the PM offered to come to Makerfield to support his campaign, he’d be told to stay away.
Whisper it quietly, but the prime minister and his loyalists won’t shed too many tears over a Burnham defeat. The reasoning being that, although half resigned to losing if Burnham gets the opportunity to challenge him in a leadership contest, they believe they could still beat any other challengers in his absence, whether Streeting, Rayner or Miliband.
As one member of a defiant Starmer’s team put it to last Sunday’s Observer, “To get voters’ support in this Reform-leaning constituency, Burnham may have to make pledges on immigration or Europe that would lose some of his lustre among more progressive minded MPs and party members. Andy hasn’t been an MP for eight years or in government for 16. He has no real team around him, no detailed policy programme and has so far received very little scrutiny. Let’s see how all that works out for him.”
Makerfield or Breakerfield on Waterloo Day?
Unquestionably, the by-election in Makerfield – or should that be Breakerfield? – is the most significant in more than half a century, With the remarkable Iannucci-esque twist that the confirmed date of June 18th just happens to be Waterloo Day. But who will prove to be Wellington and who will turn out to be Napoleon?
The dramarama captured in all those headlines, leader columns, op-eds and phone-in show debates – whether Andy Burnham likes it or not – means that it is being portrayed as the ‘Brexit Revisited By-Election’. Not least by the pro-Brexit right wing papers,
Take Monday’s Daily Mail splash: ‘BACKLASH OVER BREXIT BETRAYAL’. Inside, the paper carried a full-page guest column by Spectator editor and former Tory cabinet minister Michael Gove headlined: ‘Whoever leads Labour will try to take us back into the EU. But thinking that’s the solution to our problems is like believing Dunkin’ Donuts will help you lose weight’.
While Tory leader Kemi Badenoch weighed in on page 1 with, ‘Labour clowns couldn’t negotiate with the EU’. In common with several titles, both right and left leaning, the Mail made great play of Burnham telling last year’s Labour Party conference: “I want to rejoin the EU. I hope it happens in my lifetime”. Not so different to his rival prime minister wannabe Streeting then?
(*Declaration of interest here: As a staunch Remainer I was an exception back in 2016 predicting that Leave would win the referendum while also forecasting that public opinion would eventually reverse. Opinion polls consistently show that to be the case, creating the paradox that the same polls indicate that ‘Mr Brexit’ Nigel Farage could well become prime minister after the next general election.)
Although Wes Streeting’s prospects of becoming prime minister seem to be receding fast with Andy Burnham scoring 80% to 10% against him in a new poll of Labour party members, he would at least have the campaign courage to argue that the right to change your mind is the bedrock of democracy, hence why we have general elections. And challenging the stance of the Mail and right-wing politicians that a referendum a decade old next month should be held inviolate, written in tablets of stone and immune from being judged on whether it’s now unfit for purpose?
Although he didn’t directly mention a leadership challenge, Wes Streeting’s powerful, eloquent resignation speech to the Commons on Wednesday afternoon was a coded message he hasn’t abandoned his ambition. His theme? Labour is currently losing the “fight of its life” against Reform and the nationalists and unless it changes course, it will “hand the keys of Number 10 to Reform.”
‘Sellout Brexit and trust in politicians will die’
The main Mail Monday leader headline? ‘If Labour sells out Brexit, all trust in politicians will die’. The opening sentence: “The chaos within Labour is pushing Britain towards the precipice of a Brexit betrayal.” Alongside it, polemicist Stephen Glover’s column sported the headline ‘OVERRATED, SCHEMING, OPPORTUNISTIC CHARLATANS!’ With Glover’s sub-head ‘I never thought I’d say it, but Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting make Starmer look like a political giant’. His opening sentence: ‘One should not pray for anyone’s defeat. But if Andy Burnham is beaten in the Makerfield by-election on June 18, I will give hanks to the Lord and rejoice.”
Tuesday’s Mail front page continued in its determination to sabotage Burnham with the headline: ‘SLIPPERY BURNHAM’S TWO U-TURNS IN ONE DAY’… He changes mind on Britain rejoining the EU – to stand in pro-Brexit area. And now says he’ll stick with Reeves fiscal rules, meaning tax hikes.”
