Why Labour leadership crisis is an insult to voters
Time spent on Labour plotting and counter-plotting is time not spent developing and acting on policy
As I write, the starting gun of a Labour leadership contest has just been fired. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has announced his resignation from the government – or as one amused social media commentator termed it, his “Wesignation” – and called on the Prime Minister to set out a timetable for his departure from office.
By the time you read these words, I suspect that events will have moved on further still. The chaos and infighting of a Labour leadership crisis makes for exciting gossip and media copy. It is also, however, an utter insult to voters who thought that they were electing a ‘boring but competent’ government in 2024.
If Keir Starmer had one offer to the country in the last general election, it was to bring an end to the Tory psychodrama and deliver the basics of good government. With a hefty majority in the House of Commons, that really should not have been a difficult promise to make good on – and yet two years later, stability and good government seem as distant as ever. It is everyone else who is left paying the price as a result.
Chaos in rural affairs
From my vantage point as chair of the House of Commons’ Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, I have had a front-row seat to the consequences of Labour’s dither and drift.
The first Labour Defra Secretary, Steve Reed, was brought in with no knowledge of rural issues. By the time he had a grip on his brief, he was stripped of his political credibility by the government’s self-inflicted farm inheritance tax mess (later, predictably, watered down to no one’s political benefit).
Having lost a year, Reed was replaced by Emma Reynolds who, having just got her feet under the desk herself, may soon be moved again if there is a change in leadership. We are almost two years into a five-year parliamentary term, and there is far too little to show for it.
This is not, ultimately, about the personalities at play but about the practical impact of government instability. Disruption harms focus on delivery, not just in Defra but in the Treasury, in Business and Trade, and all other departments besides.
A government at war with itself
Time spent on Labour plotting and counter-plotting is time not spent developing and acting on policy. After Starmer pledged to put “country over party” in opposition, it is a slap to the face for voters in all corners of the country that party interest has taken up so much of his government.
For all that he has been one of the major sources of Labour’s lack of drive and vision, however, the best case for Starmer remaining in post for the time being is that the alternatives amongst his parliamentary colleagues are so entirely uninspiring. It speaks volumes that, amongst the 400-odd MPs elected in 2024, there are so few who can credibly put themselves forward now.
Whatever your view of the Prime Minister, it is entirely counterproductive for the rest of us for our government to be at war with itself. One way or another, Labour have got to get a grip and start delivering on the issues that really matter. That is the least we all deserve from them.
Alistair Carmichael is the Scottish Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland
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