The latest document dump of the Mandelson files is full of delicious scuttlebutt and juicy insider gossip which embarrasses the Government even if there is nothing particularly game-changing in them.
If anything, the revelations merely confirm what we already know: That our Government is an unhappy, rudderless ship with an inadequate captain at the helm.
Most folks came to this view within months, if not weeks, of Keir Starmer winning his landslide majority almost two years ago. The significance of the Mandelson files is that it confirms this is now also the opinion of those at the heart of government, including those who are supposed to be his allies.
To that extent, it’s another large nail in Starmer’s political coffin. Even if Andy Burnham should fail in his bid for political glory – and, against the odds, loses the Makerfield by-election on June 18 (don’t rule it out) – it’s hard not to conclude after perusing these files that Starmer’s days are numbered.
It is striking how Starmer is missing in action throughout the documents released on Monday afternoon. By that I don’t mean the absence of anything to or from Starmer. That’s another matter entirely and has the makings of a scandalous cover-up.
My point is that these documents are about matters crucial to the Government’s purpose and success – yet Starmer’s fingerprints are nowhere to be seen. It’s almost as if the Prime Minister is the Invisible Man.
At no stage does anyone in the Government say: ‘The PM wants this and it’s our job to deliver.’ Or: ‘Look, we know this is the Starmer strategy, so let’s get on with it.’
The opposite, in fact. Even those closest to him in government confess they have little idea what he thinks or the direction in which he wants to travel. The money quote is from Peter Mandelson himself: ‘They [10 Downing Street] don’t work as a team, they are not led and none of them really know what Keir thinks or wants. In fact, most of them don’t think Keir knows what he wants.’
It is striking how Starmer is missing in action throughout the documents released on Monday afternoon, writes Andrew Neil
Even if Andy Burnham should fail in his bid for political glory, it’s hard not to conclude after perusing these files that Starmer’s days are numbered, says our columnist
There you have it. In 33 words from the Prince of Darkness a shining light, a succinct precis of what has ailed the Starmer government from the start, explaining why it has gone off the rails so quickly and so completely. A government which was unprepared for power because it was led by a man who didn’t really know what he wanted, failed to do the necessary homework in advance and has been buffeted from pillar to post ever since.
This is now the consensus inside government as well as out. Mandelson tells Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary at the heart of the Starmer project – regularly sent out to bat for the PM on TV and radio – that Starmer ‘lacks verve’ and Labour’s problems ‘stem from the top’.
The Cabinet minister agrees. He replies that the Government has appeared ‘tone deaf’ and a ‘bit robotic’. Now, who could he have in mind?
Treasury minister Torsten Bell, supposedly an up-and-coming young Turk in the Labour firmament – he played a seminal role in concocting Rachel Reeves’ second Budget (which was almost as bad as her first) – tells Mandelson ‘the big picture is … messy’.
Mandelson snaps back: It was ‘messy because the Government doesn’t do policy well enough’. Bell does not demur: ‘Well that is definitely true… Everyone seems to think it’s someone else’s job to get the policy right… which is very odd.’
Even the man who was until recently Starmer’s closest consigliere, Morgan McSweeney, gets in on the act. He describes Starmer’s leadership – or lack thereof – as ‘advance/buckle/advance/buckle’. McFadden agrees, telling Mandelson that the PM’s authority was ‘destroyed’ when he buckled before the Labour backbench revolt on welfare reform last summer.
It was McFadden, of course, who provided the biggest zinger in the Mandelson files. His cutting critique about his party’s welfare fixation is one for the ages. It will haunt Labour for years to come.
‘Every meeting I have [with Labour MPs],’ he tells Mandelson ‘is [about] “who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others”. They’re asking the wrong questions.’
Indeed they are. Some of us have been pointing this out for quite some time. But I suppose it’s good to know our view is shared by at least one influential Labour politician. Not that anything will change. As McFadden acknowledges, Starmer has already sold the pass when it comes to welfare reform – and presided over record tax rises.
But it’s all grist to Reform UK’s mill in Makerfield, a constituency of working class and lower-middle class folk more aligned to aspiration and self-reliance than the benefit class, where around 75 per cent of families own their homes, many bought after Margaret Thatcher made it possible for people to buy their council houses.
As Pat McFadden acknowledges, Starmer has already sold the pass when it comes to welfare reform – and presided over record tax rises
They do not take kindly to more taxes to pay for more welfare. We can be sure Reform will give McFadden’s words quite the airing.
The harrowing murder of Henry Nowak will also play into Reform’s hands. As readers will know, he was stabbed to death in Southampton last December by a knife-obsessed Sikh who this week was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 21 years. The tragedy has become a national scandal because his killer claimed, falsely, to have been racially abused by Nowak. So, when the police arrived, they treated Nowak as the criminal, refusing to believe his pleas that he had been stabbed and couldn’t breathe. They dragged him along the ground, arrested him and handcuffed him.
The last words he heard were the police reading him his rights as blood filled his lungs and he died.
This shameful police behaviour has appalled the nation. Yesterday Reform UK leader Nigel Farage weaponised the issue by claiming it was, to his mind, yet another example of Labour two-tier justice, in which the ‘rights and privileges of white people matter less than those of ethnic minorities’.
Appalling and disturbing as the police behaviour was, that’s quite a stretch. When I spoke to Farage’s police and crime adviser yesterday, he couldn’t provide me with any hard data to back it up.
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But ‘white lives matter’, in an echo of the powerful ‘black lives matter’ mantra that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, will resonate in Makerfield, which is over 96 per cent white, socially conservative and voted Reform in the recent local elections.
Labour MPs who’ve already concluded Starmer is a dud, unfit to be PM, will find plenty in the Mandelson files to confirm their views. Those Labour MPs who were inclined to stick with him will be reconsidering their views. To that extent, it’s all good news for Burnham.
But the news cycle is fast and fickle. McFadden’s words on welfare and a police service trained to accept too readily claims of racism at face value, to the exclusion of all other considerations, are not happy backdrops to Burnham’s by-election campaign. He has yet to say anything meaningful about either matter.
Starmer may be toast – he already seems something of an irrelevance as we roll into summer – but we live in febrile times. Those who think they have it in the bag are, these days, more than likely to be disappointed.