Certainly, Andy Burnham is working hard to distance himself from Wes Streeting’ weekend depiction of Brexit as a “catastrophic mistake” responsible for much of Britain’s economic woes.
But the Greater Manchester Mayor would be happier with The Times Tuesday front page: ‘Burnham ‘far ahead of Starmer’ in Labour vote’. With the caveat that he has to win the by-election first. He’d have been less enamoured with Sir Trevor Phillips’ Times column the previous day arguing: “Political saviours tend to crash and burn… Andy Burnham’s in the romantic tradition of those who fought for the people but none of them were good with power.”
For a man who was not yet officially the candidate, Burnham had started the week in full campaign mode. How easily were photographers and TV cameramen able to capture him out on his daily run. Implied Message: ‘I’m not just running here, I’m running to be prime minister too’. Not that everyone was taking things too seriously, with much of the social media exchanges focusing on the varying lengths of Andy’s running shorts rather than his political statements!
Macbeth or The Comedy of Errors?
‘The prime minister’s past few days have resembled not so much Macbeth as The Comedy of Errors’ was the Shakesperean analogy headline on Andrew Rawnsley’s latest Observer column. The veteran Labour simpatico writer warning: “Streeting and Burnham have unleashed a perilous summer for Labour driven by panic, miscalculation and naked ambition.
“One blunder was made by Sir Keir’s team when they sent him out to make a ‘fightback’ speech that was devoid of any inspirational content. When you’re widely accused if being a visionless vacuum, the charge levelled by Wes Streeting in his stinging letter resigning from the cabinet, don’t make a tepid speech thar reinforces your critics’ complaint. For a lot of those who were wobbling on the fence, that terrible speech killed him off, in the words of someone who used to be one of his senior aides.
“The next miscalculation was made by Mr Streeting who wrongly assumed Sir Keir would fold under his demand to quit. The prime minister instead barricaded himself behind the party rule book, his people goading his rival to put up or shut up, and the would-be challenger failed to produce the 81 supporters in parliament required to trigger a contest.
All eyes on the ‘Messiah of Manchester’
“And so, all eyes now turn northwards to Andy Burnham, the messiah of Manchester. Fighting a by-election is a high-risk, high-reward gamble. If it pays off, his march on the leadership may start to look irresistible. If he loses his shirt, it will be the most colossal miscalculation of all.”
Rawnsley concludes: “The by-election is shaping up to be the most consequential in our modern political history. It is also going to be a rather surreal affair, given that Mr Burnham will be running on the unofficial slogan: ‘Vote Labour, get Starmer out’.
“If the King in the North succeeds in marching south, Labour will move towards the leadership contest that many of the party seem to desire with the current most popular candidate on the ballot paper. Listening to Labour people, I hear many of them say that Sir Keir is circling the plughole and the ideal outcome will be to have a new leader in place for the party conference.”
He quotes one Starmer loyalist cabinet minister as saying that if Burnham beats Reform in Makerfield, he “will be unstoppable” and another who is no fan of the Greater Manchester Mayor as saying a victory would open a “credible pathway to a Burnham coronation’ despite Keir Starmer’s apparent determination to dig in and deploy his rulebook prime ministerial entitlement to contest a leadership challenge.”
Elsewhere, The Observer carried an extended vox pop by its award-winning feature writer Andrew Anthony headlined, ‘No one wants Burnham round here’… mayor faces voter hostility in by-election. Reform is poaching once loyal Labour supporters, say residents’.
The Mail’s star feature writer Robert Hardman struck a similar tone with a full-page Makerfield visit headlined, ‘Here, where George Formby grew up, the voters aren’t singing to Labour’s tune anymore. No, it’s Reform now’.
The Labour-supporting Guardian hasn’t exactly been cheerleading for the prime minister either. Its front page on Saturday declaring: ‘Burnham will push to be next PM by autumn’.
Inside, star columnist Jonathan Freedland led the paper’s Journal section with: “The stakes are huge. We must have a PM worthy of the name… they’re looking like the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Labour’s upper echelon, both the prime ministers and his rivals, have served up a performance of such political ineptitude, walking into doors and tripping over their own feet, that it’s hard to argue with the cabinet minister who glumly told me this was the week when the government did itself damage that can never be repaired, if not the week that Labour confirmed its defeat at the next general election.”
