The amendment to the Representation of the People Bill, tabled by Labour MP Alex Sobel, has attracted 166 signatures, making it the most-signed amendment to any piece of proposed legislation since the 2024 general election. A total of 88 Labour MPs have backed the bill. 

This development means the amendment has surpassed the 164 signatures gathered by Meg Hillier’s reasoned amendment to the government’s welfare bill in June/July 2025, which triggered a tortured climbdown from the government. 

Supporters of the electoral reform amendment span eight political parties as well as independents, including Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green, Plaid Cymru, Scottish National Party (SNP), Alliance, Your Party and Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) MPs. 

The Representation of the People Bill, which proposes extending the right to vote to 16- and 17-year-olds among other measures, is set to return to parliament next week.

The all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for fair elections has described the amendment as a straightforward win for Andy Burnham, who has previously championed both proportional representation (PR) and the idea of a national commission. Burnham is so far the only declared candidate in the race to succeed Keir Starmer as Labour leader and prime minister. 

Alex Sobel, who chairs the fair elections APPG, has argued that the commission would be a signal to “break the status quo”.

Sobel said: “My amendment to establish a national commission on electoral reform is now the most supported amendment this parliament with 166 signatories from eight parties, half of whom are Labour. 

“MPs still have five days left to sign and it’s clear with the change of government coming that the commission is not just a clear signal to break the status quo but hugely popular with both MPs and the public.”

Beccy Cooper, a prominent figure on Labour’s “soft left”, called the amendment a “golden opportunity for the incoming prime minister.”

Copper stated: “PR has been central to [Burnham’s] political analysis and remedy for Britain’s ailments for years, so this is about much more than just voting reform now – it’s about authenticity, trust, and showing he means what he says.”

Chris Curtis, who founded the Labour Growth Group (LGG), said that Labour MPs were now “clamouring” for electoral reform.

Curtis said: “You don’t have to be Harry Kane to see what an open goal this is for him. He should launch a commission in his first 100 days – so he can focus on his other priorities and bringing growth and hope to Britain.”

Burnham endorsed the idea of a national commission on electoral reform in an address to Labour conference last year. He argued that proportional representation “would lay the ground for a new politics [and] a better conversation with the public”.

Burnham further contended that electoral reform would precede economic reform and lead to “some of the structural changes this country needs to make.”

He stated: “What I think a move to a proportional system would do is it would allow new politics to come in, where parties that can agree can set a long term approach so repairing the basics, building the council and social homes that we need as a country over a 10 year period.”

Burnham repeated his support for electoral reform during the June 2026 Makerfield by-election. 

In December 2024, the House of Commons voted in favour of the Elections (Proportional Representation) Bill – introduced by Liberal Democrat frontbencher Sarah Olney under the 10-minute rule procedure. The bill sought to “introduce a system of proportional representation for parliamentary elections and for local government elections in England”.

A total of 138 MPs supported the bill – with 136 opposed. Notably, 59 Labour MPs backed Olney’s bill.

Introducing the bill, Olney told the House: “First past the post [FPTP] is a broken and unfair system. This summer, the Labour Party won a landslide election victory, securing 63% of seats in the House of Commons in return for just 34% of the vote.

“The system leaves millions of voices unheard and creates a divisive, adversarial political climate where collaboration is discouraged and accountability is often sidestepped.”

In January 2025, Rushanara Ali, the then democracy minister, told the commons that there are “no plans” to change FPTP for national contests.

Ali said: “The [FPTP] system, while not perfect, provides for… a direct relationship between members of parliament and their local constituency.”

In September 2025, the APPG for fair elections published a “ready to go” blueprint for an independent review of the FPTP electoral system. Sobel described the proposal as “a ready to go plan to independently review how parliament is elected, promote a national conversation, and build consensus on a way forward”.

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Burnham’s ambition, of course, was never in doubt – nor was the national executive committee’s rapid capitulation. The Greater Manchester mayor was blocked ahead of the February 2026 Gorton and Denton by-election on the grounds that his selection would unleash a new wave of Westminster psychodrama. At the second time of asking, Starmer’s resistance – and his political capital – was spent. 

But the circumstances that delivered Burnham’s Makerfield vacancy invited scrutiny. It was Josh Simons, the former director of Labour Together, who sailed to the rescue of Labour’s prince across the water. Simons’ abdication could well be rewarded with a central position in the Burnham court.

The second curiosity concerned the character of the Makerfield constituency. Simons’ 5,399-vote majority was the fifth lowest of the 27 Greater Manchester constituencies in 2024. The seat also carried a significant Reform presence. The party’s 2024 candidate, Robert Kenyon, polled 12,803 votes (31.8%), finishing second. Some two years later, in the weeks before Simons’ resignation, Reform secured 24 out of the 25 seats up for grabs on Wigan Borough Council.

In truth, it was necessity – as opposed to calculation and strategy – that carved Burnham’s path to power. He was left with limited options as Greater Manchester Labour MPs successively ruled out imposing a by-election on their constituents. Political circumstance conspired to produce a proof-of-concept contest for the man many cast as Labour’s antidote to Reform.

Burnham’s victory this week was remarkable on two counts therefore: for its margin – a majority of 9,231 with 54.8% of the vote – and for its narrative power.

Burnham’s campaign in Makerfield was constructed around a series of familiar rallying cries. But it was their convergence on a single candidate that defined the by-election’s novel nature. Burnham was simultaneously the “Change” candidate, the “Stop Reform” candidate and the “Get Starmer Out” candidate. This same succession of slogans powered the Green Party’s victory in Gorton and Denton. But in Makerfield, they formed the rhetorical reserve of the candidate with the red rosette – in a historically Labour-voting constituency. 

Not every slogan was featured on Burnham’s “For Us” literature. But there could be no mistaking the subtext of Burnham’s “bring change to Westminster” message. In Makerfield, the electorate endorsed Burnham and the central, irresistible implication of his candidacy: regicide. 

Against this backdrop, Burnham’s landslide conforms to recent electoral trends. Voters want change and do not expect Starmer to deliver it. Makerfield represented another opportunity for voters to send a version of the same message they have sent to Westminster for some years now. 

For weeks, Makerfield was styled as a stepping stone on Burnham’s path to power. But Burnham’s campaign would be mistaken to see itself as the driver of events. Voters used him to send a message to Westminster – not the other way round.

Burnham still has considerable cause for optimism this weekend. Reform’s limited pool of candidates is continuing to cause problems; Robert Kenyon marked the party’s second candidate blunder in as many by-elections. Nigel Farage appears increasingly uneasy in the role of permanent political actor; the prospect of becoming prime minister is weighing on British politics’ perennial outsider. And over the coming months, Farage’s fragmenting right flank will pose a series of tricky purity tests that risk pulling Reform’s centre of gravity further from the median voter.

Burnham will now reap the political spoils of his Makerfield conquest. His immediate achievement lies in injecting a popular element into what had hitherto been an elite-dominated power struggle. Burnham was endorsed as his party’s saviour in a Reform target seat by voters Labour must win to survive as a national force. A great deal was left unsaid during the campaign. But Burnham’s implicit message to Labour MPs was simple: if I can win Makerfield, I can win the country. 

Politicians, of whatever rank or party affiliation, trade in stories. The original sin of the Starmer premiership was its almost dogmatic aversion to narrative. Burnham’s victory simultaneously strikes the heart of the tale Starmer told Labour MPs in opposition: that ideological self-flagellation was a condition of victory. Burnham’s message is that Labour can be truer to its historic instincts (more left-wing) and still win the country. 

Today, in the wake of Makerfield, Burnham’s principal problem is that all which was left unsaid during the campaign must now be articulated. 

The mythical power of the prince across the water is derived from their perfect isolation. Burnham’s relative detachment in recent years has obscured his political outline. As such, leading figures from every Labour faction have projected their political aspirations onto the Greater Manchester mayor. Burnham’s power base is found among the soft left, and his emerging leadership operation is staffed by figures drawn from the upper reaches of the relaunched Tribune Group. But elements of the traditional Labour right, the Socialist Campaign Group, Blue Labour and the Red Wall Caucus have all found common cause with Burnham in recent months. 

The rival claims on Burnham were thrown into sharp relief in the early hours of Friday morning. Both Josh Simons and John McDonnell celebrated when the returning officer declared Burnham’s victory. The former was situated by Burnham’s side at the Makerfield count; the latter shed a tear live on LBC Radio. 

Labour MPs’ conceptions of what Andy Burnham means, politically, will now be pitted against each other. Every faction that rallied to Burnham’s ambiguous standard will want to see itself represented in the settlement that follows.

The extent to which Burnham’s factional coalition is a marriage of convenience – or of delusion – will soon be revealed.

The big strategic dilemma facing camp Burnham is whether they choose to define their man before or after challenging Starmer. The route of least resistance would be to land in Westminster on Monday with the roster of 81 regicides required under Labour’s leadership rules. A contest would begin in earnest, and Starmer and Wes Streeting could melt away. But this approach would store up problems for Burnham in Downing Street.

There is also the matter of unseating Starmer, whose public pronouncements indicate a stubborn resolution to remain in power. The prime minister is protected by Labour’s strict leadership election procedures, which do not provide for a simple “no-confidence” motion, and he senses that subjecting Labour’s saviour to finer scrutiny could see some of the sheen come off. 

In any case, it is time for Labour MPs to reconcile themselves to the consequences of their rebellion and Burnham’s Makerfield victory. The demand for an “orderly” succession will soon reveal its oxymoronic character. There is no such thing as a bloodless coup in British politics. Even if a contest is avoided, Burnham will need to succeed where previous prime ministers have failed in constructing a sense of political order from the rubble of regicide.

If the real meaning of Makerfield lay in the campaign subtext, its fallout will be defined by the clarity Burnham can no longer defer.

And if he does not deliver, if chaos reigns, Labour’s latest MP will learn that the public’s patience is perilously thin.

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In a letter to the prime minister, Healey said the proposed defence investment plan “falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time”.

Read Healey’s letter in full below. 

This is a letter I never expected to write, and I do so now with great regret and reluctance.

I am proud of what we have done in less than two years as a Labour Government. We’ve stepped up to lead internationally for Ukraine with the Coalition of the Willing and Ukraine Defence Contact Group, established Britain as a leading voice for Europe in NATO, raised defence investment to 2.5% of GDP three years earlier than anyone expected, launched the deepest defence reforms in 50 years, won the biggest UK defence export deals for decades, published a first-of-its-kind Strategic Defence Review, gave our Armed Forces the biggest pay rise in nearly 20 years, boosted military morale, fixed over 1,200 of the worst forces family homes, reset relations with European allies and signed major defence agreements with Germany, Norway and France.

You have led this as PM, earning wide respect at home and abroad. Like me, I know you are exceptionally proud of our Forces and all of those who work in UK Defence.

We came into government, recognising Britain faced a new era of threat which demanded a new era for defence. The SDR we jointly commissioned set the 10-year vision to transform our Armed Forces, strengthen alliances, invest in the technology that is changing warfare and back British industry to make defence an engine for growth.

This new era for defence required further investment through the Defence Investment Plan. The excellent and extensive cross-government work that completed in January – overseen by you, me and the Chancellor – confirmed the scale of the challenge and the rising demands on defence.

Since then, you have been unable, and the Treasury has been unwilling, to commit the resources that the nation needs to defend the country at this time of rising threats.

Since then, the demands on defence have increased still further, as have the UK commitments you have rightly made to allies. Conflict in the Middle East, with the UK now leading the multinational Strait of Hormuz military mission; High North security, with the UK now leading NATO’s Arctic Sentry mission; increased Russian activity towards the UK and NATO nations and increased attacks in Ukraine, with the Paris Agreement confirming a British deployment to Ukraine after a ceasefire.

We have worked to secure a Defence Investment Plan that does two things. First, deal with the increasing operational demands on defence now and step up the SDR actions to meet the increasing threat. Second, set a clear path to meet the new NATO commitment you agreed to spend 3.5% of GDP in 2035 through the next Spending Review.

