Starmer survives – but for how long?

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07Today, a wild 24 hours in British politics.

0:19There are some days as a journalist when your best laid plans end up in tatters by lunchtime. Yesterday was one of those days. The episode we had planned to make for you today was going to look at how Keir Starmer would cope without Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, who had quit over the weekend because of his relationship with Peter Mandelson. In the past few moments, we've received a statement. Let me read it to you. The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself. But the news gods had other ideas. The executive director of communications, Tim Allen, has quit.

1:04Another senior member of Keir Starmer's team gone. Scotland's Labour leader, Anasawa, he is publicly expected to say in the next hour or so that Keir Starmer should go. Needless to say, we had a chaotic start to the week. And we're going to take you on the journey with us.

1:29From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus, is this the beginning of the end for Keir Starmer?

1:42It's 8am on Monday morning and I'm on the phone with a Scottish Labour MP as he makes his way through security at Edinburgh Airport. My name is Brian Leishman and I'm the Member of Parliament for Alloa and Grangewife. I asked him about what I thought was going to be the big story of the day. The resignation of Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer's closest aide, who quit on Sunday. So Morgan McSweeney has left. Are you happy that he's gone? Yes, I think that's a start. I think when you look at the kind of intense and bitter factionalism that's been at the heart of the Labour Party, then Morgan McSweeney has played his part in that.

2:17And you said so this is a start. Do you think then Keir Starmer should consider his position too? Yes, I think that the Prime Minister's got to look at his misjudgments on a whole raft of issues, not just the Peter Mandelson scandal. So yeah, I think it's only right that the Prime Minister looks at his own position also.

2:36As Brian goes to board his plane to London for a week in Westminster, I ring Karl Turner, a veteran MP for Hull. This call will be recorded. You've been an MP since 2010, so you've seen various iterations of the Labour Party. How would you characterise this particular moment in time compared with the last 16 years of your life as an MP? Let me tell you, I used to refer to the Jeremy Corbyn era as the Troubles. The troubled times for the Labour Party. Because the PLP was all over the place. Some were supportive, some were against. But I'm afraid to tell you, some of the things that have been happening are the worst I've ever seen in the entire time that I've been in politics.

3:25Each Monday when Parliament is sitting, MPs return to Westminster from their constituencies. But today it is so far from business as usual. They are heading for a showdown with Keir Starmer at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, the PLP, which will be addressed by Starmer himself. Before she gets on a train down from York, I ask one of Starmer's most persistent critics, Rachel Maskell, what she wants to hear from the Prime Minister. As Keir Starmer loses trust, he pulls everything into himself. I think he is quite introverted in the way that he makes his decisions as opposed to pushing out and really trying to find out why.

4:02And he has to, at this crucial moment, reach to the far edges of his party and ensure that everybody is included. Carl Turner says he's going to try to speak at the PLP meeting. Look, what I want him to say to the Parliamentary Labour Party is, listen, I'm sorry, I accept we've not been listening to you. I accept that you feel as if the government is not made up of people from across the broad church of the Labour Party. And I want to be more inclusive of other people with other opinions on policy.

4:44After talking to the MPs, I'm joined in the studio by Jessica Elgert, the Guardian's deputy political editor. I obviously sometimes have to look down at my phone because I don't have my laptop. Is that OK? Yeah, ideally, look and then look up. We settle in to talk about Keir Starmer and his relationship with Morgan McSweeney, who quit on Sunday saying he'd made a mistake in encouraging Starmer to appoint Peter Mandelson as the US ambassador. What about this oft-repeated allegation that really it was Morgan McSweeney who was the driving force behind everything in Downing Street? There's this anecdote that I know Starmer himself absolutely hates that was included in this book Get In by Gabriel Pogrand and Patrick Maguire from The Times, which said, Keir's not driving the train.

5:27He thinks he's driving the train, but we've sat with him at the front of the DLR. The DLR, of course, is a driverless train in East London that has like pretend controls for toddlers to play with. To what extent do you think that that was actually true? I think one of the reasons it hurts so much is probably because there's a lot of truth in it. He sort of leaves himself being the one who is the person to kind of make kind of higher level calls. but ultimately a lot of the work has already been done for him. So he's not just outsourced to McSweeney, but he outsources economics policy to Rachel Reeves.

6:04He outsources foreign policy to Jonathan Powell. He is someone who has outsourced lots of his policy thinking. There are things, of course, that he directly cares about and believes in, things like prison reform he cares a lot about. But ultimately, because he came to politics late, And because he didn't have a sort of broad base of support in the Labour Party and because he just won and fought a very, very safe seat in central London, so he doesn't have any background in local organising, in relationships with trade unions, in how you sort of fight and win a marginal seat. Lots of that stuff is completely alien to him.

