UK Special Coverage Starmer Survives a Palace Coup, But for How Long? Labour still has irresoluble internal faults. UK Special Coverage It is an old adage in war and politics that, if you’re going to take out your leader, you’d better not miss. You also need to be sure that the politicians who’ve said they’ll support you in a palace coup are serious people. Unfortunately, the Scottish Labour grandee, Anas Sarwar, failed on both counts. Yesterday he voiced what many Labour MPs have been saying privately for months and called openly for the beleaguered Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign. “Too many mistakes,” he said. “The leadership needs to change.”  He was referring to the crisis that has engulfed Number 10 since the publication 10 days ago of the latest tranche of Epstein Files by the U.S. Department of Justice. These revealed the apparent duplicity and venality of the disgraced former British Ambassador to the U.S., Peter Mandelson, whom Starmer had appointed to this most senior of all diplomatic posts. But if Sarwar thought that he would be supported by a legion of disgruntled Labour ministers and MPs, he was sorely mistaken. Only his deputy, Jackie Baillie, MSP, and a couple of MPs echoed his “resign” call. The UK Cabinet rallied very publicly behind Starmer last night. Even the putative leadership contenders, the former Deputy Leader Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting, dutifully pledged their allegiance. It looked as if Sarwar had thrown the pin, not the hand grenade. Friends of Sarwar insist that, on the contrary, the Scottish leader has astutely distanced himself from the UK Labour leadership and that this will help him challenge the Scottish National Party in the Scottish Parliament elections in three months’ time. That remains to be seen. But for the time being, the UK Labour leader seems to be on rather safer ground than he was only 48 hours ago, when his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, resigned, followed quickly by his director of communications, Tim Allan. In reality, Starmer is still, as they say in Scotland, hanging on a shoogly peg. The Mandelson affair, Labour MPs agree, has cut through to the voters unlike most political scandals of recent years. This is because of the character of the man they call the Prince of Darkness. One of the architects of New Labour, Mandelson has been a malign influence for over 30 years, according to his many enemies. The Epstein files revealed that Mandelson had supplied his “best pal” with highly market-sensitive intelligence about the activities of the UK Government during the financial crisis of 2008–10. Documents suggest that he briefed his financier friend about an imminent €500 billion rescue operation and about the UK Government’s plan to sell state assets. This all happened prior to Keir Starmer becoming prime minister in 2020. However, the PM admitted last week that when he appointed Mandelson ambassador in 2024, he knew that he had maintained close relations with Epstein even after the latter was convicted in 2008 of procuring underage girls. Mandelson was forced to resign. Starmer’s critics pointed out that Mandelson had already had to resign twice in the past from Labour Cabinets over his relations with wealthy men. Did this not raise serious questions about Starmer’s judgment?  Even before the Epstein-Mandelson scandal, Starmer had been widely criticized over ill-thought-out measures like cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners, introducing compulsory ID cards, and abolishing jury trials for many lower-level offences. In some opinion polls, Starmer is currently the most unpopular PM in history. But much of the criticism of Starmer in the Labour Party is not over policy mistakes but ideology. The left have been urging him to start using the large majority he won in July 2024 to push through socialist measures. Now, it may seem as if Starmer has already been cleaving to the left. He has raised taxes on business to crippling levels; imposed onerous inheritance taxes on farmers and private individuals; pumped tens of billions into welfare; handed inflation-busting pay rises to public-sector unions; banned oil and gas exploration in the North Sea; and allowed small boats to ferry 50,000 illegal immigrants across the Channel, only to house many of them in costly hotels. Indeed, viewed from America, Britain already resembles a failed socialist state. But in the looking-glass world of progressive politics, Starmer is seen as positively right-wing. The socialist Campaign Group of MPs regard their leader as almost a Conservative. MPs like John McDonnell, a former chancellor, and Clive Lewis, a former minister, have been urging a more radical agenda. The left wants more wealth taxes, outright nationalization of public utilities, abolition of university tuition fees, a ban on trans conversion therapy, a boycott of Israeli goods and services, opposition to nuclear weapons and a return to the EU customs union along with free movement. Many of these are also the headline policies of Zack Polanski’s Green Party, which is expected to do well in the forthcoming Gorton and Denton by-election later this month. Labour is caught in a pincer movement by the Greens on the left and Nigel Farage’s Reform Party on the right. The former is draining support from Labour among the university-educated, progressive urban elites and the large immigrant communities in cities like Manchester and Birmingham. Reform is attracting many white working-class voters in the so-called “Red Wall” seats in the North of England who are concerned about living costs, immigration, and Asian grooming gangs. The tension between left and right in the Labour Party is, paradoxically, one reason for yesterday’s rejection of Anas Sarwar’s resignation call. Cabinet ministers realized that if the PM had resigned precipitately yesterday, then open war might have broken out in the party. That has been avoided for now. But the reckoning cannot be put off indefinitely. After this week’s clear-out of “Blairite” advisers like McSweeney, the left hope they can now capture Starmer and bend him to their will. But a reckless lurch to the left is the last thing the Labour Party needs. Public spending is out of control, growth is anemic, taxes are stifling growth, energy costs are crippling industry and uncontrolled immigration is creating caustic divisions in British communities.  British voters do not seek a return to the Venezuela-lite policies of the former Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who now leads his own far-left party, confusingly called “Your Party.” Right now, Labour is not looking like anybody’s as it staggers from crisis to crisis. The post Starmer Survives a Palace Coup, But for How Long? appeared first on The American Conservative.

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