As we have regularly discussed, I am certain that a headmark date for 3% of GDP on defence in 2030 is what Britain must set. This commitment would have strong cross-party support. Other European allies are stepping up in this way.

I know how hard you have worked to get to this point. And in funding the DIP, I fully recognise the strain this places on colleagues in other Departments, both now as you have required spending switched into defence and in the future. I am very grateful to those colleagues who have supported this, and I appreciate how difficult their choices will have been.

As I’ve outlined to you, there are credible ways of meeting the mid-term funding challenges, working multi-nationally and as other European nations are doing, to allow us to protect our ability to deliver the missions of our Labour Government.

However, your DIP financial settlement – which I was first given in full on Monday afternoon this week – falls well short of what is required for defence and the country at this dangerous time. The extra support is backloaded when the pressure of operations and imperative to speed up readiness to fight is in the first two years and it rises to just 2.68% of GDP in 2030, when we will reach 2.6% next year with the investment we are already making.

You spelled out the threats last week: “it is our intelligence assessment, and the assessment of other countries in NATO, that there could be an attack by Russia on NATO as soon as 2030.”

You know what defence needs. You made the argument for this powerfully in your speech at the Munich Security Conference back in February.

Without a DIP that meets the moment in this way, I am being forced to make decisions that would reduce the readiness of our Forces and increase the risk to personnel on operations, and could make the country less safe.

After explaining to you that I would not be able to accept a DIP settlement that does not give our Forces the resources they need, I am now left with no other option than to submit my resignation as your Defence Secretary.

I wish you all continuing strength in the exceptional challenges you face as Prime Minister. As always, our Labour Government will continue to have my fullest support.

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The response to the climate and nature threats we face has too often amounted to little more than hand-wringing as the ecosystems we all depend on are slowly chipped away at.

Part of the challenge for those of us raising the alarm is how easily these concerns are brushed aside.

Just as climate change was dismissed for years, and still is by some – the political class too readily downplays the long-term consequences of weakening environmental protections or failing to invest in a serious nature recovery plan.

Britain is also rolling back its responsibilities on the world stage. Yet the impacts of climate change and the destruction of vital global ecosystems are real and they are already being felt. Floods, droughts, and other climate-related disasters are not confined to distant parts of the world; they are already affecting lives here in the UK.

The costs of acting are painted as abstract or long into the future when set against pressures more immediately felt in people’s pockets. We have got to be clear about the stakes of ecological collapse – and the urgency of preventing it.

The government recently found £2.2 billion to increase defence spending when pressured to do so by Donald Trump.

If the reasoning for this shift really is our national security – it’s a serious oversight that the same urgency has not been applied to the government’s own intelligence assessments, which conclude that ecosystem collapse is now one of the gravest threats to UK national security.

Developed with the involvement of the joint intelligence committee, the body that oversees MI5 and MI6, this report found that global breakdown of key ecosystems risks geopolitical instability, economic insecurity, conflict, mass displacement and increased inter-state competition for resources, all of which will cause devastating consequences for the UK.

Every critical ecosystem is already on a pathway to collapse, and the impacts are already here, in food prices, flooding, and rising insurance costs hitting British households.

Depressingly, the government delayed the publication of this national security assessment for months. When it finally emerged, it was heavily redacted, raising serious questions about whether the UK is prepared for the consequences it outlines.

It’s more than concerning that this has coincided with a weakening of environmental protections at home – and Ministers retreating from our international obligations too.

International climate finance has been cut from £11.6 billion over the past five years, to just £9 billion in the next, a reduction of close to 40 per cent in real terms. The Biodiverse Landscapes Fund has been slashed from six regions to two. The £500 million Blue Planet Fund is being cut. Multi-year commitments have been reduced to single-year allocations, telling partner countries plainly that the UK cannot be relied upon.

The decision to walk away from the Tropical Forest Forever Facility is further evidence that we are sticking our head in the sand. This landmark mechanism, co-developed with UK involvement and launched at COP30 last November, delivers sustained payments to tropical forest countries for every hectare they protect. The total pledged stands at over $6.7 billion USD. Germany and Norway have committed.

And yet, the UK, which helped design the very architecture of global forest finance, has contributed nothing, citing fiscal constraints.

Tropical forests store enormous amounts of carbon and help regulate global weather patterns – essential for keeping temperatures liveable and weather reliable enough to grow food. When these ecosystems break down, the effects ripple across the world, directly impacting people here in the UK. Cutting funding for their protection is not prudent budgeting; it is a failure to safeguard our security.

When ecosystems collapse, economies fail and the UK pays through emergency aid, security responses, disrupted supply, and food prices that squeeze households and strain public services. The savings made by cutting the Biodiverse Landscapes Fund will be spent many times over on the consequences of its collapse.

These are the dots the government has not connected. Conflict, instability, and the fraying of alliances, are compounded by ecosystem breakdown.

Climate change and biodiversity loss exacerbate resource conflicts, and destabilise fragile states. And yet, currently, we are pouring money into dealing with the consequences while cutting the investment that would address the root causes.

A serious security strategy requires treating nature as critical infrastructure; a resilient network that both protects and powers the UK. Climate action and nature restoration must be embedded into every major decision, not as competing priorities, but as the foundation for all others.

Governing seriously means acting on the evidence. Ministers must reinvest in international climate and nature, treating this security assessment as an urgent call to action.

The vast increases in defence spending demonstrate that significant, targeted funding can be deployed quickly when deemed necessary.

It is high time that nature breakdown and climate change are recognised across Whitehall as a national security issue, with a coordinated, cross-government response to the global threats we face.

After all, no nation is secure when the natural world that sustains it is in freefall.

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For some, the history of the Labour Party is viewed through a prism of relentless, linear progressivism. In this narrative, the movement has always been a vanguard for social revolution, making the emergence of “Blue Labour” feel like a grit-toothed betrayal – a foreign body injected into a purely progressive bloodstream.

I do not write this piece to trash the social progress that was made under the last Labour government. We should celebrate and continue to defend The Equality Act, equal pay, greater diversity and acceptance in our institutions, including within our politics. We must defend these things particularly as it comes under attack from the populist right, and we should say clearly that the mainstream of this country has no desire to go back to the bad old days where racism, homophobia, misogyny and other social evils were more prevalent.

However, to suggest that a focus on the traditional values is “alien” to Labour values isn’t just a political critique; it is a profound rewriting of history. If you peel back the layers of the movement, you find a plurality of traditions holding our historic coalition together, of which Methodism, trade union protectionism, and a deep-seated desire for social stability are a key part.

The oft-quoted phrase that the Labour Party owes “more to Methodism than Marx” is more than a catchy aphorism. The early pioneers of the movement were often socially conservative figures who viewed the excesses of raw capitalism not just as an economic failure, but as a moral one.

Their primary concern was the protection of the “moral economy.” This included:

• The sanctity of the home: Early unions fought for a “family wage” specifically so that the domestic sphere could be protected from the industrial machine.
• Communal discipline: The movement was rooted in self-improvement, temperance, and a strict ethical code.
• Localism: The focus was on the parish and the branch, not a borderless global utopia.

It is one of the great successes of neoliberalism that we have been convinced that “radical” and “conservative” are polar opposites. We are told we must choose between a left which is socially liberal and or a right wing which is socially conservative. Both of which have accepted the dominance of free market orthodoxy.

However, for the Labour movement, the most potent periods of change occurred when radical economic reform was fuelled by conservative social values. The two are not only compatible; they are often mutually dependent. To rebuild a broken economy, one needs the “social glue” that conservatism provides. A radical socialist program – nationalisation, wealth redistribution, the empowerment of unions – requires a high degree of social trust and solidarity.

The 1945 Attlee government – the gold standard of radical Labour achievement – was culturally traditional. They built the NHS and the welfare state not to dismantle the British way of life, but to fortify it. They were radical in their means because they were conservative in their ends: the health, dignity, and stability of British families.

Modern progressives often view “radicalism” as synonymous with “disruption.” But for a worker, radicalism is the tool used to achieve stability. You nationalise the railways or protect the NHS not to cause a revolution, but to ensure that the foundational things in life remain predictable and secure. In these times of global insecurity, the security of those things we most hold dear as a country and in our communities is a potent political message.

By dismissing the socially conservative streak of the movement as an aberration, we risk alienating the very heartlands we should aspire to represent. When the “Red Wall” crumbled, it wasn’t necessarily because the voters moved; it was because gradually, over decades, the party’s centre of gravity shifted toward a metropolitan liberalism that felt increasingly judgmental of parts of the tradition that founded it.

It’s not just potential Reform voters who could find some appeal in a Labour party talking which places fairness, security and tradition at the core of it’s message. Despite the vehement disrespect for working class communities shown by Zack Polanski when talking about social care workers, we should note that in Gorton and Denton Hannah Spencer secured the support of a coalition of voters who would once have cast their vote for Labour, by focusing on the bread and butter things that most people, regardless of their background, care about. Am I going to be able to afford to put food on the table or heat my home? Can I afford to go on a holiday this year? Is my community divided?

Blue Labour isn’t a Tory-lite infiltration. It is a reminder that work is a vocation, not just a contract, that relationships matter more than abstract rights and that patriotism is a valid expression of solidarity, not always a precursor to prejudice.

To purge the “Blue” from Labour is to lobotomise the party’s own memory. We must stop treating social conservatism as a stain to be scrubbed out and start seeing it for what it is: a foundation stone of the British working-class experience. If Labour wants to win again, it cannot retreat into a comfort zone of any one part of its coalition. It must not lean into the fragmentation of our politics but instead reach back out towards the things that unite us – a radical desire for security, community and a good life that resonates with our historic base.

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Morgan McSweeney, one of the prime minister’s longest-serving and closest lieutenants, resigned as Downing Street chief of staff on Sunday. In a statement, McSweeney said he took “full responsibility” after personally advising Starmer to appoint Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to the United States.

The outgoing No 10 chief of staff said the decision to appoint Mandelson was “wrong” and had “damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself.”

McSweeney stated: “When asked, I advised the prime minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice. In public life responsibility must be owned when it matters most, not just when it is most convenient. 

“In the circumstances, the only honourable course is to step aside.”

McSweeney said he remained “fully supportive of the prime minister”. His former deputies Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson have stepped up as acting chiefs of staff.

On Monday morning, Tim Allan resigned as the prime minister’s director of communications, having only spent five months in the role. 

In a statement, Allan said: “I have decided to stand down to allow a new No 10 team to be built. I wish the PM and his team every success.”

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Starmer has since addressed staff at No 10 Downing Street, declaring that his government is united by a “driving purpose” of “public duty”. 

Reflecting on the revelations surrounding Mandelson, which precipitated the present crisis, Starmer said that the scandal risked undermining “the belief that politics can be a force for good and can change lives.”

He added: “I have been absolutely clear that I regret the decision that I made to appoint Peter Mandelson. And I’ve apologised to the victims which is the right thing to do.”

Starmer also paid tribute to McSweeney, whom he referred to as a “colleague and a friend”. 

The prime minister said: “We have run up and down every political football pitch that is across the country. We’ve been in every battle that we needed to be in together. Fighting that battle.

“We changed the Labour Party together. We won a general election together. And none of that would have been possible without Morgan McSweeney. 

“His dedication, his commitment and his loyalty to our party and our country was second to none. And I want to thank him for his service.”

Starmer pointed to the work of his government around tackling the cost of living and cutting NHS waiting lists.

He continued: “In just a few months, we start the work of lifting half a million children out of poverty. A massive thing to do in this country because that means that lives will be changed.

“For decades to come, children who otherwise wouldn’t have fair chance and fair opportunity. Poverty holds children back like nothing else on earth. And so getting rid of child poverty opens up opportunities for so many.” 