While Acid Queen Marina Hyde’s same day column weighed in with a wide ranging: “Starmer, Burnham, Farage, Polanski: they make a week in politics feel like an eternity in Hades…” a sentiment all the more relevant with more shifting claims about that £5m personal security ‘gift’ the Reform UK leader bagged from the party’s Thailand-based crypto currency donor and contradictory versions of how he paid cash for a £1.4m house shortly afterwards. The Guardian has flagged up Farage’s uncharacteristic absence from Reform UK events where there would be a media presence amid the investigations into his financial affairs. Attention was drawn to Farage’s absence at Wednesday’s PMQs when more questions about his finances were raised.
Meanwhile, Green leader Polanski has been exposed for falsely claiming he’d voted by post in Hackney when it turned out he hadn’t voted at all, along with the revelation he hadn’t paid his council tax either!
The Guardian’s highly regarded political duo of Peter Walker and Pippa Crerar this week produced a news page analysis headlined ‘Starmer has shed so much authority he now looks to many MPs like an interim leader’.
And in a further Tuesday analysis piece, the Guardian’s deputy political editor Jessica Elgot argued: “This byelection is bigger than one man. It could change the course of history. It is bigger than Andy Burnham. It is probably the closest the UK will come to a presidential-style election, run through one constituency, and is likely to decide the future of the Labour party.”
The defiant PM and his team took some comfort from Wednesday’s Times front page, ‘Stand firm Starmer may still be in Downing St in the new year’. Less so from the ‘i’ paper splash, ‘Cabinet ministers woo Burnham in race for top jobs’.
Enter Larry the Cat
Hats off, btw, to The Observer for its witty front page featuring a large picture of Larry the Cat prowling the pavement outside Number 10, pointing out he’s ‘outlasted six prime ministers and counting’ with the headline ‘Survival of the fittest’ trailing several pages of Labour psychodrama coverage inside.
Eagerly a Reform figure close to Farage himself told me: “You could call Makerfield the kill two birds with one stone by-election. If we win then both Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer will be dead in the water.”
Reform’s plumber runner
Taking a leaf out of the Greens’ successful Gorton playbook, Reform UK has named local self-employed plumber Robert Kenyon as its Makerfield candidate.
Earlier, the party had reportedly sounded out local ‘heroine’ Maggie Oliver about representing them. Oliver became a national figure when she resigned as a police detective in 2012 in a whistleblower protest over the force’s mishandling of the grooming gang scandal. No fan of the mayor, Oliver – who now runs a charity supporting sex abuse victims – penned a guest op-ed for Monday’s Daily Mail blasting Burnham under the headline: ‘He had the chance to give a voice to grooming gang victims, and he wasted it’.
In an excoriating article for a paper hellbent on inflicting maximum damage on Burnham, Oliver claimed: “Over the next month, we’re going to hear a lot from Andy Burnham – as he bids to return to Westminster – about his role in rooting out the Asian grooming gangs and getting justice for the countless children who were their victims. He will claim he fought the police and social services to expose their failure to act. And he will imply the scandal is largely over, thanks to his intervention.
“If Burnham is elected as Makerfield’s MP at next month’s by-election, there’s a strong chance he could soon be prime minister. And that concerns me. It doesn’t matter to me which party Burnham represents. He should not be PM because he does not fulfil his promises. He happily takes the credit for other people’s battles, but he lacks the steel to keep fighting when the stakes get high. In my experience, he doesn’t finish the job.”
Take a bow out, Kemi…
But the most intriguing media twist so far came when Tuesday’s main Daily Mail leader urged: ‘Tories must bow out to beat Burnham’. It ‘recognised’ that Farage’s Reform UK is better placed to win in Makerfield than Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives. Personally, I wasn’t so surprised. As this column has been reporting for months, the Mail hierarchy is determined to force through a ‘Unite the Right’ general election pact between its traditional Tory support position and its growing acceptance of Reform UK’s formidable power surge.
Justified or not, disturbing or not, it all rather brings me back to where this column started. Come on, Armando, there’s so much classic source material here, it’s surely time to bring back ‘The Thick of It’? Bigger, better and more satirically brilliant than ever.
