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It was a day for one of the Top Team. The safest of safe hands. A grownup. That didn’t mean the likes of Emma Reynolds. Emma looks permanently startled at the best of times. Especially when there’s a microphone around. Give her more than 30 seconds and she’ll confess to crimes she didn’t commit.
And certainly not Wes Streeting. Not even Wes trusts Wes. His denials over any involvement with Anas Sarwar’s Monday press conference weren’t 100% convincing. Nor was his insistence that he had never much liked Peter Mandelson. In his WhatsApps, Wes uses one kiss for those he hates and two for those he loves. Apparently.
Ordinarily it would have been Pat McFadden on the morning media round. Keir Starmer’s personal enforcer. But Pat hasn’t been quite himself since touring the studios on Sunday to tell broadcasters it would make no sense for Morgan McSweeney to resign. Nor was his delivery ideal. Pat is one of life’s natural depressives. You get the feeling that a smile costs him. Even when he’s trying to be upbeat, he still sounds as if he’s giving a funeral eulogy. Something best avoided on today of all days.
So it fell to Ed Miliband to do the honours. Ed comes with one massive advantage over many of his cabinet colleagues. He really, really doesn’t want Starmer’s job. He’s done it once and he crashed and burned. He has no desire to put himself through that pain again. He’s happy in his own skin doing a job he loves as energy secretary. Ed is now older and a wee bit wiser. This gives him a credibility and gravitas that many ministers lack. The worst has happened to him and he’s come out the other side. There is the sense that what you see is what you get with Ed. That he is an honest broker. Up to a point. More of that later.
Labour MPs had looked over the precipice, he told the BBC’s Nick Robinson on the Today programme, and they hadn’t liked what they had seen. That was one way of looking at it.
But Ed was getting down to basics. No pretence that the events of the last week had all somehow been a confection of the Westminster media. It had been a real enough leadership crisis alright. One that had only been steadied by the cabinet giving Soviet levels of support for Starmer and a quick reminder to be careful what you wish for. Don’t get rid of your leader until you have a successor lined up.
And never forget that it’s not just Keir’s job on the line. It’s those of hundreds of Labour MPs. Many may not rate their prospects of keeping their jobs in 2029 with Labour tanking in the polls, but if they get rid of Starmer now that election could come early and they will be getting their P45s a whole lot sooner. Even Streeting knows he is likely to be a goner. Which wasn’t to say that the danger had passed for Keir. Just that he was safe for now. Until the next crisis. Bring on the May elections. As Miliband knows better than most, politics is nothing if not transactional.
But Ed didn’t want to dwell on the negatives. They were to be left as an unspoken subtext to all his interviews. A reminder both to Starmer and Labour MPs of the realities. And who was really in charge. First though, some praise for Keir. He had been bold and passionate in his speech to the parliamentary party on Monday night, Miliband said. Starmer had reminded MPs he had never been involved in a fight he had lost. Maybe he was having an attack of amnesia. Either way, it seemed that no one reminded him he had lost the battle over the two-child benefit cap and inheritance tax for farmers.
This was the Starmer he had always known throughout their 15-year friendship, Ed insisted. It was just one of life’s little tragedies that Keir had always saved his boldest, most passionate speeches for behind closed doors so that the voters never got to see it. Put him in front of a TV camera and Starmer fades to beige.
But Miliband was hopeful that everything would be different from now on. A line in the sand had been drawn. Keir had refound his mojo. He had a burning desire to end the class divide. From now on he would govern for the powerless. This was a moment of genuine change.
It was a nice thought. Wishful thinking, perhaps. You couldn’t help thinking this was a Keir fashioned in Ed’s own image. Starmer was now only in Downing Street under the sufferance of a cabinet elite. That weak.
A while ago, one of McSweeney’s team had described Keir as the leader who thought he was driving the driverless DLR. If that was an exaggeration then, it’s turning into a reality now. Miliband was more than happy to give Starmer a fake steering wheel for the sake of appearances. To allow him to think he was at the centre of government. Why bother to go through all the pain and uncertainty of replacing the leader, when it’s much easier to control the one you’ve got into doing what you want? Especially when you haven’t got a replacement lined up. Ed didn’t need the trappings of office. Save them for princes. All he was interested in was a Labour government doing his kind of Labour things.
Not that there wouldn’t be a struggle for power at the very top. Wes wouldn’t give up without a fight. So Miliband gently put the boot in. It was time for others to stop making the leadership crisis all about their own ambitions. A nice touch, that. Add in a quick reminder that Ed had never trusted Mandelson since way back and his morning’s work was just about done. Things still might go tits up, but they were looking a lot more promising than they had done a day ago. Later, Starmer gave a media clip in which he promised never to walk away from the job. Bless. As if it was in his gift.
