KEVIN MAGUIRE: ‘Keir Starmer should play playing cards rigorously to have any likelihood of survival’
‘Adopting a poker-face to stare down Labour rebels and gamble on the enemy within folding requires nerves of steel and political guile he’s rarely displayed in No 10’
The PM faces a fight to survive (Image: Sean Hansford | Manchester Evening News)
Keir Starmer holds a weakening hand so the Prime Minister needs to play remaining cards smartly to have any chance of surviving as odds shorten on the end of his Downing Street tenancy.
Adopting a poker-face to stare down Labour rebels and gamble on the enemy within folding requires nerves of steel and political guile he’s rarely displayed in No 10.
Gordon Brown when Prime Minister skilfully and narrowly trumped a hat-trick of coup attempts, including Cabinet resignations, in 2008, 2009 and 2010. So you have to wonder if the great clunking fist’s global finance envoy role includes advice on how to smash upstarts.
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One wise Labour head predicted the battle of the lists before faithful’s produced a rear-guard stay petition of 100+ loyalists outnumbering almost as many traitors demanding Starmer go. Praetorians adopted Brown’s tactics in effectively challenging hesitating Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s supporters to put up 81 names or shut up, a wrecking strategy Big Gordie successfully deployed to cower Foreign Secretary David Miliband’s fan band into silence.
Intriguingly Starmerites despatched to big-up their line manager to the media after the Cabinet meeting(Peter Kyle, Steve Reed, Pat McFadden and Peter Kyle) would likely all be Wesleyites in any future ballot. Hinting any contest without King of the North Andy Burnham would be illegitimate is delicious hypocrisy from a divide and rule camp when Starmer blocked the Greater Manchester Mayor’s byelection candidacy.
Should Starmer’s Alamo defences be overwhelmed by hostile forces demanding his head, the PM could take the Tony Blair option by pre-announcing his goodbye for later this year or next to escape immediate execution. The Dignitas departure, death with dignity, would spare Starmer the crushing humiliation of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss trampled by stampeding Tory herds.
Blair put on a brave face, pretending he recognised it was time to move on, yet he was a veteran in post 10 years while toddler Starmer not yet two would convince only the criminally gullible his eviction was mutually agreed. One course of risky action would be a reverse Corbyn, engineering a Parliament Labour Party confidence vote to prove most MPs are with him to head off a formal challenge.
Jeremy Corbyn’s critics won their PLP battle and lost the resulting party war as Comrade Jezza was rejected by MPs then re-elected by members. Starmer might convince MPs to stick with him for now but would almost certainly see him awarded a P45 by bloodied troops on the ground against multiple alternatives.
Or wife Lady Vic could tell hubby the game is up, Kryptonite ratings a time for him to stop posing as Superman and return to a quiet Clark Kent life. Whatever Starmer does, the skids feel under him and the country is on the verge of a record seventh PM in only 10 years.
