Keir Starmer was battered at PMQs today amid demands to sack his closest aide for a bungled bid to kill off Labour leadership threats.
Just a fortnight before a crucial Budget, the PM’s supporters made clear overnight that he will fight any leadership challenge in an extraordinary pre-emptive strike on plotters.
But Health Secretary Wes Streeting immediately hit back by accusing No10 of ‘self-destruction’ and urging Sir Keir to sack those responsible for the briefing.
In the Commons, Sir Keir denied he had ‘authorised’ any barbs against his own ministers. ‘Any attack on any member of my Cabinet is completely unacceptable,’ he said.
Asked by Kemi Badenoch if he had confidence in chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir did not answer directly. ‘Morgan McSweeney, my team and I are absolutely focused on delivering for the country,’ he said.
The PM’s press secretary denied afterwards that the briefings had come from inside Downing Street, and said Sir Keir does have confidence in Mr McSweeney.
Sir Keir heaped praise on Mr Streeting – who is in Manchester for an NHS conference and revealed earlier that he has yet to speak to the premier.
Furious MPs are accusing No10 of ‘losing the plot’, with fingers pointed at Mr McSweeney. Even admirers of the election campaign architect acknowlege he is on ‘borrowed time’ – but there are question how long Sir Keir would survive if his long-time ally has to go.
Leadership rumours have been sweeping Westminster with Labour at historic poll lows, and friends of Sir Keir are concerned he could be dethroned if the Budget – expected to include massive tax hikes – lands badly.
The assault from No10 was seemingly timed to coincide with Mr Streeting touring broadcast studios for a big NHS announcement.
But it spooked the markets, with yields on 10-year gilts – the main way the government borrows – rising. The Tories accused Sir Keir of ‘machine-gunning’ his own ministers instead of ‘fixing the country’.
In the Commons clashes, Mrs Badenoch asked if Mr Streeting was right to swipe at a ‘toxic culture in Downing Street that needs to change’.
Sir Keir replied: ‘My focus each and every day is on rebuilding and renewing our country. But let me be absolutely clear, any attack on any member of my cabinet is completely unacceptable.’
He said Mr Streeting had out-performed expectations by delivering five million extra appointments within the first year of a Labour government, higher than the two million pledged.
‘He’s doing a great job, as is the whole of my Cabinet,’ Sir Keir said.
The Tory leader hit back: ‘This is his responsibility. Just last night, his allies accused not just the Health Secretary but the Home Secretary and even the Energy Secretary of launching leadership bids. These attacks came from Number 10, nowhere else, his toxic Number 10.
‘The person responsible for the culture in Number 10 is his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. Does the Prime Minister have full confidence in him?’
Sir Keir replied: ‘Morgan McSweeney, my team and I are absolutely focused on delivering for the country. Let me be clear, of course, I’ve never authorised attacks on cabinet members, I appointed them to their post because they’re the best people to carry out their jobs.’
He backed Mr Streeting, telling MPs: ‘Waiting lists are down under this Government. The number of GPs is up, because we scrapped NHS England, we’re investing on the front line, that’s what the Health Secretary is doing today, getting on with his job, and he’s doing a very good job too.’
But Mrs Badenoch said the PM had ‘lost control of his Government, he’s lost the confidence of his party, and lost the trust of the British people’.
Asked after the exchanges if the PM was prepared to sack people found to have briefed against Cabinet ministers, his press secretary said: ‘I would point you to what he has said about this previously, which is any attacks on Cabinet ministers are completely unacceptable and will always be dealt with.’
Briefings against Mr Streeting in particular were ‘a series of quotes attributed to outside Downing Street’, she suggested, when asked if a leak inquiry was under way.
The PM has full confidence in both the Health Secretary and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, No 10 also indicated.
Asked if briefings that Sir Keir’s insists he is ready to fight against leadership challenges made him look weak, the press secretary replied that ‘the Prime Minister’s leadership speaks for itself’, and pointed to to the three trade deals he had struck, as well as efforts to restore stability to the economy, and reform public services.
Alongside Mr Streeting, former deputy PM Angela Rayner and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood are regarded by some as ‘on manoeuvres’.
