UK’s Labour not in habit of dumping sitting prime ministers

The last time a Labour prime minister came under pressure to resign like Keir Starmer did last week, was when Harold Wilson faced a backbench revolt over trade union reform in May 1969.

Harold Wilson was quick witted with a very good turn of phrase, which he used to great effect. “I know what’s going on, I am going on,” he said in a speech at a May Day rally at the Royal Festival Hall in London. It killed off the rumours and the plots and established a tradition of party loyalty in the Labour Party that stood Starmer in good stead last week when some cabinet ministers went on leadership manoeuvres.

There was a botched coup d’état after the Labour leader in Scotland called for the PM’s resignation. It was followed by a deafening silence but gradually Starmer’s cabinet rallied in support – some more enthusiastically than others – and he survived when they reverted to type after looking into the abyss – Labour is trailing Reform UK between four and nine percentage points. 

The Conservatives have a history of disloyalty that must have tempted some in Labour’s recent crop of MPs and ministers. Margaret Thatcher was removed in 1990 after a Freudian slip when she told an interviewer she would “go on and on” instead of taking a leaf out of Harold Wilson’s book of witty quotes.

Thatcher was, as the Russians said, an Iron Lady, but not to the Conservatives who forced her out of office after they deemed her an electoral liability. They did the same with Theresa May in July 2019 when she lost control of Brexit; Boris Johnson in September 2022 after he lied to Parliament; and Liz Truss in October 2022 when she lost the confidence of the markets. And will do the same to Kemi Badenoch once they realise she is unlikely to win them power in 2029.

The Labour Party is not known for removing sitting Labour prime ministers. The nearest they got was when Tony Blair made way for Gordon Brown in 2007, but that was part of an arrangement between them after Labour leader John Smith died in 1994. The agreement was that Tony Blair would run as leader in 1997, appoint Gordon Brown in charge of economic policy if Labour won and make way for Gordon to succeed him after Labour won a second term.

Unsurprisingly, Tony Blair stayed on much longer after he won a third term in 2005, albeit with a much-reduced majority. The pressure to make way increased enormously until Blair agreed and Gordon Brown became PM unopposed in June 2007.

He immediately thought of calling a general election in the autumn of 2007 to win his own mandate, but the opinion polls were not favourable enough for him to throw away two and half years at the helm.

Keir Starmer is also not going to throw away three and a quarter years as PM after a meagre year and a half of a five-year term with an overall majority of 175 and enough time to turn the economy round. And neither is he going to call a general election he knows he could lose. As justice minister David Lammy shouted to reporters in Downing Street when he joined the prime minister in his fightback last Monday, “it took 14 years to get here.”

It would also be an undemocratic interference with the result of a general election for the parliamentary party to remove their elected prime minister so soon after an election. The argument that in a parliamentary democracy in which the people vote for a parliament and not the person of a party leader, does not mean that a recently elected prime minister can be forced out every time his popularity falls in the opinion polls.

The fact that a UK prime minister has the power to call a general election at any time is a kind of insurance policy against his removal by his parliamentary party. But in practice, a prime minister would only call a general election early if he or she is likely to win it and that does not look likely at present.

The appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador in Washington in the knowledge that he maintained a friendship with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein after he was convicted of trafficking an underage girl for prostitution in 2008 was a clear error of judgement.

But that is not the issue; the issue is whether his error of judgement on Mandelson is a resigning matter. In the post-Epstein climate, public figures are expected to cancel friendships with convicted sex offenders but that does not make their appointment to public office a resigning matter for the PM.

The Mandelson dismissal was compounded by later information that he had betrayed his country in 2009 while he was a cabinet minister. It goes without saying that the prime minister would have had to resign if he appointed Mandelson knowing of his propensity to betray his country.

In the grand scheme of things, however, the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador was well intended even if it was wrong – he was sent to Washington to charm Donald Trump in furtherance of the best interests of the UK.

Rightly or wrongly, Mandelson’s appointment was applauded by many who must have known of his association with Epstein – primarily because they too thought he was the right person to handle Trump.

According to the 19th century British foreign minister Lord Palmerston, it is realism in furtherance of British interests not morality that is the dominant consideration in foreign affairs. The Mandelson scandal shows, however, that a wrong judgement call about a moral dilemma opens a Pandora’s box. The hope is that Starmer has learnt this lesson.