Like Conservative Boris Johnson before him, the Labour British prime minister is on borrowed time.
LONDON — Keir Starmer has survived a day in which a top aide resigned and his most senior colleague yet tried to topple him. Or as he calls it: Monday.
Aides to Britain’s prime minister — under pressure about his former U.S. ambassador Peter Mandelson’s friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — extracted public vows of support from his entire Cabinet after Labour’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, called for Starmer to resign.
Sarwar’s move did not snowball into the full-blown coup feared by No. 10 Downing Street.
Instead Starmer was cheered and applauded by his own MPs and peers in a private meeting on Monday night. Fighting for his future in 75 minutes, Starmer gave what one supportive MP called “the most passionate speech” of his time in office and took 44 questions, apologizing for the damage caused to his party. It was heartfelt and sincere; in short, he won the room.
Yet POLITICO spoke to more than 25 ministers, MPs and officials, all of whom were granted anonymity to give their frank assessments — and the peril is far from over.
One frontbencher said it “bought him time but [is] still terminal.” A minister said it had done nothing to stop him facing a challenge following local, Scottish and Welsh elections on May 7. A previously loyal MP added: “Nothing fundamental changed tonight … He is in office but not in charge, and it’s not sustainable.”
Such high drama and jeopardy is extraordinary for a prime minister who won an election landslide 19 months ago — and reminiscent, for some MPs, of the final months of Conservative Boris Johnson’s premiership. Like his political opposite Johnson, Starmer has been beset by a series of controversies, worsened by a scandal that prompted moral outrage from his MPs.
“I had four Labour MPs ringing me up over the weekend asking what they should do,” said one shadow Cabinet minister. Another veteran of Johnson’s government strode past Monday night’s meeting muttering: “Terrible flashbacks.” Starmer will be hoping he does not meet the same end.
Doom awaits at any moment
The new round of bloodletting for Starmer began on Feb. 2, when messages related to Mandelson were released by the U.S. Department of Justice as part of a larger tranche of Epstein files. Email chains appeared to show Mandelson taking five-figure payments from Epstein between 2003 and 2004, as well as leaking sensitive No. 10 financial discussions to Epstein in 2009. Police are now investigating Mandelson for potential crimes related to those disclosures.
Starmer did not know about the messages when he appointed his envoy, but admitted last Wednesday that he knew Mandelson had continued a friendship with Epstein after his conviction. That admission prompted many MPs to lose faith in his political judgment.
Since Sunday the prime minister has lost his chief of staff and key ally Morgan McSweeney, who pushed for Mandelson’s appointment, and Director of Communications Tim Allan. Rumors also persist that Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald, the most senior civil servant in government, will be ousted.
Some of Starmer’s MPs still believe the prime minister’s doom could come sooner than May’s local elections, when Labour had already been expected to face bruising losses.
Starmer now nervously awaits the results of a parliamentary by-election on Feb. 26, and the release of more texts between Mandelson and his own ministers and officials. A second minister said Starmer’s performance on Monday night “cleared the risk” until May but only slightly reduced it after that. A third minister was more pessimistic: “A few hurdles before then.”
“Right now, anything could provide the spark that burns the whole house down,” said one government official. “You can only have mass Cabinet support once,” added a second, previously loyal Labour MP.
Dangers still lurk before the by-election. Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who is widely considered to want a tilt at the leadership, proactively released his own texts with Mandelson on Monday night.
In them Streeting complained his own government had “no growth strategy at all.”
Starmer will face a meeting of his “political Cabinet” on Tuesday morning, where ministers could make coded criticisms of the government’s approach despite their public support. One Cabinet minister voiced support for the prime minister Monday, while telling POLITICO: “It will give us a chance to air views on what we need to do to turn things around.”
Only after a scheduled clash with Conservative opposite number Kemi Badenoch in the House of Commons on Wednesday can he slump into a short parliamentary recess.
“Clearly his plan will be to get to 1 p.m. on Wednesday still breathing,” said the first government official quoted above. “Then you’ve got recess to provide a fire break.”
MPs call for big changes at the top
Signs that the prime minister would face no challenge — yet — were obvious from when MPs began trickling into Westminster on Monday. A third loyal Labour MP said they had been knocking on voters’ doors and few blamed the prime minister for Mandelson’s behavior or wanted to change the prime minister.
