“You’re nowt but a midget!”
Dennis Skinner, Former Labour MP for Bolsover (right before the Commons headed to the House of Peers for the State Opening in 2001)
You could be forgiven if the past 48 hours may well have appeared to be a dizzying if not utterly mad period in British politics.
The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod banging on the doors of the Commons that were slammed in his face to summon the members of the House of Commons to the other end of the Palace of Westminster where the House of Lords sits to attend His Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech during the State Opening of a new session of Parliament is the ceremony that appears the most normal thing in these turbulent political times in spite of it’s anachronistic appearance.
Oh, how I miss the Beast of Bolsover’s caustic quips from his usual seat on the bottom row of seats… 😉
That speech is completely written by the government which is currently reeling from an appalling showing in the local elections that has seemingly devolved into recrimination and now an outright civil war amongst them and it’s all the more remarkable for what wasn’t said in that speech as what was.
Perhaps the most shocking omission was any mention of continuing the work of reforming and strengthening the social welfare system that’s been a cornerstone of Labour political manifestos for as long as I can remember it.
I wish I could be surprised at this but given the shuffling of the chairs on the deck of the Titanic that is the Cabinet Room in Number 10 Downing Street we’ve seen over the past few days is likely to consume the government for the foreseeable future.
A few junior ministers and parliamentary secretaries resigned over the weekend which was hardly unexpected given the election results.
Early this morning, the real starting gun to a potential leadership campaign for control of the parliamentary Labour party began with the predicted resignation of Health Secretary Wes Streeting who has been spending the past few weeks briefing the press from the shadows and making it quite clear that he’s quite happy to give Sir Keir the boot from Number 10 and taking up residence there himself.
It was hardly a surprise that he’d lay down his tools for a leadership bid when he had a very brief meeting of a few minutes with the Prime Minister at Number 10 that didn’t allow anything else but him telling Sir Keir he was going to leave Cabinet.
What was very interesting was that the expected announcement that he was triggering a leadership campaign actually didn’t actually happen right after the announcement of his resignation.
He supposedly has the required number of Labour MPs (81) to trigger the leadership contest in his pocket against about 150 of them expressing support for Sir Keir to remain in post.
That leaves about 172 of the 403 Labour MPs quietly sitting on the sidelines looking to see which horse they might back in a potential leadership bid and it’s by no means certain that it would be Wes Streeting and Sir Keir Starmer as would be expected.
Maybe Streeting does have the numbers to trigger the contest and maybe he doesn’t.
Or maybe it was former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner getting to announce that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC is rather akin to the UK version of the IRS) had exonerated her completely for potentially dodging a higher rate of tax which had led to her resigning from the Cabinet some months ago and now there was another potential entrant in the contest along with an even more unlikely candidate in former Labour leader Ed Miliband.
Wes Streeting couldn’t have been happy with the subsequent announcement that John Simons, the MP for Makerfield near Manchester was resigning which would trigger a by-election which current the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has already said he’d contest in order to get back to Westminster as a Member of Parliament.
Something he’d need to do in order to also challenge Sir Keir for the leadership of the Labour Party and which Starmer through the Labour Party Executive Committee had blocked him from standing for election in another constituency in January because he hardly wanted someone far more popular in the Labour Party and the country back in the Commons who would almost certainly win a leadership contest.
Are you confused yet?
So as of this writing, there is no leadership contest that’s been triggered yet.
The two most likely challengers that are currently MPs in Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting don’t appear to have the support necessary to unseat the Prime Minister in a head-to-head challenge.
The most likely next leader of Labour has already declared a candidacy for the now vacant seat in Makerfield which will be filled in the next sixty days in a by-election which Andy Burnham would be favoured but by no means guaranteed to win…but that only happens if the Labour Party Executive Committee blesses his bid to stand for election, a committee that will be under intense pressure from the Prime Minister and his allies to once again deny Burnham leave to stand for election as the Labour candidate for Makerfield.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer has to feel like he’s completely under siege in Number 10 Downing Street from pretty much all corners and absolutely panicked about all of the political machinations swirling round him to bring down his premiership knowing that there would be a very real chance that the next Prime Minister after the general election expected in three years time would be none other than the execrable Nigel Farage, MP for Clacton which rarely if ever sees him in his constituency surgery with a home whose purchase and ownership are about as dodgy as Angela Raynor’s was accused of being.
Get yer popcorn folks…the next few weeks in the UK political scene will be absolutely fascinating watching everyone trying desperately to climb to the top of the greasy pole!
And notice I’ve not even mentioned Kemi Badenoch who is currently the Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition which is the post of the leader of the shadow cabinet made up of MPs not in the government majority from the largest party on the opposition benches.
She certainly went on the warpath in her opening salvo in the first speech following the Speaker announcing the motion to be debated was a Humble Address in response to His Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech opening the new session of Parliament. Normally these speeches are relatively light-hearted if not gently humourous roasts but as is her style, conventions and traditions of the House seem to be of no interest to her as she eyes the prize of a stay in Number 10 Downing Street in spite of the local elections being as disastrous for the Conservative Party she leads as it was for Labour.
Certainly Labour were the largest losers of local councillors and councils by far but she lost 563 Tories and is now fourth in terms of local council seats behind Reform UK, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats which is a precipitous fall that started with the ouster of Boris Johnson from Number 10, Liz Truss’ disastrous and record-setting shortest time as PM at 44 days, and Rishi Sunak leading the party over the cliff in the election that saw Sir Keir and Labour storm to the largest working majority seen in recent memory in 2024.
Reform UK have been taking quite a bite out of the Conservatives across the UK and it’s a rare week that we don’t hear of another defection from the Tory half of the opposition benches further toward the doors and into the welcoming arms of Reform UK.
It seems ludicrous to think she’d be any more effective a leader going into the next general election than Rishi Sunak and one can see signs that there are plenty on the benches behind her wondering when they can either put her to the sword or head over to Reform UK themselves.
The political schemes in the House of Commons was once described on “Yes, Minister” as nothing more than a bucket of crabs where the ones on top are constantly being pulled down by the ones in the bottom of the bucket in a never ending cycle. UK governments have the tendency to be very unstable in the short term and yet their system of government which has no written constitution governing it has proven remarkably stable over the decades and centuries since the Great Reform of 1832 that heralded the advent of the modern UK Prime Minister.
The past couple of weeks should be seen as a case in point… 🙂