The prime minister concluded: “We must prove that politics can be a force for good. I believe it can. I believe it is. We go forward from here. We go with confidence as we continue changing the country.”

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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On Wednesday, the prime minister instructed Labour MPs to support a government amendment to a humble address tabled by Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party. The official opposition called for the release of documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s appointment as Britain’s ambassador to the US; Starmer sought to include exemptions for those papers that might prejudice national security and international relations. 

The Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) mutinied. 

Having been marched up and down hills for months by a meandering Downing Street operation, Labour MPs looked elsewhere for guidance. It was left to Angela Rayner to locate a politically sustainable solution and dictate terms to the government Whips’ Office. Ministers agreed, under the threat of greater humiliation, to refer the documents to the cross-party intelligence and security committee.

The former deputy prime minister filled the PLP power vacuum on Wednesday. 

The episode exposes just how thin Starmer’s grip on his parliamentary party has become. 

Any prime minister’s fate rests with their parliamentary party. A finer appreciation of this fact might have spared Starmer some of his more spectacular misjudgments – the “noises off” on the backbenches matter. But a prime minister’s dependence on their party is never more apparent than at the end of the road. 

On the steps of Downing Street in July 2022, Boris Johnson memorably described the irresistible synchronisation of regicidal MPs. When the herd moves, the outgoing prime minister observed, it moves. Johnson’s obstinate determination to cling to power was no match for the collective might of Conservative MPs. 

Johnson attributed the “powerful” herd instinct to Westminster as a whole. But there is an argument to say that, when it comes to ejecting and electing leaders, this instinct is a uniquely Conservative asset.

Over 14 years of government, spanning five prime ministers, the Conservative Party’s leadership election rules were treated as an extension of the British constitution. The key distinction between the Tory rules, established in 1998, and those governing any challenge to Starmer lies in the former’s no-confidence procedure.

The Conservative no-confidence ballot is a ruthless, and highly sophisticated, mechanism.

In total, the 1922 committee of Conservative backbenchers has overseen three ‘votes of confidence’: Iain Duncan Smith in 2003, Theresa May in 2018 and Boris Johnson in 2022. Of these votes, only the first has been successful. A total of 90 Conservative MPs voted against Duncan Smith in the standard secret ballot; the outgoing Tory leader could only muster 75 to his defence. 

The 2018 and 2022 ballots technically secured the position of May and Johnson respectively. When a leader survives a confidence vote, they are rewarded with a 12-month clemency period. In practice, both May and Johnson were defenestrated mere months later. (Johnson, at least, was warned that the 1922 executive committee would pass a rule change to force a second confidence vote.)

The power of the no-confidence mechanism is that it creates a leadership vacancy. This means that Conservative MPs, who see the incumbent leader as a liability, do not need to resolve on a common path forward – only that the incumbent should go. The defenestrated leader, to round off the ruthless process, is then barred from standing in the subsequent leadership election. 

The mechanism has its drawbacks, of course. Creating a vacancy without charting a clear course can produce some unforeseen and unfortunate outcomes – including but not limited to sending Liz Truss to Downing Street. But the Conservative no-confidence ballot remains a precise, and mostly orderly, way of translating mass disaffection into a leadership challenge. 

Labour’s system is significantly less precise. 

In the event of a vacancy, as we saw with the mostly smooth competition to replace Angela Rayner as deputy leader, the rules are simple enough. But Labour lacks its own in-house assassination bureau; there is no reliable production line of “men in grey suits” who can coordinate a lethal visitation while an incumbent remains in place.

Critically, there is no procedural means of creating a Labour leadership vacancy. In 2016, a PLP motion expressing no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn, tabled by Margaret Hodge, was passed by 171 votes to 40. But there was no obligation for Corbyn to stand down. Instead, both Owen Smith and Angela Eagle declared their leadership candidacies and easily surpassed the 20% threshold (then 50 MPs) to trigger a contest. Corbyn was given a place on the ballot following an 18-14 National Executive Committee (NEC) ruling. And the membership vote restored Corbyn as leader with a refreshed mandate. 

According to the Labour rule book, it remains the case that a vacancy can only be created by a resignation. Pretenders cannot exploit a vacuum; they must wrestle the crown from the king’s head while he remains on the throne. 

Conservative leaders are felled by a politically amorphous, technically anonymous herd of critics. Keir Starmer’s usurper will have a name, a faction and a wider group of allies – all of whom must make themselves known under party rules. Labour MPs cannot cower in smoke-filled rooms or behind secret letters to a senior backbencher. In this regard, the Labour rule book is plain: “Valid nominations shall be published by the party”.

The rule book, however, is sufficiently ambiguous to allow a challenger to choose the sequencing of their insurrection. The rules suggest that a challenger should surreptitiously sign up a fifth of the PLP (81 MPs) to a coup, before providing the proof of their nominations to the general secretary of the Labour Party, Hollie Ridley. But on a reasonable reading of the rules, an MP could declare their intention to run, and then begin canvassing the parliamentary party.

And yet, whatever approach a would-be challenger takes, they will be forced to place their head above the parapet. 

A potential parallel is found in the Conservative Party rules as they existed from 1975 to 1998. Then, as now in the Labour Party, the removal of an incumbent leader required a full frontal assault from a prospective challenger. Margaret Thatcher avoided a challenge under these rules for much of her tenure as Tory leader and prime minister. But she faced two contests successively in 1989 and 1990. 

In 1989, Sir Anthony Meyer stepped forward as a “stalking horse” candidate. Thatcher secured a mostly decisive victory over “Sir Anthony Whats’isname” or the “stalking donkey”, as Meyer was dubbed by some in the press, by 314 votes to 33. On that occasion, a serious challenger to Thatcher, such as the former defence secretary, Michael Heseltine, chose not to stand. Meyer stood to test the party’s confidence in the prime minister. 

One year later in 1990, in the wake of Geoffrey Howe’s searing resignation statement, Heseltine announced his candidacy for the leadership. Under the party’s then leadership rules, a candidate required a majority of 15% of the total Tory selectorate to win outright on the first ballot. Thatcher’s majority was four short of this threshold; she responded by announcing her resignation as prime minister. 

But Heseltine’s candidacy famously established the dictum that knife-wielders do not go on to collect the crown. Both John Major and Douglas Hurd put themselves forward for the second ballot, and the former prevailed. 

Those considering a challenge to Starmer’s leadership will be acutely aware of this precedent. There are countervailing case studies, of course – examples of would-be candidates missing their moment of maximum opportunity to wait for a cleaner opening that never arrived. Michael Portillo installed telephone lines in 1995, but did not challenge Major; David Miliband chose not to lead an insurrection against Gordon Brown. Both pretenders lost subsequent leadership elections. 

Another option for those dissatisfied with Starmer’s leadership would be a symbolic stand, signalling to the prime minister that his time is up. Historically, this is the route the Labour Party has taken when a leader is perceived to be a liability.

An ideal model is supplied by the Blair-Brown leadership transition. On 5 September 2006, 17 Labour MPs issued a letter asking Blair to resign – reports indicated that dozens more were willing to support the call. A coordinated move by Brown’s allies followed, including the resignation of several junior government ministers. Tom Watson, the future Labour deputy leader, was among those to step down. Blair was forced to announce that the party’s upcoming conference would be his last. On 25 September, at the scene of Blair’s final conference, Brown declared his candidacy for the leadership.

Crucially, the relative precision of Blair’s defenestration owed to Brown’s status as his obvious successor (notwithstanding an ill-fated challenge by John McDonnell). 

Recent coups have not been so successful. In June 2009, just minutes after the polls had closed in the European and local elections, James Purnell resigned as work and pensions secretary and called on Gordon Brown to step down as prime minister. Purnell, who insisted that he would not seek Brown’s post were it to become vacant, was joined by backbench MPs Barry ­Sheerman and Graham Allen in calling on Brown to resign. But Miliband, the foreign secretary, and Alan Johnson, the health secretary – Brown’s most likely heirs – rowed in behind the Downing Street incumbent. Purnell’s putsch failed. 

In January 2010, two former cabinet ministers, Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon, called for a leadership contest to resolve Brown’s future. The prime minister dismissed the challenge as a “form of silliness” – and the Parliamentary Labour Party agreed. Interestingly, the Hewitt-Hoon coup called for a secret ballot vote in Brown’s leadership, replicating the Conservative no-confidence procedure. Both Johnson and Miliband (eventually) signalled their support for the prime minister. 

The 2016 Labour leadership election was the ill-fated consequence of a failed coup, triggered by the dismissal of Hilary Benn as shadow foreign secretary for plotting. Benn’s sacking in the early hours of the morning opened the floodgates to a wave of resignations from the shadow frontbench, precipitating the symbolic no-confidence vote in Corbyn’s leadership. The incumbent stayed put. 

At this moment, Starmer is likely more vulnerable than either Brown or Corbyn. In the former case, discontent was more diffuse with a general election nearing; in the latter instance, Starmer does not command the confidence of the grassroots in the way Corbyn did. A symbolic intervention could well be enough to depose Starmer. 

But such a stand would have to be fronted by a politician with sufficient political clout – a party grandee or shadow cabinet minister – to signal decisively that Starmer’s time is up. Moreover, if the prime minister refuses to resign, this strategy would still depend on his prospective successors stepping forward to announce their candidacies. They would need to have full faith that their parliamentary colleagues would go over the top with them.

It is likely, therefore, that in the absence of a resignation, the Labour herd will be forced to get creative in order to drive Starmer from office.

The prime minister is also protected, for the time being, by the absence of an agreed successor. Andy Burnham was only recently barred from marching on Westminster by the Labour National Executive Committee (NEC). In September 2025, Angela Rayner resigned from the government over her tax affairs. Wes Streeting is seen as a plotter by Starmer’s allies and with scepticism from the Labour “soft left”. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader from 2010 to 2015, has previously been rejected by the electorate. Shabana Mahmood, the most Blue Labour-coded of the likely contenders, would surely struggle among the party membership. 

The Conservative herd moved against Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, in part, because the parliamentary party could conceive of a line of succession. (The choice of Conservative MPs to succeed Johnson was, of course, Rishi Sunak, not Truss.)

The bottom line is that Starmer’s position is terminally vulnerable, but protected by a combination of process and political circumstance. 

In July 2022, Johnson referred to his party’s “brilliant Darwinian system”. Labour simply lacks a reliable apparatus for regicide. And so the relative ease with which the Conservatives ditched leaders will not be repeated under Labour. The process will not be precise, and it will almost certainly not be orderly. When Starmer is finally felled, the fallout will be fraught. 

The length of Starmer’s stay of execution lies with the Labour herd. The prime minister is only in a position to endure. In the meantime, the destabilising phoney war and the leadership brinkmanship will continue until a future flashpoint. This could be provided by the Gorton and Denton by-election and/or the elections in May.

If Starmer is to go, then at some point, in some way, someone – be they a leadership contender or disgruntled grandee – will have to step forward.

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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For this, Kemi Badenoch likely has the Greater Manchester mayor to thank. Burnham landed in Liverpool last week with a transparent agenda to destabilise the Labour leadership; every fringe event marked another symbolic incursion on the Starmer premiership. The prime minister broke the siege with a well-received keynote speech that targeted Reform UK and featured some precise swipes at Burnham’s pretensions.

Jenrick, a strategic mind, chose not to risk comparisons with the Greater Manchester mayor’s botched putsch.

Burnham and Jenrick perform corresponding roles in the internal dramas of their parties. Both are possessed by a palpable ambition, and aren’t afraid to flaunt it; wear the scars of a leadership campaign (two in Burnham’s case); have been on ideological journeys, cementing their popularity among party activists (several in Burnham’s case); once sat around the cabinet table; and articulate analyses of their party’s position that resonate with the activist soul. 

Jenrick and Burnham represent parallel phenomena: independent but dynamically aligned. The Conservative pretender showed uncharacteristic restraint this conference season – having witnessed his Labour counterpart flaunt his way into obscurity. The result is the same: Starmer and Badenoch both saw their authority enhanced at the expense of their rival claimants. 