But Sir Keir is said to have told ministers any attempted coup would destabilise financial markets.
One supporter told The Times: ‘Keir knows he is already fighting a leadership contest. When it comes, he won’t resign. He will fight it. He thinks it’s fantasy politics.’
Downing Street figures have raised concerns that Mr Streeting is preparing to demand the PM’s resignation after the Budget.
MPs have been threatening to revolt if Chancellor Rachel Reeves hikes income tax for the first time in 50 years – something that would flagrantly breach Labour’s manifesto.
Earlier, Mr Streeting dismissed ‘daft’ claims he is planning to challenge the premier and suggested those conducting the Downing Street briefings had been watching too much Traitors on TV.
Asked whether he was planning a leadership challenge, the Health Secretary told Sky News: ‘No, and I think whoever’s been briefing this has been watching too much Celebrity Traitors, and this is just about the worst attack on a faithful I’ve seen since Joe Marler was kicked out and banished in the final.
‘It’s totally self defeating briefing, not least because it’s not true and I don’t understand how anyone thinks it’s helpful to the Prime Minister either.’
Asked if he would rule out demanding Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation after the Budget, he said: ‘Yes, and nor did I shoot JFK.
‘I don’t know where Lord Lucan is, had nothing to do with Shergar, and I do think that the US did manage to do the moon landings. I don’t think they were fake.’
Mr Streeting pointedly referenced Lucy Powell, the ‘anti-Keir’ candidate who recently won the deputy leadership contest.
‘What I think this does show is that when Lucy Powell stood to be deputy leader of the Labour Party and said there needed to be a culture change in how we lead and how the party is managed, I think she has been vindicated,’ he said.
He added: ‘I do think that going out and calling your Labour MPs feral is not very helpful.
‘I do think that trying to kneecap one of your own team when they are out, not just making the case for the Government, but actually delivering the change that we promised, I think that is also self-defeating and self-destructive behaviour.
‘I also think whoever did this doesn’t speak for the Prime Minister. I speak for the Prime Minister.’
He added he thought Sir Keir would be ‘horrified’ reading reports of briefing against Cabinet members.
On the prospect of a challenge to Sir Keir, Mr Streeting told BBC Breakfast: ‘I cannot see circumstances in which I would do that to our Prime Minister.’
He added: ‘I also think that taking on that job feels like more of a punishment than anything else at the moment, given how hard the Prime Minister’s job is, that’s why he’s got full support.
‘That’s why I constantly support him in the job that he’s doing. And I’ve always been a team player. That is how I do things, and that’s how I will always do things.’
Labour MPs voiced despair at the eruption of psychodrama. One told the Daily Mail they did not believe highly coordinated plotting was taking place.
‘There’s people with complaints and moans – some reasonable and some not,’ they said.
Another Labour insider said the intervention from No10 was ‘quite something’. They joked that it was like the scene from Apocalypse Now, where Colonel Kurtz asks if his ‘methods are unsound’ and Willard replies: ‘I don’t see any method at all, sir.’
A veteran aide said Downing Street was trying to ‘smoke out’ Mr Streeting. ‘There are at least four leadership campaigns up and running,’ they added.
However, they warned the tactic was ‘unwise’ and took aim at No10 communications director Tim Allan and Sir Keir’s biographer Tom Baldwin.
‘There is no one in the country that’s more out of touch with the real Britain than Tim Allan and Tom Baldwin, with the possible exceptions of the Prime Minister and Ed Miliband,’ they added.
The aide insisted that in contrast Mr McSweeney was a ‘genius’ but admitted he now appeared to be on ‘borrowed time’.
One friend of Mr McSweeney told the Daily Mail he was ‘100 per cent behind’ the briefing, adding: ‘He’s toast’.
A senior Labour MP added: ‘McSweeney has to go’.
Mr Baldwin, a former comms chief for Mr Miliband who is known to be close to the PM, has also criticised the No10 briefing.
‘I’m at a loss to understand why anyone would think this sort of briefing will help Keir Starmer, the government, or even their own cause. Some people just can’t resist, I guess, but it’s all a bit nuts,’ he posted on X.