Then, at lunchtime, the Downing Street defense operation kicked into overdrive. Sarwar staged a surprise press conference in Scotland calling for Starmer to end the “distraction” and resign. Within hours, Starmer’s entire Cabinet — plus his former deputy Angela Rayner, who is widely seen as his most dangerous challenger within the Labour Party — had posted messages of support.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, whose allies let it be known recently that he warned against Mandelson’s appointment, said outside No. 10 that Starmer should stay. “We’ve waited 14 years to get here,” he shouted at the press pack.
A “massive stabilization effort” kicked in, said a second Cabinet minister. A second government official said ministers were “encouraged” to show their support. A third said ministers were “under duress.” One Scottish Labour official claimed Starmer threatened Cabinet ministers with the sack unless they tweeted their support for the prime minister — though two other Labour aides denied this.
It worked, for the day. Wales’ First Minister Eluned Morgan kept her counsel by nightfall, while no regional mayors called for Starmer to resign — not even his arch-critic, the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham.
Yet MPs are now calling for big changes at the top after McSweeney and Allan’s departures.
One veteran Labour MP called on Downing Street to Starmer to reject his “reactive micromanaging incrementalism,” adding: “You can’t micromanage your way out of a crisis like this. You’ve got to make some big ballsy calls and really go for it.”
A third Cabinet minister called for Starmer to personally front more domestic policy, like he does with international summits. “I think there will be a recognition that we have to listen, and Keir has to be at the heart of things,” they said.
A third government official said: “The only way Keir survives is if he gets a strong team in fast and shows clear direction.” A second veteran Labour MP added: “Get some proper political heavyweights in there and there is no reason this can’t be fixed.”
As part of this, several MPs said Starmer cannot permanently keep two joint chiefs of staff, Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, who were appointed on an acting basis on Sunday night. “You need to have one person with the authority to grip things,” said the third government official. “They’re both brilliant but neither of them are political organizers,” said a fourth official.
Suspicion lurks everywhere
Perhaps Starmer’s greatest saving grace on Monday came from the “soft left” Tribune Group of Labour MPs, which decided not to move against him.
Before Sarwar’s intervention, one senior figure in the group pointed out that many of Labour’s policy changes on workers’ and renters’ rights and welfare payments may soon be felt by voters. They voiced hope that “Keir genuinely resets us and that we move on and do what we’re supposed to be doing.”
But Sarwar’s speech injected a new round of vicious infighting.
Two MPs said there was suspicion that Sarwar was acting in concert with Streeting, only for his attempt at a coup to lose momentum and fail. Yet Streeting’s allies denied this and accused No. 10 of briefing the claims to damage him.
An ally of Sarwar said he spoke to Streeting and much of the Cabinet over the weekend, but not on Monday and the pair did not coordinate.
Meanwhile Starmer’s allies mocked Sarwar on Monday night after the worst danger passed. The second Cabinet minister quoted above said: “He went over the top and looked left and right and was like — where are you guys?”
A former Labour official allied to McSweeney said of Sarwar: “What an absolute shit show. He’s Brutus but he’s just stood there with an unsheathed knife.” One MP in Monday night’s meeting branded him “treacherous.”
Yet the misgivings about Starmer’s entire personality remain — one senior Labour figure said the PM “thinks politics is beneath him” — and the complaints about his operation persist. A fourth Labour official complained: “No. 10 see shadows everywhere and want to drag this into a will-they-won’t-they war with Wes. That shows how fundamentally detached from reality they’ve become.”
All this suggests there was a simple reason for Starmer’s survival on Monday — his potential challengers, who will need 80 MP backers to pull the trigger, weren’t ready to move yet.
Rayner is still awaiting the result of an investigation into her tax affairs, and no contender will want to own the results of the May elections.
Starmer motivated MPs on Monday night by promising to fight the “grievance” politics of Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK. “As long as I have breath in my body, I’ll be in that fight, on behalf of the country that I love and I believe in,” he said. “That is my fight, that is all of our fight, and we’re in this together.”
He will be hoping it stays that way for as long as possible.
Noah Keate, Patrick Baker and Sam Francis contributed reporting.