It’s been a poor conference season, then, for those who would be king. 

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The art of pretending is in its timing. Leadership aspirants face a lethal paradox. Hesitate, and you risk missing an opportunity to sack the throne. But forcing the question can prove politically fatal. You risk exposing your designs. 

The conspirator must maintain a fine balance. Constructive ambiguity sustains the mythology of a saviour-in-waiting. Theirs is a state of permanent preparation. 

Burnham and Jenrick’s challenge extends beyond convincing activists they’d be an improvement on the incumbent leader. (Polling suggests they have already succeeded in that regard.) They must persuade the party’s kingmakers that the realisation of their tantalising potential is worth the trauma of regicide. 

The shrewdest pretenders manoeuvre and cajole their party into taking a path it would refuse were the destination – regicide – ever spelt out explicitly. They engineer the circumstances whereby their elevation is not condemned as a treacherous plot, but received as a welcome inevitability. That is how a pretender defies the famous maxim, bloodying the knife and claiming the crown. 

Andy Burnham, suffice it to say, did not display the requisite subtlety in his conference contributions. Whatever his intent, his public posturing belied his strained protestations of innocence. Ambition was read into his every action, but still, he persisted in delivering his damning appraisal. 

The ‘King of the North’ arrived at the scene of his first conference intervention shadowed by a royal court comprising photographers, a security detail and his political counsel. In an address ostensibly about electoral reform, Burnham took aim at what he termed a “climate of fear” within the party. He never directly walked back his comments, but the days that followed were marked by a broader strategic retreat.

Having recommitted himself to the Greater Manchester mayoralty and backed Starmer to remain prime minister, Burnham cut an isolated figure in his conference exit. The King of the North departed just minutes before the PM’s keynote speech, flanked by two anonymous aides. 

The narrative arc of his conference was encapsulated by these contrasting images: his regal entrance, with the eyes of conference upon him, and his humble, defeated departure. 

In politics, it is so easy to learn the wrong lessons from teachable moments. Jenrick would have taken note of Burnham’s spectacular overreach, and it surely informed his obsequious manner at Conservative conference. 

Jenrick either overplayed his hand in the preceding months, or underplayed it in Manchester. Whatever the case, the lack of continuity was immediately conspicuous. “There was a leadership election and the party made its choice”, Jenrick told one fringe event. “Kemi is our leader. I am in her shadow cabinet. I would not have chosen to serve in the shadow cabinet if I didn’t believe in Kemi, if I didn’t want her to succeed, if I were not rooting for her and trying to support her in every way that I can.”

The stance presented a clear path for Badenoch to outperform expectations with her conference address. Indeed, Jenrick’s own podium contribution was seriously underpowered – echoing his sermon at the Conservative Party’s 2024 fête. (The shadow justice secretary’s rise has been powered by a canny social media strategy; it’s noteworthy that he has not risen to the set-piece opportunities afforded to him).

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Conference season provided a genuine pivot in the political narrative: Burnham and Jenrick’s leadership tilts are – temporarily at least – on hold. Starmer and Badenoch have secured a welcome period of silence, albeit only partially of their own accord. 

Both return to Westminster next week sporting something of a post-conference glow. Starmer hinted suggestively at a symbolic purpose for his government. Badenoch proved her party still has a pulse. These are considered wins for parties polling a collective 37%.

The PM and LOTO have been afforded space to define their own agendas, free from damaging questions about their fragile authority. The same could not be said heading into conference season. Starmer can continue to tell his story. Badenoch will begin to draw the dividing lines implied by her policy blitz. 

Yet the political solace is in its own way deceptive. Burnham’s insurgency was a convenient smokescreen; it allowed the Labour leadership to style its critics as irredeemably disloyal. It distracted from the more subtle but no less instructive manoeuvring of Shabana Mahmood and Wes Streeting. And Burnham’s challenge obscured the party contest that is actually playing out within Labour.

Lucy Powell’s likely election as deputy Labour leader will not, as her rival apparently expects, plunge the party into a fresh civil war. (Bridget Phillipson’s contention that Powell has no “clout” and would single-handedly foster division is contradictory, of course.) But the deputy leadership result, Powell’s all-but-inevitable elevation, will be interpreted as a rebuke. And Starmer’s prospective deputy has said she would use her perch to act as “bridge” between the Labour leadership and party activists – thinly veiled code for championing a leftward tilt.

The stage is set for future flashpoints. Starmer’s focus will now turn to internal discontent ahead of the autumn budget and the fraught path to digital ID – before pivoting to the local elections in May. 

The local elections will beg ever more existential questions of the Conservative Party’s standing in this radically reformed political landscape. Badenoch succeeded in securing a temporary reprieve at conference, no more: a stay of execution snatched from the jaws of regicide. Any ephemeral narrative of resurgence will not survive contact with the local elections in May.

The post-conference glow is something of a smokescreen, therefore. For both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, the uncomfortable truth is that their moments of maximum danger are still to come.

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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So, he was a delight to meet. But what about what he said in his speech?

Significantly, the 2025 Labour Party conference showed that the Labour Party, fresh from a brilliant Keir Starmer speech in Liverpool, is already taking note of one of Obama’s big themes of the night in London: that for progressives to prevail, we must tell stories that move and connect.

Let’s be clear. Lincoln aside, Obama is the most significant president in modern US history. At one point, as he said himself, he was the most photographed person on the planet. The first digital US president. The first Black President. Looking younger than his 64 years, he had the audience at London’s O2 eating out of his hand. I thanked him for being a relentless force for good in the world and I hope he knows how many people are behind his ongoing work.

President Obama delivered a sermon in beautiful, measured prose. Less politician, more preacher, his post-presidency work now tours the liberal world with a homily about democracy, equality and grace towards our political opponents. His main theme in London was the fragility of liberalism and the need to communicate it not just as a system of rules but as a story. To reach and move people, to ignite passion.

Much of what he said was familiar. Globalisation has winners and losers. The wealth it generated was immense, but it came with inequality and insecurity. Britain has lived through the same story as the USA. Entire regions of the UK feel untethered. Our old industries gone, our communities hollowed out. Populism exploits resentment. Institutions creak under the strain of 21st-century challenges. The relentless 24-hour social media landscape rewards outrage. Artificial intelligence looms. MAGA in the USA and Reform here are flourishing where economies are not delivering. Ultimately, truth is suffering.

He framed liberal democracy as a noble, if imperfect, experiment that deserves reverence rather than embarrassment. He urged progressives to temper impatience with those who have not yet absorbed what the left so often conveys as obvious and self-evident. He pleaded for grace in political debate, something too often forgotten.

President Obama said that given these challenges, progressives too often fail to articulate their cause with sufficient impact. Much of Starmer’s first year nodded to this – prose stripped of poetry. A Labour leader who talked solely of industrial strategy and green jobs risked sounding like a policy manual, not a visionary leader.

What was missing was the emotional register. The promise of dignity, fairness, and national renewal. The connection.

Starmer’s cannot be accused of a lack of competence. Far from it. Too often in his first year, this seriousness and capability, the sense of him being a man who can draft a contract, chair a meeting, audit a set of accounts, convene a table of strong leaders, has simply not cut through. The stories, the connection to voters, have been absent.

Labour’s most successful leaders understood the need to paint on a big canvas. Clement Attlee, the least messianic of leaders, did not win in 1945 by promising only clean government after Churchill’s turmoil. He offered a transformative vision of security “from cradle to grave” and linked it to the moral experience of wartime sacrifice. Tony Blair, for all his polish, won in 1997 by projecting optimism, suggesting Britain’s best days lay ahead, not behind. And in the United States, Joe Biden, whose charisma differs from Obama’s, nonetheless made 2020 a contest of stories – Trump’s zero-sum fear against his own “battle for the soul of America.”

Until Tuesday’s speech in Liverpool, Keir Starmer too often sounded like a man in front of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, footnoting his promises with actuarial caveats. Yes, voters want reassurance that the sums add up, but they also want something more elemental. They want a sense of belonging, a reason to believe politics sees them as more than units of revenue and expenditure.

Obama’s London lecture pointed towards that other half of the task. He described the clash between two stories of humanity. One of equality and trust, the other of hierarchy and fear. People harbour both stories within them. The question is which one politics dignifies. The nationalist right flatters instinct. The liberal left too often scolds it. The result is a lopsided contest.

Here, the lesson for Labour is clear. A politics that regards provincial conservatism as moral delinquency is doomed to fail. Blair understood this better than anyone. His was a politics of inclusion – bringing Essex Man and Mondeo Man into the Labour tent, not by berating them but by respecting them. Obama’s language of grace, of inviting sceptics in rather than excluding them, is the modern equivalent. Stop shouting at your opponents, he was saying.

In our democracies, rhetoric is the currency of power. Obama knew it. Reagan knew it. Blair knew it. Even Boris Johnson, for all his unseriousness, understood that optimism can trump detail. The case against the government is currently well made. The case for Labour is less vivid so far. Crucially, I see evidence of that changing in Liverpool.

Obama’s gift is to make liberalism feel romantic. He invokes the long arc of history, the sacrifices that gave birth to institutions, the sense that democracy is a fragile inheritance worth defending. He does it without self-pity and without sneer. Our prime minister does not need to become Obama. Britain is not America; our political culture punishes grandiloquence. Attlee’s understatement and Blair’s conversational modernity are closer models. But all three men understood that management must be embedded in a wider sense of mission.

Obama’s London speech was a welcome reminder of politics’ oldest truth – people need stories. Starmer has one, of patriotic renewal after national decline, about fairness after years of drift. Until Tuesday in Liverpool he could be accused of whispering it. Not now.

It is an odd thought, but the fate of British politics may depend on whether a former American president has reminded our prime minister that he must be a better storyteller. When I watched Keir Starmer speak in Liverpool, I thought he was already showing signs of understanding the power of stories that inspire and move. Long may it continue.

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Even then, Kemi Badenoch’s party was reduced to a rhetorical device, rather than treated as a meaningful political threat. The Conservatives did not stand up to “grievance politics” in their 14 years in government, Starmer observed. He would. With that, the prime minister delivered his peroration and returned to more pressing matters: the rise of Reform UK. 

Yet the speech’s cursory consideration of the Conservative Party was, in effect, its logical foundation. The rump Tory party, exhausted and misled, was dismissed as obsolete. Labour would focus its energy on the forces that devoured it.

Starmer’s conference address was an analysis of the political landscape, its recent redevelopment, its faultlines – and a statement of where Labour under his leadership would stand within it.

Nigel Farage was the speech’s antagonist. And Starmer portrayed his role in Britain’s political drama with unprecedented clarity. The Reform UK leader was characterised as a harbinger of division and decline; derided as a politician who neither understands his country, nor much likes it; and cast as an arch-opportunist, who cynically exploits grievance for his own career ends. 

The prime minister called out the “self-appointed champions of working people” and spoke of “a fight for the soul of our country”.

He declared: “If you say or imply that people who have lived here for generations can’t be English because of the colour of their skin, people who made their lives here… we will fight you with everything we have because you are an enemy of national renewal.”

Starmer positioned Labour as both Reform’s antithesis and antidote. He defined the nature of the populist threat, and presented a theory to explain its moral failings. 

In other words: Starmer told a story.

“That was me”, the prime minister is said to have confided to friends moments after delivering his speech. Therein lay the political power of the address: its simplicity, its unapologetic authenticity. 

With his speech, Starmer intervened in the long-running debate over what he actually stands for. The prime minister had once been reticent to rectify this ambiguity. Perhaps his strategists reasoned that storytelling was not his strong suit, or that politics had somehow evolved beyond the need for narrative. Whatever the calculation, events have shown it to be wrongheaded. 

The prime minister’s previous attempts to address his lack of political substance only muddied matters. Starmer took to the conference stage on Monday with his programme still couched in managerial nomenclature: his collection of “pledges”, “missions”, “first steps”, “milestones”, “foundations” and “phases”. 