Mr McSweeney was pivotal to Sir Keir’s Labour leadership campaign. He became the PM’s chief of staff after winning a power struggle with former civil servant Sue Gray.
Sir Keir has lost a slew of top advisers over recent months, including comms chiefs James Lyons and Steph Driver and strategist Paul Ovenden.
The chairwoman of the Red Wall group of Labour MPs said the party was ‘fighting like dogs’.
Bassetlaw MP Jo White told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: ‘Our enemies love nothing more than when we start fighting like dogs in public, and my message to those MPs who are running around with their tails held high: That this is neither the time or the place.
‘This is a group of people who think they’re much cleverer than the rest of us, who spend their time selectively briefing journalists and stirring the pot. I want to simply say: We’re not having it.
‘I’m not aware of a single person in the red wall group who’s involved in this. And if anyone, including Wes Streeting, wants to make a move, they would have to speak to us. He’s a London MP and it hasn’t happened and it’s not true.’
Ms White added: ‘I’d like to say to No 10, I think they’re barking up the wrong tree, briefing against Wes.
‘I’ve known Wes since he was NUS president. He’s one of the tiny handful of MPs who came up to Bassetlaw to help me with my election.
‘He’s only just recently written a really kind letter to one of my members who lost her husband. And I think I’d know – he’d tell me if he was manoeuvring.’
The bar for ousting a Labour PM is very high. At least 81 rebels would need to unite around a single candidate, and even then there would need to be a contest at the next party conference.
However, in reality Sir Keir would struggle to survive losing the confidence of the Cabinet.
And dissent has been growing in the Parliamentary party. One Labour MP told the New Statesman: ‘If this is a marriage, the two sides have reached the ‘staying together for the kids’ stage.’
An aide told the publication – historically viewed as the ‘bible of the Labour Party’ of Sir Keir: ‘He doesn’t understand politics or the Labour Party, he doesn’t have a vision, he’s a terrible communicator.
‘We’ve always known these things about him, but we put up with it when we were doing OK against the Tories.’
One cabinet minister also criticised Sir Keir for not getting a grip: ‘There are some things you have to grip yourself. He doesn’t.’
Labour backbencher Barry Gardiner told GB News: ‘We’re in a very poor state when Number 10 feels that it has to defend itself against some putative challenge, and the chief person they’re accusing of challenging saying, ‘no, no, of course I’m not doing anything’.
‘I don’t believe either of them, actually, because Number 10 is saying that the Prime Minister knew nothing about it and Wes Streeting saying that he knew nothing about any plots against the Prime Minister. It’s common knowledge in Parliament.
‘I think the public look at this and they say, ‘oh, for goodness sake, stop talking to yourselves and get on with running the country’. Because they look at this and in Parliament, everybody knows that there are groups of MPs who’ve been saying we’re really worried, the polls are low. What are we going to do? Does the Prime Minister need to go? Who’s going to challenge him? When’s it going to happen?’
As the briefing raged last night, one minister told the BBC that the Prime Minister ‘will fight this’.
They added: ‘He is one of only two people alive who have won a general election for Labour. It’d be madness to run against him after 17 months.’
Another minister who believes Sir Keir should stay until the next election said the PM is at the mercy of ‘feral’ Labour MPs from the 2024 intake.
Sir Keir is aware of the growing threat to his position and is ‘already fighting the leadership election’ by reaching out to Labour backbenchers, according to The Times.
The Prime Minister has reportedly told ministers that any attempted coup would destabilise Britain’s standing on the financial markets and its relationship with foreign governments.
Other names said to be in contention are Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, and backbenchers including the former transport secretary Louise Haigh.
Another Labour source said: ‘The list of reasons for people to move after the Budget are growing by the day.
‘If Wes is brave and moves he may well be rewarded by being prime minister by Christmas.’
Critics have warned that Downing Street was ‘in full bunker mode’ which ‘won’t help the Government out of the hole we’re in’.
A source said No 10 was ‘turning on their most loyal Cabinet members for absolutely no reason’.
‘Unfortunately there is a pattern of Keir’s team briefing against his own people… now it’s Wes’s turn,’ the source added.
