MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: If PM goes we want an election – not an previous warhorse as ‘caretaker’
There is growing talk, among the Left-wing establishment, of appointing a ‘caretaker leader’ for the Labour Party, so making it easier for Sir Keir Starmer to resign.
The argument is that the party will not be immediately compelled to choose a new leader even worse than the current one. It can then, in the fullness of time, pick a successor who does not frighten the country too much, and whose closets, files and email records have been carefully searched for embarrassing moments.
No doubt Labour’s inner circles, who are, by a sour irony, the heirs of the old Blair-Mandelson machine, hope they might use the intervening months to boost whoever they now secretly pray will get the job.
All kinds of supposedly reassuring old warhorses are being canvassed to fulfil the caretaker role. It is unlikely that any of these majestic figures would want anything to do with such a scheme.
The idea is absurd for many reasons and almost certainly impracticable too. Labour cannot currently rely on winning a by-election even in its safest seat.
It is very hard to imagine the Parliamentary Labour Party being willing to accept a leader who sits in the Lords, a chamber Labour has ceaselessly sought to undermine and which most of its members would cheerfully abolish.
Resurrecting such figures as Ed Miliband or Hilary Benn would look desperate. But these are minor quibbles beside the profound arguments against any such move.
The word ‘caretaker’ warns us that this plan cannot work.
Labour can’t have a caretaker look after it if Starmer goes, it can only be tamed by a respect for the electorate
Labour is not some National Trust country house which needs to be gently looked after and protected from leaks and rodent infestations. Labour is a political party, a seething, high-temperature faction of radicals, who are often at each other’s throats.
It can only be made fit for government if its natural ferocity and chaos is tempered and damped down by a respect for the electorate and a willingness to compromise principle in return for power.
It needs to be led by someone with a firm grasp of reality and a strong hand, ready to keep it from self-destruction by the use of ruthless authority.
A temporary caretaker, manhandled into position rather than elected after a full-powered campaign, simply would not have the internal force to manage this.
And then there is the constitutional problem. Technically, a PM gets his or her right to rule from the Commons. The King is more or less obliged to appoint a party leader who appears to have such support. But the TV age has made the relation between voters and Premier much more personal and direct.
General Elections centre upon the leader’s personality and experience. The British system has grown far more American and presidential.
Gordon Brown’s lack of a personal mandate rotted his entire stint in Downing Street. And this means that Labour cannot now foist on the nation either a supposed ‘caretaker’ or a new Premier who has merely emerged from its own leadership election system.
If Sir Keir Starmer goes, and it is hard to see what can save him, then there must be a General Election immediately.