Some of these formulations had already been reneged upon. But others were left languishing in a liminal state of simultaneous existence and non-existence: neither explicitly committed to, nor formally forsaken. From 2023 to 2025, the more the prime minister tried to distill his political offer, the less accessible it became. Somewhere in this managerial milieu, of course, resided the government’s “plan for change”.

Starmer’s conference speech entirely avoided such constructions.

From the outset, Starmer levelled with the electorate by foregrounding a clear narrative. Speaking plainly matters in politics. 10 pledges, six milestones, six first steps, five missions, three foundations and two phases are no substitute for singular purpose. There was a finality to the conference address, therefore. The chronic carving up of Starmer’s politics into categories was never exactly compelling; it lacked genuine commitment. There was no indication of political definition, direction or denouement. Starmer’s address was different.

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The final phase

The prime minister’s lack of political definition infused his government. Policy announcements seemed random, bereft of any overarching programme.

More pertinently, political stories matter – especially in a fractured and highly competitive political landscape – because they dictate the battles a party picks. Managed conflicts are a means by which parties project their values to voters. Without a narrative, parties are drawn onto the territory of their opponents and forced, in effect, to triangulate to survive. Instinctively sympathetic voters are left isolated. 

Political stories are also significant in setting the boundaries of a leader’s authority. A narrative provides the connective tissue that holds a government’s priorities, policies and personnel together. It invites frontbenchers and backbenchers alike to identify with a common mission. Without one, orders emerging from the centre appear disjointed and incoherent. MPs who want to be heard are left to freelance. With a story, loyal MPs are incentivised to work towards their party’s leadership on its terms.

Approved narratives, equally, serve as an instruction to the leader’s inner circle. Consider Starmer’s “islands of strangers” debacle: the prime minister’s decision to row on the speech suggests his own speechwriters – apparatchiks employed as experts in their subject’s mind and voice – did not understand his politics. The conference speech, which narrated the nature of Starmer’s challenge to Reform, will stand as a guide for his No 10 coterie. 

And without a narrative, otherwise manageable crises – like the loss of Downing Street personnel – appear somehow existential. A government that exists, ostensibly, to ensure the favourability of the daily news cycle will find itself disproportionately distressed by relative dips. The lack of a narrative has informed the brittle quality of Starmer’s premiership. 

Indeed, when the going gets tough, a political North Star can serve as a guide – setting the terms of strategic retreats and/or pointing a government to safer territory. 

For the first time in months then, Starmer’s speech has given his premiership a sense of forward momentum. The address has created a permission structure for his cabinet outriders to take on their opponents with evermore uncompromising rhetoric. Consider Ed Miliband’s comprehensive castigation of Elon Musk in these terms. One already senses the shift from cautious managerialism. A much-needed edge has been added to the government’s communication. 

The response of Reform, reactive and not a little tetchy, should harden Starmer’s strategic resolve. Farage’s hastily arranged presser suggested he had been thrown off balance by the conference address – as did the substance of his response. His fightback incorporated strained suggestions that the Labour leader had set out to incite violence against Reform. As Zia Yusuf, the former Reform chair, put it on Tuesday: “The prime minister knows precisely what he’s doing. 

“He knows he cannot beat Nigel at the ballot box, we’ve seen the most extraordinary campaign over 48 hours to demonise Nigel, and he is absolutely inciting violence against him.”

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The anti-Farage front

There are unavoidable risks with Starmer’s strategy, that said. The approach speaks simultaneously to progressives, to traditional conservatives and to the Reform-curious so-called “hero” voters Labour secured in 2024 – all with a view to constructing an anti-Farage popular front. It seeks to persuade those who are implacably opposed to Reform’s politics that Labour is the only vehicle that can thwart Farage. At the same time, it engages in an argument among the Reform-curious about the moral damage the party would wreak were it given the chance – an attempt to effectively delegitimise and re-stigmatise the party. 

The “moral line” strategy is a deliberately unsubtle solution, therefore, to a rapidly fragmenting electoral landscape. The apparent aim is to appeal to enough of its target audience (the anti-Reformers and the Reform-curious) to build the kind of broad-but-shallow electoral coalition Starmer constructed in 2024.

The questions as to whether this strategy can work are manifold, and multiplying. How will voters respond to the prime minister’s transition from details-focused arch-pragmatist to a lectern-thumping preacher-politician? Can Starmer authentically style himself as the leader of a British popular front – à la Emmanuel Macron in 2017 and 2022? Will progressives really rally to Labour’s cause when arguably better ideological fits, in the form of Zack Polanski’s Greens or the Corbyn-Sultana project, exist? 

In any case, is this the best Labour can do in government: emerge as a repository for reluctant anti-Reform votes? And what if Starmer succeeds in talking up the threat of Reform, inspiring further coverage and diminishing any Conservative comeback, but fails to take them down?

Will stigmatising Farage catch his voters in the crossfire? Can Starmer differentiate his target audience, the Reform-curious electorate, from the Reform leadership? Farage will try his utmost to sow confusion; he excels in twisting the meaning of such stances to suit his standing. 

The fight Farage strategy, as we have addressed, leaves room for impassioned improvisation. That is the instruction Starmer handed down in Liverpool. And yet, David Lammy’s intervention just hours after the PM delivered his speech was a conspicuous blip in an otherwise roundly successful afternoon. The deputy prime minister was forced into a hasty about-face after he claimed Farage had “flirted with Hitler Youth”. Labour must remain relentlessly aware of the traps and unforced errors that Farage so excels at exploiting.

But the riskiest element of Starmer’s pitch is his message to those who declaim Britain as “broken”. The PM, despite his previous declarations to the contrary, says he does not “accept” this characterisation. This position risks coming across as insecure, insincere, and – Reform will posit – out of touch.

Farage’s success in recent months has been to associate Starmer and the Labour government with a status quo that voters roundly regard as having failed. The prime minister now risks playing into this conception by defending what he used to demean as “broken”. Starmer’s story about Britain’s moral character, and threats to it, should not relegate concerns about its material condition. 

Such is the narrative conflict that will define our politics, quite possibly, until the next general election. Starmer’s frame, that of division vs renewal, is now in direct competition with that advanced by Farage: that of insurgent outsider vs the broken status quo. 

The prime minister has begun the process of piecing together his premiership, fractured as it has been by infighting, incoherence and policy reversals. And yet danger still awaits: a pivotal budget and perilous May elections could rupture this nascent sense of momentum. Farage will not let up.

In his conference speech, Starmer appeared to find his calling. His ability to answer it now looks set to determine his political fate. 

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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Torsten Bell, who serves jointly as a pensions and Treasury minister, delivered the remarks while speaking to a fringe event at Labour Party conference. 

Bell said: “What Britain needs to tackle [Reform UK leader Nigel] Farage is a vision, and the vision they need is not a fat bloke in a wetsuit, which is what the Lib Dems have got to offer Britain in the 21st century.”

Davey, who is known for his attention-grabbing, water-themed stunts, has taken the fight to Nigel Farage since the 2024 general election – especially over his relationship with US president Donald Trump. 

Speaking at the Liberal Democrats’ own party conference last week, Davey accused Farage of seeking to turn the UK into “Trump’s America”. 

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Davey said: “Imagine living in the Trump-inspired country Farage wants us to become. Where there’s no NHS, so patients are hit with crippling insurance bills. Or denied healthcare altogether.

“Where we pay Putin for expensive fossil fuels and destroy our beautiful countryside with fracking – while climate change rages on.

“Where gun laws are rolled back, so schools have to teach our children what to do in case of a mass shooting. Where social media barons are free to poison young minds with impunity.”

The matter of an effective political strategy to counter Reform UK is arguably the leading concern animating Labour conference in Liverpool this year. It was this subject that Bell appeared to be addressing when he referred to Davey as a “fat bloke in a wetsuit”.

Responding to the Treasury minister’s comments, a Liberal Democrat source said: “Fun fact: Labour’s failed ‘Ed Stone’ from 2015 was Torsten Bell’s idea.”

The infamous ‘Ed Stone’ was unveiled by the then-Labour leader, Ed Miliband, during the 2015 general election campaign. The stone tablet, with six vague-sounding messages carved into it, was relentlessly ridiculed at the time of its unveiling. The eight-foot slab remains the subject of much mockery in Westminster. 

Bell, who served as Miliband’s director of policy at the 2015 election, has been credited as the brainchild of the infamous limestone gaffe. 

Carl Cashman, a Liberal Democrat councillor in Liverpool, commented: “No shock here. The Labour Party are the nasty party. 

“I’ve never even heard of Torsten Bell.”

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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And something happened along the way. By the end of writing the lecture, I admired him more than when I began. Not because he was flawless – he wasn’t – but because his flaws never stopped him from showing courage when it mattered most. Cook’s example proves that greatness and fallibility can coexist, and that integrity in politics is always a choice. In an age when politics is too often reduced to managerial calculation or performative outrage, that is a lesson we desperately need to relearn.

Cook’s career was a lesson in balance. He existed at the fulcrum of politics: that precarious point between pragmatism and principle where the only serious politics is done.

It is the point Labour has rarely managed to hold. Too often the party has lurched between purity politics, too rigid to govern, and managerial politics, too hollow to inspire. Cook refused both dead ends. He adapted when reality demanded it, but he refused to surrender the values that anchored him.

That balance gave meaning to his eventual resignation over Iraq. It wasn’t a rash act of conscience from someone unused to power. It was the culmination of a career spent holding the line between pragmatism and principle – and recognising when the line had been crossed.

Cook also understood that politics was not a factional game of winners and losers. He was trusted across the Labour spectrum because he did not treat disagreement as betrayal. He brokered alliances between Tribune and the Campaign Group not because he agreed with everything either said, but because he believed every part of Labour had something vital to contribute.

That tolerance feels like another era. Today dissent is pathologised, selections are stitched up, members treated as irritants. Labour’s pluralism, once its superpower, has been replaced by a culture of control.

Cook once compared party management to the reins of a horse. The reins, he said, are there to balance the animal before the jump, to channel its energy and make sure it clears the obstacle. They are not there to yank the horse’s head down, stifle its movement, or stop it running at all. Cook’s metaphor captured something essential: that leadership is about harnessing enthusiasm, not strangling it. Today, the reins are pulled so tight the horse can barely move.

But metaphor’s aside, Cook’s politics were rooted not in abstraction but in a fierce sense of who was being left behind. In private he worried Labour’s modernisation programme alienated the bottom 20%. This meant they were at risk of being abandoned by the mainstream and absorbed into the ranks of fascism. He saw what happens when markets tear free of social bonds, when people are treated as disposable. Long before today’s populist surges, Cook feared that if Labour failed the poorest, others would claim them with a politics of resentment and exclusion.

Look around now and his fears feel prophetic. As disinformation swirls, as alienation hardens into rage, the far right offers belonging to those left adrift. Cook’s warning wasn’t just analysis. It was a glimpse of our present.

Cook also knew that Labour’s task was not just to govern but to reform the system itself. Watching Margaret Thatcher declare that proportional representation would mean “no more Conservative governments ever” was, for him, an epiphany. He embraced PR not as a tactical gimmick but as a moral necessity.

Cook saw that a political culture open to representation and debate would be stronger, not weaker. That discussion and disagreement make politics healthier. And he warned that unless Labour changed the voting system, it would one day find itself back in opposition on a minority vote. He was right.

Above all, Cook understood integrity as the lifeblood of democracy. His resignation in 2003 exposed what I call the “integrity gap”: the gulf between what governments say and what the public believe. That gap was not born with Blair, but it widened dramatically under him.

The trap had been set by Thatcher and Major, as public service was hollowed out and politics became increasingly managerial. But it was Blair’s false prospectus for war that blew it open. Trust in politics never recovered.

