As Tony Blair joins Keir Starmer pile-on, his successor should beware
Keir Starmer’s position as Prime Minister is becoming weaker by the day
Poor old Keir Starmer. The backbencher-in-waiting can’t catch a break. Labour left-wingers don’t like him because he tried to cut benefits; the Conservatives have been making hay with all his mistakes and miscalculations; and now Tony Blair is being mean too.
The problem was not, the ex-PM wrote, “Keir’s personality. Or a failure to communicate ‘our achievements’. Or a need to assert more strongly Labour’s ‘values’”. Instead it was “because we don’t have a worked-out, coherent plan for the country”. The ‘no plan’ line was straight out of Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s playbook.
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Meanwhile, the actual government has effectively entered a political interregnum – the “no leadership contest yet” period, as Scotsman columnist Henry McLeish describes it today – while we await the fate of ‘King in the North’ and leadership favourite Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election.
Should he be defeated, red-faced Labour would then have to do their best to pretend they’re not simply settling for Wes Streeting. But whoever takes over from the almost-forgotten Starmer, they will need a thick skin as they may soon find themselves just as beset from all sides, left, right and centre, as he is.
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