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Westminster politics is currently consumed by the fact that the May elections are next week.
On Tuesday night Labour MPs voted down a Tory proposal that would have seen the prime minister referred to the privileges committee over his handling of the Mandelson scandal. Just 15 Labour MPs – mostly long-term critics of the PM – voted for the Tory motion; 53 did not vote, not all of whom abstained.
Rather than reading this result as a resounding vote of confidence in Keir Starmer, it is instead the case that MPs who may well be sincerely outraged about the most recent iterations of the scandal do not want to go into the week of elections with headlines dominated by internal strife.
There is a reasonable chance that Starmer will face a leadership challenge after the May elections, and few want to add Conservative-proffered fuel to the already well-stoked fire that is internal discontent with Starmer. For those MPs whose areas will have elections next week (and indeed, those who won’t), the business of the day is supporting Labour councillors and candidates, the people who represent the party in local government, and in the longer and more selfish term, form a critical part of any MP’s campaign for re-election.
In Cardiff and at Holyrood, too, Labour is fighting to defend its seats; Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has previously gone so far as to call for Starmer to resign, but even he called the privileges committee vote a “political stunt” before quickly highlighting that Labour’s focus was the campaign. For all that the headlines are full of stories about Labour infighting, the party is still a group of people who are in something together – namely, a common electoral endeavour, one in which many people involved have rooted their lives.
Lack of desire to fight in public the week before your colleagues, comrades and friends are up for election should not be taken as an indication of overwhelming delight at the status quo. Alongside discontent over the Mandelson affair, unhappiness has brewed over other issues, including the party’s recent stances on immigration (which Angela Rayner notably chose to take aim at last month), and more generally, the party management choices and perceived lack of direction.
Even for Labour MPs whose feelings towards the status quo are distinctly negative, a different kind of stasis waits on the other side of the May elections, guaranteed as much as anything can be to be bruising for the party. Those who might seek another leader face a kind of candidate gridlock, where all the mooted potential leadership challengers have significant problems (Andy Burnham isn’t an MP; Rayner’s tax affair is yet to be resolved; Wes Streeting struggles with the membership). For the time being, however, the party wants to keep its eyes on the daunting task ahead of it.
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