And what filled the void? A political culture where proximity to wealth became the measure of success. Where public service was no longer an end in itself, but a stepping stone to corporate consultancy or a boardroom seat. Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador was not an aberration; it was the logical consequence of this political culture.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is another useful metaphor here. Some shed their early idealism and, like Conrad’s Kurtz, could not return. In its place grew something colder: a political class comfortable with corporate capture, for whom public service was no longer its own reward.

And here is the danger. The Labour leadership is now confronted by a world of disinformation, by an authoritarian right well versed in wielding it. Yet the political culture Labour has embraced – intolerant of dissent, dismissive of members and the public, cosy with corporate power – leaves it unable to respond with authenticity.

Integrity is the basis of authenticity. And authenticity is the precondition of trust. Without trust, no appeal to resist authoritarianism will land. That is why, when the prime minister warns of the dangers of the far right, many will simply hear hollow words. How can he convincingly call out authoritarianism abroad while presiding over its habits at home? How can he rally people against billionaire-backed demagogues while inviting Oracle, BlackRock and corporate lobbyists into the heart of government?

This is the real danger of the integrity gap. At the very moment we most need politics capable of calling out the authoritarian right, our political class shares too many of its instincts: disdain for pluralism, impatience with democracy, comfort with corporate power. In trying to resist authoritarianism, it risks echoing it.

But Cook’s life shows us another way. He showed that politics could still mean something. That integrity was not ornamental but essential. That pluralism was not weakness but strength. That public service, done for its own sake, was the highest calling.

If Labour is to meet this moment, it must rediscover the fulcrum where Cook lived: the balance between pragmatism and principle, power and integrity, pluralism and purpose. Because unless we close the integrity gap, unless we rebuild a political culture that is open, tolerant and honest, we will remain incapable of confronting the forces now rising against democracy.

Cook once showed that courage is contagious. The question is whether we have the courage to follow him.

This article based on a speech given by Clive Lewis MP at the Robin Cook Memorial Lecture, Sept 2025

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Labour has announced that a government consultation will be launched on plans to make settlement dependent on paying national insurance, claiming no benefits, learning English to a high standard, volunteering and having a “spotless” criminal record.

The home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, will set out these conditions in her speech to Labour Party conference on Monday. 

Labour has marked this stance as a “clear dividing line” with Reform UK, pointing to Nigel Farage’s own position on indefinite leave to remain (ILR).

Reform UK has pledged to abolish ILR, which is open to people who have worked and lived in the UK legally for five continuous years and their dependents.

Labour has said Reform’s policy “would force those who have lived here for decades to leave the country.”

The party claims: “These measures draw a clear dividing line between the Labour government and Reform, whose recent announcement on indefinite leave to remain would force workers, who have been contributing to this country for decades, to leave their homes and families.”

At present, those who have lived and worked in the UK for five years are eligible for ILR. In the government’s white paper on immigration, published in May, it was announced this would be lifted to a baseline of ten years.

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In her conference speech, Mahmood will insist that her policies are needed for an “open, generous, tolerant” country. But she is expected to warn party members that she will be a “tough home secretary” and that “you won’t always like what I do”.

She will pledge to be a “tough Labour home secretary, fighting for a vision of this country that is distinctly our own.”

She will express her fears that “patriotism, a force for good, is turning into something smaller, something more like ethno-nationalism.”

It will be argued that failure to control borders and crime will result in voters turning away from Labour to “seek solace in the false promises of Farage”.

Mahmood will also announce a “winter of action” to tackle a rise in shoplifting and antisocial behaviour. This is said to follow the recent “summer of action”.

Speaking on Sunday, the prime minister hit out at Reform UK’s plan ILR plan as “racist” and “immoral”. 

Keir Starmer told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Well, I do think that it is a racist policy. I do think it is immoral. It needs to be called out for what it is.”

He added: “It is one thing to say we’re going to remove illegal migrants, people who have no right to be here. I’m up for that.

“It is a completely different thing to say we are going to reach in to people who are lawfully here and start removing them. They are our neighbours. They’re people who work in our economy. They are part of who we are. It will rip this country apart.”

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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Paul Sweeney, member of the Scottish parliament (MSP) for the Glasgow region, warned that without electoral reform, the country could face a “horrendous scenario” leading to the “extinction of the United Kingdom”.

Speaking at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool on Sunday evening, he pointed to the “existential question” that would be posed by a Reform UK majority at Westminster. 

Sweeney said: “I’ve been watching the tensions build in this country over the last decade or so, whether it’s the [2014] Scottish independence referendum, whether it was the [2016] Brexit referendum or the rise of populist nationalism.”

Sweeney said Labour should not be “blinded” by the seismic nature of the party’s victory at the 2024 general election. 

Labour won almost two-thirds of seats in the House of Commons (411) in the 2024 general election with just over one-third of the popular vote (33.7%).

The MSP told a Labour For A New Democracy and Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform (LCER) fringe event that, accounting for the 2024 result, “the last century has been the Tory century punctuated by occasional Labour governments”.

He said: “That’s what we need to be aware of – the long term prospects for our nation and [the need] to build a system of politics in this country that reflects the structural, progressive majority that truly exists in this country.”

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Cross-party MPs publish ‘ready to go’ blueprint for electoral reform commission

Referring implicitly to the prospect of a Reform majority government, Sweeney added: “There’s a potential scenario where if don’t reform the electoral system, we visit that horrendous scenario upon our country. 

“And if that does happen at the next general election, then we can face the extinction of the United Kingdom. We can see the border poll in Northern Ireland happening; we can see a sustained majority for independence in Scotland as a result of that. 

“So I think we need to be aware of the risks.”

In a later contribution, Labour MP Luke Akehurst argued that the case for reform should be made on “social democratic values” and not in terms of the Labour Party’s own self-interest.

Akehurst, the Labour MP for North Durham, said: “The reality is [under] a proportional electoral system we will probably help the Labour Party when we’re not doing that well, and probably take the edge off the number of seats that we would get in years when we’re doing fantastically well.”

He insisted it was impossible to predict how the public would vote under a different system, as people would “behave in a totally different way if they had a genuine choice”.

He added: “My message is we have to go out and win this on our social democratic values. There’s the word ‘democracy’ in there, because we should fight for the best forms of democracy that we can get. 

“And the ‘social’ aspect of social democracy is about equality and justice, and that means justice for people in terms of their economic outcomes, justice for people in terms of their social outcomes and the lives that they have, but justice [meaning] a vote in any part of the country should be worth exactly the same.

“As much as I loved the ‘hero voters’ who switched from Tory to Labour in the last general election, actually, it’s an appalling indictment of our electoral system [that] there are some people whose votes counted effectively double because they took one off the Tory majority and one off of Labour. 

“Everyone’s vote should have an equal value and that’s what we’re fighting for.”

The comments came as Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, issued his first major intervention of Labour conference.

In wide-ranging comments, Burnham looked ahead to the next general election and warned that Reform UK could win it with a historically limited share of the vote. 

Reflecting on his experience campaigning for the Greater Manchester mayoralty, which is elected under the supplementary vote system, Burnham spoke positively of the impact of ranked voting.

He said that “point scoring gave way to trying to find points of agreement”.

Burnham added: “It creates a situation where the process of politics starts to align with the way the public see politics, because they look at us, and they look at what goes on in Westminster and on the television screens, and they think, why don’t they just try and find solutions and sort of work together? Why don’t they do that?…

“I think if we were to move to a PR system for Westminster, we would get the same effect replacing point scoring with the search for points of agreement”.

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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Andy Burnham criticises ‘climate of fear’ in Labour with vow to continue ‘debate’

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In his first major intervention at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool, Burnham criticised a “climate of fear” in the party, which he suggested had been imposed by the leadership by way of recent suspensions.

In wide-ranging comments, the mayor of Greater Manchester reiterated his support for Lucy Powell, the former cabinet minister who is running for Labour’s deputy leadership. 

Speaking at the Labour4PR fringe in Liverpool, Burnham ventured some distance beyond the event’s ostensible focus, with remarks on the two-child benefit cap, social housing and transport policy. 

In his opening remarks, Burnham set out his support for proportional representation (PR) —  a proposal that has been ruled out by the government. He looked ahead to the next general election and warned that Reform UK could win it with a historically limited share of the vote. 

Reflecting on his experience campaigning for the Greater Manchester mayoralty, which is elected under the supplementary vote system, Burnham spoke positively of the impact of ranked voting.

He said that “point scoring gave way to trying to find points of agreement”.

Burnham added: “It creates a situation where the process of politics starts to align with the way the public see politics, because they look at us, and they look at what goes on in Westminster and on the television screens, and they think, why don’t they just try and find solutions and sort of work together? Why don’t they do that?…

“I think if we were to move to a PR system for Westminster, we would get the same effect replacing point scoring with the search for points of agreement”.

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Burnham predicted that the next general election, expected to be held in 2029, would boil down to a “choice of worldviews”.

He said: “I feel if we’re heading towards an election that is a choice of two worldviews: our view, the progressive view, the values that have shaped the country that we’ve always known and always lived in, or something much darker and very divisive.”

He added: “It is dangerous to continue with an electoral system that can elect a majority government on a minority of the vote.”

Burnham set out his support for a national commission on electoral reform, an ask of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for fair elections. He argued PR would “would lay the ground for a new politics [and] a better conversation with the public”.

The former Labour MP went on to argue that electoral reform would precede economic reform and lead to “some of the structural changes this country needs to make.”

He said: “In my view, we’re living in a time where we’ve lost control of the costs of the essentials, and in many ways, we’ve lost control of the costs of public spending, because everything was broken up and sold off in the 1980s, we don’t control life’s essentials as a country in a way that we once did. 

“People are overpaying for water, housing, energy, transport, and the country is overpaying for those things as well.

“If you think about housing, specifically, the 1.4 million social and council homes this country has lost since the 1980s, costs us now £25 billion every year. We’re £25 billion poorer because of the loss of those social homes when you have a benefit system that is chasing rents in the private rented sector. 

“That’s what I mean about losing control of our costs.”

Weaving his argument into a case for electoral reform, Burnham continued: “What I think a move to a proportional system would do is it would allow new politics to come in, where parties that can agree can set a long term approach so repairing the basics, building the council and social homes that we need as a country over a 10 year period.”

The Greater Manchester mayor reiterated his stance that the Labour Party needs a debate on the direction adopted by the government, and committed himself to continuing to lead that debate. 

He said: “I think we got to go back to repairing the basics, housing, education, transport… And these are the ideas that I’m putting forward, because I think we need to debate them as a party.

“To me, the way to reassure the bond markets and stop looking over our shoulder at them is to have that long-term, stable approach agreed between different political parties that takes the volatility away, that takes the uncertainty away, and then the country’s back on the right path, where we’ve got the headroom to make this investment that, in the end, improves people’s lives and improves the public finances.”

Burnham insisted he did not regret the fact that he had “launched a debate on [the Labour Party’s] direction”.

He said: “I think we need [a debate] at this moment, because I want this government to be a success…

“And let me say something about what I’ve done in recent weeks that proves I am here to support the government to be that success: I spent much of my summer strengthening the Hillsborough law, making sure that the bill I put into parliament in 2017 was fully replicated in the new government bill…

“I did that because I wanted this conference to be a success for the prime minister and the government in this city [Liverpool]. And it’s absolutely wonderful to see the commitment to it.”

But Burnham maintained that the debate should “go further” and vowed not to “shy away from [it]”. 

He said: “In fact, I’m in a position to say something, to open up that debate. I think it’s very important that we do that we do that right now, because… the next election, when it comes, will be a big choice. But let’s not forget the challenge is right in front of us now: [the election in] May 2026 [are] going to be a huge challenge for our party.”

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Burnham also criticised the “climate of fear” which he said surrounded internal debates within the Labour Party. He argued that such discussions are being “closed down”. 

He said: “[But] how can you have an open debate about all those things, if there’s too much of a climate of fear within our party and the way the party is being run.