6:41And what was the culture like in Number 10 under Morgan McSweeney? Morgan Masweeney has always been one of those people who is able to inspire incredible and devoted loyalty amongst a small team of people who think he is, you know, a truly genius strategist. And that is probably because in person, he's not very much at all like the kind of caricature that you hear about. He is softly spoken. He's very kind to people who are loyal to him. He's funny. He's thoughtful. But to the people who he is dismissive of, a lot of those people being MPs and the kind of broader coalition of different politics that makes up the rest of the Labour Party, he can be extremely factionist and ruthless and often, I think, picked battles that you never needed to pick with people.

7:32As we're working out what this all means for Keir Starmer's future, our executive producer, Maz, comes into the studio with some breaking news. I can hear a lot of banging what's going on? I don't know if you guys can hear so Tim Allen Director of Communications has just stepped down saying that he wants to move out the way to stand down as number 10 team so the new number 10 team can be built significant?

8:05We are recording this late on Monday morning and there has been another development, somebody else has left Downing Street, Tim Allen, who is fairly recently appointed, I think, head of communications, has quit. What do we know about him and how significant is his departure, do you think? This might be the shortest run of director of communications yet, I think, for Keir Starmer, who goes through directors of communications, like my children go through Cheerios. He was only appointed, I think, in September, after what was a fairly disastrous summer, where the government basically allowed Nigel Farage to entirely dominate the whole of August.

8:39Alan initially worked for Tony Blair's but went after to set up what is now a huge PR agency called Portland and became a hugely successful comms chief and returned with what was seen as kind of a rescue operation for Keir Starmer. But again, someone who didn't necessarily gel with some of the team who had been around in opposition. And I think Starmer finds communications very difficult for even someone who's a very seasoned pro at communications, it seems to be very difficult for Starmer to kind of give voice to his own personal views and ideology and direction. Right. So he's lost his chief of staff.

9:12He's lost his head of communications. That must leave him very isolated. Yeah, no, I think it does. And I think he seems to be a person for whom it takes a really long time to build up real trust and friendship. The few people left in government, he's got one special advisor left who used to be head of the policy unit, Stuart Ingham, who's been you know with him and since he was first an MP there's two other parliamentarians Baradess Jenny Chapman and Chris Ward the cabinet office minister who are still around him with a kind of core team but in terms of who are now in his Downing Street operation you know very few of them have been people who have been with him you know since he was shadow Brexit secretary and have seen the way he operates and know his mind you know Morgan McSweeney was the last person who is prepared to go out and give a kicking to his leadership rivals.

10:00And it's hard to see who's going to do that job for him now.

10:13I'm just having my lunch when we hear that Labour's leader in Scotland, Anna Sawa, will be holding a press conference at 2.30pm. The rumour is he is going to call for Keir Starmer to resign. Good afternoon. Everybody, I have, as you can imagine, done a lot of thinking over the last few days. And I am clear that I have to do what's right for my country, Scotland. I jump on a call with The Guardian Scotland editor, Severin Carell. Oh, blimey, Sev, what just happened? Well, it's quite extraordinary. Anasawa has suddenly morphed from being one of Keir Starmer's biggest cheerleaders and staunchest allies into the first senior Labour leader to call him to quit.

10:56That's why the distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change. I mean, the reason Anas has done this is it's a very, very cold political calculation. He's watching Scottish Labour's support in Scotland tank to find himself limping behind reform in third place with only, what, seven or eight weeks before a pretty critical Scottish election. And the only person that they can blame for that is Keir Starmer. And he was at pains to mention, wasn't he, in the press conference that he and Starmer are pretty close. I think he said there's no other Labour politician in Scotland that's closer to Keir Starmer and yet he's just stuck the knife in.

11:39Astonishing. He has. It's an indication of how hard-nosed, but also how incredibly focused on victory Anasawa has been for several years. The reason in part why Scottish Labour have taken the decision that they have to call for Starmer to quit is because they feel in Glasgow headquarters of Scottish Labour and the Scottish Parliament that they have been within the closest recently to winning back power at Holyrood than has been the case in 2007. Sarwa is regarded as the best leader Scottish Labour has had since the foundation of the Scottish Parliament. He has shown a greater amount of political skill and intelligence.

