This morning we read an interview the Prime Minister gave to a Sunday newspaper in which he made the following – staggering – claim.
Brushing aside news that the patience of his MPs has finally snapped, and they were preparing to oust him, he said: ‘What you never hear from are all the people who are supportive, loyal and just want to get on with the job. And that is the vast majority of people in the parliamentary Labour Party’.
The worst thing is, I think Keir Starmer genuinely believes it.
Over the past week I’ve talked to Ministers. I’ve talked to MPs. I’ve talked to advisors. I’ve talked to people who despise Keir Starmer and never wanted to see him elected Labour leader in the first place.
I’ve talked to people who grudgingly accepted him on the basis he was the man who could drag his party out of the wilderness of opposition and into power.
I even spoke to a couple of people who really rate him, backed him from the off, and thought he would prove to be a genuinely great Prime Minister.
Yet I could not find a single one who was ‘supportive’. They might have been in the past but not now. Nor anyone steadfastly loyal. Nor anyone who thought it was remotely conceivable they could get on with their jobs and successfully deliver the change they were elected to bring while he remained in power.
‘I’m staying out of this now,’ one Starmer stalwart told me.
Sir Keir Starmer talks during a visit to Kenton United Synagogue, in northwest London, which was recently the target of an attempted arson
Meanwhile, a former loyalist Minister confided: ‘He may be able to stagger on for a while because they [the Parliamentary Labour Party] can’t agree on a replacement. But it’s now only a matter of when, not if.’
But Sir Keir really can’t see it. He honestly does think the silent majority of his MPs back him and want him to carry on with his bold strategy of changing the world one breakfast club at a time.
Partly, this is a reflection of the bunker mentality that has enveloped No 10 Downing Street, which now resembles that famous scene in the 2004 film Downfall, in which Adolf Hitler asks his tremulous generals where all the reinforcements have gone.
On Friday, Starmer held a ‘crisis meeting’ at Chequers. It was attended by Chief Secretary Darren Jones and Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden. The rest of the Cabinet were otherwise engaged.
The loyal band of aides that guided Starmer into office has been dispensed with. The wider network of special advisors built up by his former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney has collapsed.
It leaves Sir Keir effectively cut off from the outside world. In Downfall, the late Swiss actor Bruno Ganz’s Hitler yells: ‘Where is Steiner?!’ We are not far from the point where Starmer will be heard to bellow: ‘Where are Reeves, Cooper and Miliband!’
A compounding issue is Sir Keir’s chronic lack of self-awareness. Trapped within the bubble that surrounds all Prime Ministers, his perception of himself as a principled man, battling a tide of reactionary forces that are seeking to undermine him and his progressive vision, has decoupled him from reality.
He is unable to fathom the level of contempt he is now held in, by both his colleagues and the country at large. It’s antipathy that has been cemented by the spectacle of him chucking everyone out of the balloon to save his own political skin.
Left to right: Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Volodymyr Zelensky in the grounds of the Mariynsky Palace in Kyiv
As one Labour grandee told me over the weekend: ‘The parliamentary party used to think he was useless but basically decent. After this week they still think he’s useless, but also that he’s a guy who will stab them and anyone else to save himself.’
But the biggest problem is this: Keir Starmer has no idea what his colleagues think because he’s never bothered to actually take the time to ask them.
There has not been a Prime Minister in modern British political history who has been so detached – by choice – from their own Cabinet and backbenchers.
As one Cabinet minister told me just a few months into his premiership: ‘It’s like we’re not here. He has no interest in what we say. He has no interest in what we do. He actually seems to have no interest at all in what’s happening in his Government.’
That is the refrain from his own most senior ministers. His backbenchers are even more scathing. ‘He doesn’t even know I exist,’ one told me. ‘I won one of our most marginal seats. He couldn’t care less. I’ve never spoken to him. Never had a call from him. Never once had him ask me what I think about anything.’
Sir Keir’s interview claiming that the passionate support of his loyal party would see him march to victory at the next election is generating ridicule and despair in equal measure – chiefly among MPs who are now desperate for him to set out a clear timetable for his departure.
‘He’s in total denial,’ one told me.
But he isn’t. Denial requires a basic degree of comprehension. And Keir Starmer really does remain blissfully unaware of just how much everyone loathes him.