He asked: “How do you get in the position… where a party member is suspended for liking a tweet by another political party, or a [MP] loses the whip for trying to protect disability benefits or the two-child cap…

Burnham added: “I was really pleased to see Lucy Powell go out there first and say, we do need to remove that two-child benefit cap — she’s got my strong support for deputy leader.  I hope she’s got yours too.”

Looking back to the New Labour era, in which he served as a cabinet minister, Burnham said he does not recall “the party being run in that [heavy-handed] way”.

He said: “To sustain a Labour government, you can’t be narrow and shallow. You’ve got to have everybody in play, everybody working together to fight the threat we’re facing. We need to be more united everybody, don’t we? 

“We need all people feeling part of this Labour government. And that’s why we need to have this debate now.”

Burnham went on to respond to comments by Alan Johnson, the former Labour home secretary, who this morning urged him to explicitly rule out challenging for the party leadership. 

He said: “To those today making calls for simplistic statements of loyalty, well, I say if that closes down the debate we need, I think that’s at risk of underestimating the peril the party is in as we get to the polls next May. 

“So I’ve been accused of all things in the last week, as you can probably, as you can probably see — I’ve done nothing more than launch a debate.”

Burnham rejected the suggestion he is speaking out to further his own political ambitions. “I can say to you all tonight, I am speaking out for the thousands of councillors here at this conference who are worried about going to those doorsteps next May”, he said, “speaking for the members of the Senedd, who, again, are working hard to keep Wales Labour… 

“And, of course, members of the Scottish parliament as well, who want a stronger story about Labour to go to those doorsteps.”

He closed: “I’m speaking out for the millions of good people around Britain who want a more hopeful direction for the country. I think we can do it. I honestly believe it can be done. We can make this government work. 

“We can find that more hopeful direction, and we can win again at the next general election. Thank you very much.”

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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At first glance, it is an intriguing choice. The dictionary definition — “to resume (an activity) after an interruption” — cuts uncomfortably close to the bone. Critics, including some inside the PLP (parliamentary Labour party), argue it is difficult to resume governing when the government has never really got started. One year in, Labour already finds itself entering phase two.

The party will counter that it has, unlike its predecessors, acted when questions of integrity arose (see Angela Rayner, Peter Mandelson, Tulip Siddiq) and even managed to find time to legislate (see the Industrial Strategy, Employment Rights Bill, Football Governance Act).

The issue for Labour is that very little of their achievements seems to be able to cut through, as they are continually drowned out by the cost-of-living crisis, global instability in Europe and the Middle East, Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and a media-hungry Nigel Farage.

The missing message 

Communications, or the lack of it, remains the thread binding Labour’s challenges. The three directors of communications (Matthew Doyle, James Lyons, and now Tim Allan) under Keir Starmer tells its own story. More fundamentally, Starmer himself has been reluctant to articulate a governing philosophy. He famously told one union leader, “There is no such thing as Starmerism, and there never will be”. Their election campaign leaned heavily on simply being the only credible alternative to 14 years of Conservative rule, so they didn’t really have the need for a deeper vision.

The risks of this approach became clear quickly. By the 2024 conference, barely three months into government, Opinium polling already showed a sharp decline in public confidence. The damage was not on specific policy issues but on perceptions of purpose, competence, and trust. If a government is not trusted, even the most carefully crafted announcements land flat.

Now Labour faces credible alternatives eager to seize the mantle of change, in both Nigel Farage with his rip-it-up-and-start-again sell to the country, and closer to home, the ever-ambitious King of the North, Andy Burnham.

New rules of engagement 

The approach to political communications has changed significantly in the last decade. The old model of controlling the narrative at set-piece moments, then retreating into government, no longer works. There must be a steady drumbeat of communication that not only explains policy but also offers hope. Conferences are a chance to reset, and “renew” may yet provide Labour with a rallying cry before the May local elections.

It is tempting to dismiss these slogans as superficial, but in an era of short attention spans and social media, they remain powerful.

The Conservatives always understood this, and slogans like “Labour Isn’t Working” to the focus group-friendly “Get Brexit Done” last long in the memory. This year, Reform UK went with “The Next Step”, signalling a party preparing for government. The Liberal Democrats avoided an official strapline but settled on the unofficial refrain, “Don’t let Trump’s America become Farage’s Britain.”

Ready for renewal? 

Powerful slogans distil complexity into clarity and sketch a direction of travel. Public sympathy for the idea of renewal is real. Whether Labour can translate it into a story of purpose and optimism beyond the conference bubble is the question that will hang over Liverpool this weekend.

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But it’s not a done deal — key hurdles still need to be overcome to deliver what we promised at the last election. Not least the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who have been working together in the House of Lords to try to weaken the bill.

Labour went into the last election promising change, and a key part of that change was the Employment Rights Bill. Through protection from unfair dismissal, ending exploitative zero-hours contracts, strengthening redundancy rights and sick pay, and making a raft of rights apply from day one, this change will deliver stability and security for working people.

But in the commons these measures faced opposition from the Conservatives and Reform, and in the Lords this opposition continued, with an alliance of Conservative and Lib Dem peers weakening the crucial measures around guaranteed hours.

Currently, flexibility in our labour market is far too one-sided, overwhelmingly favouring employers. Workers on zero and short hours contracts are left vulnerable to sudden changes in income and are expected to be available for work at very short notice, without any guarantee that any work will actually be available.

The proliferation of one-sided flexibility has had a profound impact on workers’ lives and is undoubtedly one of the most damaging labour market developments of the past 14 years.

A survey from my trade union Usdaw heard from staff who regularly worked far beyond their contracted hours, being turned down for a full-time contract. Members spoke of living with the anxiety of not knowing how much money they will have at the end of every week, struggling to arrange childcare and being forced to disrupt their children’s education, being turned down for mortgages because their contract doesn’t reflect the hours they work, and having to rely on foodbanks to get bridge the gaps where they don’t have work – despite having two zero-hours contract jobs.

And we need to be clear, not everyone on a zero-hours contracts is casually picking up a bit of extra cash here and there. The latest Labour Force Survey showed that over a million people in the UK are on a zero-hours contract, with further analysis from the TUC finding that nearly half those had been in their current job for over two years.

It’s about time this exploitative practice was brought to an end – and that’s what Labour’s Employment Rights Bill sets out to do.

The bill will make sure that everyone has the right to have a guaranteed hours contract – a contract that reflects the hours you actually work.

This means that if you want to remain on a zero-hours contract, if that works better for you, then you can. But if you want the security of those guaranteed hours, hours that you are already working and the consistent income that comes from them, then they’re yours.

These new protections could transform the lives of millions of workers, providing them with a stable foundation on which to build their lives around. But there are two big hurdles still to overcome.

First, when the Employment Rights Bill returns to the commons from the Lords today, we need to make sure the Conservative and Liberal Democrat amendments are voted down.

In a move that will dismay working people, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have got the old coalition band back together, amending the bill in the House of Lords so that those on zero and short hours contracts now just have a “right to request” guaranteed hours.

This is not a minor change. It leaves the door open for unscrupulous employers to use pressure or coercion to deter requests, and for many, will completely undermine the new right. It will also put this crucial measure out of reach of those who simply aren’t aware of their rights.

Secondly, with so much of the detail yet to be decided in secondary legislation, we need to make sure we get this right. We cannot allow any loopholes and must ensure everyone is entitled to a contract that reflects the hours they regularly work.

This evening, workers across the country are counting on MPs to do the right thing and protect the new right to a guaranteed hours contract.

This was a major manifesto pledge for Labour. Delivering job and financial security must be a key aim of this government. There’s still work to do to make sure we get this right, but if we can end exploitative short and zero-hours contracts, the impact on the economy and the lives of workers up and down the country will be transformative.

This debate is not business versus workers as the Conservatives would have us believe, and it’s not about empty rhetoric and false promises that are all Reform have contributed to the debate. It’s about an economy that delivers for everyone through productivity and security.

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The Lord Mandelson scandal represents the latest eruption of ill-feeling within Labour. The political repercussions are profound, and multiplying.

Starmer signalled his staunch support for Mandelson at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, only to summarily sack him less than 24 hours later. The PM’s position, articulated in response to Kemi Badenoch, was uncompromising and uncomplicated: he retained confidence in the US ambassador, insisted due process was followed in his appointment, and maintained Mandelson was playing an “important” role in the US-UK relationship. 

Starmer repeated the phrase “full due process” a full three times across the session. Badenoch had the PM on the run. “I see that she is finally catching up with the questions that she should have asked last week about the deputy prime minister”, Starmer quipped at one point, trying to shift the spotlight from this week’s fiasco to last week’s. The comeback was met with well-deserved derision.

At this stage of course, Mandelson had already made his final public appearance as US ambassador.

In a pre-planned interview with The Sun, broadcast 8:10 am UK time on Wednesday, Mandelson described Jeffrey Epstein as an “albatross around his neck”. The confessional came shortly after a US congressional committee released Epstein’s “birthday book”. It featured Mandelson sitting with the financier wearing a bathrobe, a note describing him as his “best pal”, and a reference to meeting Epstein’s “‘interesting’ friends”.

Forebodingly, Mandelson volunteered a pre-emptive mea culpa. The ambassador warned that further “traffic, correspondence, exchanges” between himself and Epstein would be released. Mandelson had already seen the “very embarrassing” communications that would cost him his job. 

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The Mandelson debacle and other unforced errors

At 3:36 pm on Monday, Bloomberg News sent a 2,000-word email to Mandelson detailing further disclosures, appearing to reveal he maintained a close and supportive friendship with Epstein after the paedophile’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a child for prostitution. In these missives, Mandelson variously reassured Epstein that “your friends love you”, suggested his first conviction was wrongful, and urged him to seek early release from prison.

As for what comes next, a great deal hinges on what Starmer and Downing Street knew, if anything, about this correspondence before it was made public on Wednesday evening — and before he delivered an unequivocal defence of Mandelson at PMQs. The No 10 line is that Starmer’s confidence in Mandelson — expressed so absolutely at the despatch box on Wednesday afternoon — evaporated upon contact with Bloomberg’s tranche of emails.

This saga is bigger, of course, than the events of recent days. It was more than two years ago that the Financial Times first reported that Mandelson stayed at Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse while the latter was in prison for soliciting prostitution from a minor. Asked about the report in February of this year, Mandelson told the FT: “I’m not going to go into this. It’s an FT obsession, and frankly you can all f*** off. OK?”

Starmer, speaking in January 2024, was hardly more forthcoming. Questioned on the report, he responded: “I don’t know any more than you, and there’s not really much I can add to what is already out there, I’m afraid”.

The prime minister then went on to appoint Mandelson as US ambassador, despite the manifest reputational risks — despite the political baggage of two ignominious exits from government during Tony Blair’s tenure in Downing Street. The fact is that Mandelson’s appointment was an immense gamble; the decision has backfired, with spectacular and damaging consequences. Whatever gains the ex-ambassador exacted in charming the Oval Office incumbent and his MAGA coterie are dwarfed by the political tumult his deposition has wreaked. 

But place the details of “what Starmer knew and when”, which opposition parties are clamouring to get to the bottom of, to one side. The PM’s deference to “due process” and reliance on dry procedural answers at PMQs were untenable from the outset. Starmer, once again, did not spot the obvious danger. Not for the first time, the politics of the moment looked to have passed him by. 

That is what is so profoundly destructive about the management of the Mandelson debacle: for Labour MPs, it is all too familiar. 

The Mandelson scandal (the first saga since July 2024 truly worthy of that term), the winter fuel fiasco, the hashed welfare reforms, and the unseemly U-turn on a national grooming gangs inquiry have little in common substantively. But a pattern emerges from No 10’s management: the adoption of an unsustainable position, the strained defence of it, the unequivocal denunciations of alternative approaches, the stubbornness — then the slow acquiescence to political pressure in the moments leading up to a brittle about-face.

The PLP’s reaction to the Mandelson scandal is therefore entirely predictable.