12:26And what they are furious about is watching the UK Labour Party and Number 10 effectively destroy that. That's their reading of the situation that they're in. And as far as they're concerned, their only way of being able to recover sufficiently in the polls to have a stab, but at least coming second, if not winning in May 2026, is for Starmer to quit. And just how toxic is Keir Starmer in Scotland for voters? I think the difficulty is, is that the situation in Scotland is more complicated and nuanced than it is south of the border. Labour's political room, its space if you like in Scotland is much narrower than it is south of the border because the Scottish National Party government in many respects has the same sort of policies as Labour might have they draw to a degree from the same pool of voters so when you have a leader like Starmer, a Prime Minister like Starmer whose mistakes and offices, missteps have been so regular and have been so consistent even since the summer of 2024, the impact that every mistake, every crisis or scandal in Scotland, it just has an even greater impact on Labour's capacity and ability to beat the SNP.

13:48Have you told the Prime Minister about this statement before making it? Yes, I spoke to the Prime Minister earlier today and I think it's safe to say that he and I disagreed. And how consequential do you think it is that Sarwa has turned against Starmer? Do you think that he is just going to be the first of many? My instinct is that the people close to Sarwa and Sarwa himself will have been making calls and trying to establish what level of revolt there is likely to be either inside the cabinet or inside the parliamentary Labour Party. But ultimately, my instinct of suspicion is that Sarwa is taking something of a risk he can't gauge with the same level of insight and instinctive knowledge exactly how people in the UK party are going to behave because he's simply not in the UK party in the same way.

14:42The most important thing for Sawa is what the Scottish electorate say. And he made that abundantly clear in the press conference. He made abundantly clear in the press conference that his, as he described it, his first loyalty was to Scotland. In three months, we have an election that must be about one thing and one thing only. Scotland. I mean, that's pure electioneering. You know, let's not mistake this fact. but the point for him is he wants the Scottish elector to respond positively. If UK cabinet colleagues are furious with him, well, that's their problem, bluntly. If this means that Labour avoid a humiliating defeat and even increases, even marginally, their chances of winning in May, that's a risk as far as Sawa is concerned, it's worth taking.

15:31Right. And finally, what do you think that all of this says about Starmer's ability to have not just friendships, but real kind of lasting loyal bonds with other members of the Labour Party? Well, I just had one commentator said that if you want a friend in politics, get a dog. And the point is, people are in politics to win. And Asawa is in politics to become first minister, he's not in politics to constantly be in opposition. And he would also be arguing, he's certainly not in politics to watch reform, given everything that reform, as far as he's concerned represents everything that Farage represents, knock the Scottish Labour Party into third place.

16:08I think that's a humiliation he's not prepared to live with. Coming up, Starmer's cabinet pledged their support. But for how long?

16:30Almost as soon as Anna Salwar leaves the stage in Glasgow, a flurry of cabinet ministers fire off tweets on X pledging their support for Keir Starmer. We have had a complete rallying round of cabinet ministers to Keir Starmer. For example, the housing minister, Steve Reid, saying Keir Starmer's led our party to victory and won a mandate for change. We need to stay on course. Yvette Cooper, Angela Rayner, Shabana Mahmood, they all row in behind their boss.

17:06Jess, welcome back. I know you've had an absolutely crazy day, so thank you for agreeing to return. How are you doing? I'm all right. Yeah, I think it's OK. I think we've spent a lot of time on the phone. in the last few hours. I can imagine. So you're now back in our Westminster office, so we might be able to hear a little bit of political chatter, a bit of intrigue in the background, maybe the odd chime of Big Ben. We're talking at 5.40pm. So much has happened since we spoke to you this morning. We've had Anna Sarwa's press conference, followed by a flood of supportive messages from various cabinet ministers insisting that Keir Starmer retains their support.

17:44What do you think was going on behind the scenes there today? Let's start with Anasawa. It was widely seen, I think, down here as obviously part of a coordinated move that must lead to the kind of dominoes starting to fall. But I think it's become clear over the course of the last few hours, at least we think, that that is not the case, that this was a decision taken kind of in a vacuum by Anasawa. Now, he might have hoped he would trigger something, but it was not done on the behest of anybody. And if there were people lined up to follow him, whether that's ministers or otherwise, they haven't materialized.

18:23And what has happened has been a kind of massive rearguard action by Number 10, who I didn't actually think was capable of orchestrating such an impressive rearguard action, from MPs and ministers and all of the cabinet to express directly their support in the prime minister. I mean, it's been interesting watching how many MPs are posting that level of support for Keir Starmer. You know, some of them, I don't know if that's what they think, having had conversations with them really over the course of the last few weeks. But, you know, at least they want to publicly demonstrate that now. And I think probably what that tells us more broadly is there is now a moment for Keir Starmer, after the departure of Morgan McSweeney, to at least try to reassert control, to show that he's serious about performing a reset of his operation and also probably of his approach, particularly economic policy.