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Labour fractures deepen, and widen

The names of Starmer’s most strident critics will not shock No 10, but it is worth ruminating on the tenor of their criticism. John McDonnell, the independent MP and former shadow chancellor, had this to say of Morgan McSweeney’s widely reported role in appointing Mandelson: “A choice is emerging for Keir. Either McSweeney goes or he does.”

Clive Lewis, the onetime leadership contender who remains a Labour MP, was less equivocal. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster programme, he said of Starmer: “You see a Labour prime minister who feels that he’s lost control within the first year…

“It terrifies my constituents, and it terrifies a lot of people in this country. We don’t have the luxury of carrying on this way with someone who I think, increasingly, I’m sorry to say, just doesn’t seem up to the job.”

Paula Barker, who was until Thursday a candidate for Labour’s deputy leadership, described Mandelson’s appointment as an “absolute betrayal”. 

She told BBC Radio 5 Live: “It smacks of putting party before the country, which is something that we said we wouldn’t do… My colleagues, who represent their constituents every single day, diligently, and stood up against welfare cuts, some of those were suspended for doing the right thing, for standing up for their constituents, and yet we have a man like Mandelson who is just basically allowed to get away with this. 

“I just think it’s absolutely disgusting, quite frankly.”

Barry Gardiner, another erstwhile frontbench colleague of Starmer’s — but by no means an ally — told BBC Newsnight that Labour MPs are “frustrated” and “angry”.

“I think it’s the culmination of a number of factors. It’s not just this but there’s been a series of what people regard as political slip-ups”, he said. “I found it very difficult to have a meeting with the prime minister when I asked for one a few months ago. It took six weeks to do that. 

“Now, I remember the days when I asked to see Tony [Blair] and it was, oh, fine, yeah, sure, Barry, why don’t you come in after PMQs on Wednesday? And if it wasn’t that, it would be, oh, it’s busy at the moment, can it hold off a week, you know.”

But one cannot characterise recent criticism as confined to No 10’s “the usual suspects”. Protests are beginning to permeate hitherto unexplored corners of the PLP. 

Justin Madders, who served as employment rights minister until last week, referred to Mandelson’s removal as the “Best sacking of the week by some distance”.

Charlotte Nichols, Labour MP for Warrington, maintained Mandelson “should never have been appointed in the first place”.

Karl Turner, the Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull East, told Sky News: “I am worried that we are in danger of losing the entire Labour movement unless we change stance, fast.”

Sadik Al-Hassan, first elected in 2024, stated: “There are some serious questions about the vetting process of the ambassador and whoever conducted those should be sacked immediately.”

Chris Curtis, generally regarded as a Starmer loyalist, noted that there are “definitely frustrations” among backbench MPs — “and that includes myself”. 

He told Newsnight: “We also know that the threat if we don’t get this right is massive, because unless we can turn these things around, what we’re looking at is a Nigel Farage-run government… It’s a duty on this government to ensure we stop that from happening.”

Curtis is a member of the Labour Growth Group (LGG) and the Living Standards Coalition of Labour MPs — prominent, nominally pro-government caucuses. Curtis represents a genre of Labour MP that No 10 cannot afford to lose.

Meanwhile, Labour grandees Lord Glasman, Blue Labour doyen, and Baroness Harman, the former deputy leader, have both been outspoken this week in criticising Mandelson’s initial appointment.

Frustration is being forced into the open by a collective recognition of two interconnected observations: the series of avoidable crises overseen by No 10, and the electoral threat posed by the rise of Reform UK. 

The result is this: the fractures opened by past policy debacles have both deepened, with regular critics radicalising in their opposition, and widened, as loyal figures now openly acknowledge their frustration.

The launch of a new internal campaign group, Mainstream, now threatens to become a lasting thorn in Starmer’s side. Backed by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and a cohort of Labour MPs, the group wasted no time this week in issuing a blistering response to Mandelson’s dismissal.

“Peter Mandelson’s inevitable sacking is what happens when you put your party faction’s interest before your party and before the country”, Luke Hurst, Mainstream’s national coordinator, stated. 

“If Starmer keeps running a narrow and brittle political project, it will break him and could break the Labour Party. We need a government and party of all the talents and all the views.”

In a social media post, the organisation added: “Keir Starmer has constantly put factionalism ahead of the Labour Party and ahead of the country.”

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A contest becomes a reckoning

These internal ructions played out in a week that saw the Labour deputy leadership contest enter its next stage. Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, and Lucy Powell, the recently removed leader of the commons, both vaulted the race’s first and highest hurdle: 80 MP nominations. 

Having topped the ballot, Phillipson enters the next round advantaged by her strong standing among parliamentarians, but politically encumbered by her role as a serving minister. In any case, Phillipson’s 175-MP total — a figure just north of the frontbench “payroll vote” of around 170 MPs — hardly constitutes a ringing endorsement of either her or the government she represents.

The peril the deputy leadership contest poses to Downing Street remains: the campaign threatens to turn into a running verdict on the government’s performance, culminating in a de facto approve-disapprove referendum on Keir Starmer. But Mandelson’s sacking has intensified this danger. This latest avoidable crisis has made a seismic rebuke evermore likely. 

The tenor of the coming contest will be shaped, principally, by how Powell chooses to conduct her campaign. Already she has called for a “change of culture” inside No 10 — echoing a common criticism levelled at Starmer’s political operation. Powell contends that No 10’s self-imposed isolation, its disconnection, only reinforces its dysfunction. After the welfare and winter fuel fiascos triggered a torrent of briefings to this effect, No 10’s conduct in recent weeks will not have convinced Labour MPs that the necessary lessons have been learnt. 

Powell’s sacking and the wider reshuffle lend credence to her platform. She reportedly asked Starmer to explain his decision three times — without reply. Meanwhile, junior ministers were not informed of their fates by the prime minister; that task fell instead to Darren Jones and Jonathan Reynolds, the new chief secretary to the PM and chief whip respectively.

At this point, Downing Street knew a deputy leadership contest was imminent. This treatment of colleagues, therefore, looks like yet another serious misstep; a conspicuous overlap has since emerged between those who were sacked in the reshuffle and supporters of Powell’s candidacy.

Speaking to the Guardian in the wake of Mandelson’s departure, Powell described a sequence of “unforced errors” by the government and pitched herself as part of the solution: as deputy leader, she would serve as a “shop steward”, making the government appear less factional and closed-off.

She declared: “We’ve got a bit of a groupthink happening at the top, that culture of not being receptive to interrogation, not being receptive to differing views. But it’s a show of strength, a show of being effective, when you are receptive to interrogation and accountability and differing views, and then you come to better decisions.”

That is Powell’s opening pitch to Labour activists; she has embraced her role as the “send a message to Starmer” candidate. Unburdened by collective responsibility, Powell now has carte blanche to contort her campaign into a ready-made receptacle for activist dissatisfaction. 

An intriguing known unknown concerns the prominence of Burnham, Starmer-critical mayor and close friend to Powell. There is also an outstanding question as to Mainstream’s role during the campaign. Tellingly, none of its MP supporters have declared their support for Phillipson — do not expect that to change as the campaign unfolds.

At this juncture, the deputy leadership election could still resolve into a contest between Burnham-backed candidate (Powell) and government spokesperson candidate (Phillipson). In fact, one immediate effect of the Mandelson scandal is that the prospect of such a battle is higher. Prepare then for the possibility of a feverish proxy war, not just for the future of the party, but specifically between supporters of Burnham and Starmer: a kind of advisory, non-binding confidence vote.

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‘Change’

The central weakness of the Starmer project has always been its narrowness politically. Its grounding in the Labour Party is shallow. The brittleness of the government is explicable in these terms; the PM’s assured-sounding proclamations are belied by a lack of outspoken pro-Starmer outriders. 

The reshuffle marked a variation on a fundamentally familiar theme: a strident, single-minded set of moves designed to elevate McSweeney-ally Shabana Mahmood into the Home Office. But its ruthlessness has corroded relations down the Labour Party food chain. It is little wonder, given the account of the reshuffle relayed above, that its victims and collateral damage feel aggrieved.

The result is a familiar, even tragic irony. The very strengths of Starmer’s operation in opposition — its unyielding control, suppression of dissent, and strategic single-mindedness — have emerged as glaring weaknesses in government. There is precedent for prime ministers being undone by the traits that propelled them into power. Margaret Thatcher’s all-consuming conviction became her fatal inflexibility; Tony Blair’s flair for performance curdled into accusations of untrustworthy spin; David Cameron’s self-assured risk-taking culminated in a calamitous gamble; and Boris Johnson’s populist boosterism proved incompatible with the basic rules of office.

A new playbook is required. Starmer is not a career politician — a fact he is apparently proud of. But that does not absolve him of the responsibilities and intricacies of politics. A finer engagement is needed with the problems that beset his premiership. Political antennae are not about to sprout from the prime minister’s temples. But the time for deeper strategic thinking is overdue; reasonable-sounding tactics, like appointing a talented but flawed spinner to charm the US commander-in-chief, will not sustain this government. 

Starmer, who condensed his 2024 general election campaign into the single, compelling promise of “change”, must prove he can too.

Josh Self is editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here and X here.

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By rearranging his top team in this way, the prime minister’s theme can be summed up in four words: more growth, fewer boats. It is a message designed to resonate with both the financial markets and the electorate, and it sets the tone for a potentially transformative period in politics.

The best reshuffles are not just about who’s in and who’s out, they’re about setting direction. Starmer’s choices reflect a deliberate effort to align his top team with the policy ambitions Labour wants to be known for. But the real test lies ahead: can this new team deliver the change in policy and communications that justifies such a dramatic reorganisation of personnel?

Keeping Rachel Reeves as chancellor reassures the markets and signals continuity in the government’s fiscal rules. Her presence ensures Labour’s over-arching economic goals remain unchanged. But beyond stability in the leadership at the Treasury, this reshuffle hints at ambition to extend the dedication to accelerating growth to every other Whitehall department.

Pat McFadden’s new role at a beefed-up Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is to be a catalyst for improving productivity. Rather than simply managing the benefits system, the DWP is now seen as a proactive engine for economic renewal.

Peter Kyle’s appointment as business secretary brings tech and innovation to the forefront of the effort to modernise the economy. His track record championing innovation could help position the UK as a global leader in emerging industries.

At Defra, Emma Reynolds’s challenge will be to turn regulators into enablers of growth, championing sustainable economic expansion without sacrificing environmental standards. At the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Steve “Build Baby Build” Reed will lead a drive to massively accelerate housebuilding.

And Darren Jones, now leading the Cabinet Office as chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, will be tasked with ensuring joined-up delivery across government. His reputation for detail and discipline has the potential to be the glue that holds this ambitious agenda together.

On the other side of the reshuffle’s theme, fewer boats, the prime minister is signalling a determination to confront one of the most politically charged issues of the day: illegal immigration.

Shabana Mahmood’s appointment is a standout. One of the breakout stars of British politics in recent years, she brings intellectual rigour and political savvy to one of the government’s most complex challenges. Her presence suggests the government is ready to move beyond the “smash the gangs” slogan and towards finding solutions.

Yvette Cooper, who had begun the work of turning around the Home Office, now takes her extensive government experience to the international stage. Her diplomacy with European ministers will be crucial in finding a collaborative approach to tackling border issues.

For any of these ambitions to be realised, the reshuffle theme must last longer than the reshuffle itself and the fleeting headlines it generates. For the “more growth, fewer boats” theme to deliver the change voters want, it must permeate every aspect of government.

On growth, the test is simple: can Labour be as obsessed with economic expansion as the Conservatives were with Brexit? That level of focus and drive is what it will take to shift the UK out of stagnation and into a new era of prosperity.

This reshuffle is Starmer’s boldest move yet. If “more growth, fewer boats” can be translated into sustained policy and delivery that is tangible to voters, it could put the next general election up for grabs.

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