19:13One of the most interesting contributions this afternoon has come from the Tribune group of soft left MPs. That's about 100 MPs led by some ex-ministers, including the former Transport Secretary Louise Hay, the former Employment Minister Justin Madders, the Select Committee Chair Sarah Owen. But you would expect people like Angela Rayner also to be associated with that group have come out saying they don't believe it's time for a leadership contest. They don't directly give their endorsement of Keir Starmer. Right, just not now. And they also say that it's now time to kind of end the factionalism.

19:44And it is a pretty direct call for a cabinet reshuffle to bring people back in from the soft left by that you would expect them to mean people like Rainer and Haig. You know, it'd be interesting to see if that group sort of shows a bit more muscle now that McSweeney has gone. And that might be the direction that Keir Starmer decides to take. or he might decide that he's just done enough by removing his chief of staff. I was particularly interested in what Wes Streeting had to say. And he didn't tweet his support, but he did give an interview saying that Starmer doesn't need to resign. He acknowledged the febrile atmosphere within the Labour Party and said it's not been the best week for the government.

20:22And he said, give Keir a chance. What do you think we can read into that? Can we assume that his own leadership ambitions are on hold, at least for now? So just a couple of hours after he gave us this story, which is an op-ed for The Guardian and being written by Pippa Creera, Wes Streeting has decided to hand over to The Guardian all of his exchanges and text messages with Peter Mandelson in order to give himself an entirely clean bill of health in terms of his relationship with that. Some of the messages are quite interesting, but none of them you would say probably for now feel like they are going to directly implicate him and associate him with what became the sort of terrible vetting scandal and misjudgment around the appointment of Mandelson.

21:06But they do say some things that are critical about the government. He says that the government hasn't got a growth plan. What's treating says that in the messages? Yes, to Mandelson and that he anticipates losing his seat. So some of those things are damaging, but I think this feels very much like the action of someone who still has serious ambitions to be prime minister and has been troubled by some of the analysis that's happened over the past week that he was too close to and had too close a personal friendship with Peter Mandelson and is now kind of tainted by that scandal and might be in trouble by the release of some of the exchanges that might be released by the ISC.

21:46he's clearly wanting to get ahead of that to show that there's nothing in there that can damage him. And I think that that tells us that his leadership ambitions are certainly alive and well. And Pippa Creera, our political editor, has had a storming day. She had another exclusive story on Monday afternoon about another Labour leadership contender, Angela Rayner. Apparently, a website was registered under the URL Rayner for Leader. And it briefly, I think, went live in January. But she too has rode in behind Starmer. Do you think that she's just sitting tight for now until her tax affairs are in order?

22:20Well, I think one of the things that kind of puzzled Labour MPs this morning when they heard what Anasawa was going to do is they, you know, they all said that they'd been hearing from allies of both Streeting and Rayner to just sit tight, hold on, let this kind of reset moment happen. You know, this isn't the moment to go. And then they were slightly confused by the mixed signals. I think both Streeting and Reyna would, you know, I think this has been said by some friends of Streeting that he's not plotting, he's planning. So, you know, he's not making active moves to remove Keir Starmer, but he, you know, would be ready if that, I think another Prime Minister said, if the ball came out the back of the scrum.

22:57So I think that that's one of the things that both of them would say they're doing. Although we should say that Angela Reyna's team completely denied that this was anything to do with them. And it's gone so far as to suggest it's dirty tricks. So we'll see who believe. And when Anna Sawa did his turn, there were rumours, weren't there, that the Welsh Labour leader, Eleonard Morgan, was going to follow him, but that didn't happen. Why not? Did she chicken out? Was there some just false briefing going on? I think that we can probably count that as part of what was a real whirlwind of speculation about whether something would immediately follow what Sawa did.

23:31But I don't think it's any secret that the Welsh First Minister, Eleonard Morgan, is a bit of a Starmer critic and was a particular critic of the winter fuel allowance and the welfare changes that were two of the things that have most annoyed Labour MPs. But I think in many ways, you know, Sarwal has caused maybe to be the most angry because he looked like he was on course to be first minister, but has seen that plunge in popularity at the polls in Scotland. And Welsh Labour were kind of already struggling, it felt like. But still, I don't think anyone anticipated them to face potentially coming third behind applied and reform.

24:07We spoke to Labour MPs this morning as they were making their way to Westminster. I wonder, I'm sure you've been speaking to many of them this afternoon. As the story has moved, what's the mood like among the PLP as they head into this meeting with Keir Starmer this evening? I think that there is sort of an open-mindedness amongst at least a portion of the PLP to see where this next phase can go the post McSweeney phase. There is certainly a significant number of them who have just given up and believe that it's time for a change. That ranges across all different factions of the PLP, I think. But lots of the Scottish MPs were quite bewildered by Sarwa's intervention.