Thirty-eight candidates are jostling for seats on Labour’s national executive committee (NEC), with ballots opening in July. If May 7th delivers the wipeout the polls predict, these elections become the first internal mechanism through which members can pass judgement on Starmer’s leadership. Andy Burnham is watching with close interest…
The left is running three separate slates. Momentum’s Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance is standing on a platform that reads like a direct attack on Starmer, with suspending arms sales to Israel and a second Employment Rights Bill “that goes beyond the current diluted version” on the menu. A new group called ‘Restoration’, offering up five candidates, wants to “make Labour working class again”. Good luck with that.
The Burnhamite Mainstream is standing three candidates. That is eleven left-wing candidates splitting the vote across nine CLP seats, which in theory benefits the right-of-party Labour to Win slate running four.
Jonathan Ashworth has put his name forward after losing his seat in 2024. The race is on…
Labour’s Treasurer Mike Payne admitted at the latest NEC meeting that Unite’s disaffiliation is draining the party’s coffers, and it will run a deficit in 2026. Admittedly Labour should be used to running high deficits by now…
According to NEC member Cat Arnold’s minutes:
“Treasurer Mike Payne said he has seen the annual accounts and they await the internal audit. Discipline will hold us in good stead for 2026, but we will not have a balanced budget but be in deficit. The Unite disaffiliation has had an impact and will have consequences.”
Unite has long been Labour’s biggest union donor. The party is clearly terrified of what happens next. As Arnold herself puts it, other unions are “considering their options”. Time to tighten the belts…
The King’s Speech will be delivered on 13th May, just six days after the local elections. Labour is expecting a bloodbath. Number 10 hoping this will make it harder for any ambitious Cabinet minister to immediately call for Starmer’s head…
Ed Miliband scores the cover interview for this week’s New Statesman. He finally joins the ever-growing list of Labour MPs who have, by pure coincidence, decided now is the time for a puff piece in which they pontificate about Labour’s problems, speak wistfully about their childhoods, and pose for weird pictures. If you want a job in the real world, you usually submit a CV. In Labour, you give a War and Peace-length interview to the New Statesman…
Miliband is careful not to mention his personal ambitions specifically. Luckily the New Statesman does it for him:
“Some of those who know Miliband are clear he has his eyes on becoming chancellor. Nigel Farage has told friends privately in recent weeks that he expects Miliband to become prime minister by 2027.”
Oh no, don’t put that in there…
He does at least admit he wants to smash the ming vase to pieces:
“We won on a modest, relatively safe platform,” Miliband went on. “That’s not meant as a criticism. It’s just a description of the facts.” Miliband mounts a defence of the government. Good things are happening, he promises.”
Most notable, however:
“Should Andy Burnham or Angela Rayner become the leader of Labour this year, they will not deviate from the script that Miliband has written.”
In other words: don’t forget who’s really running the show. He is even described as having “liquid charm“. The only line he might take issue with is his “remarkably enormous oblong of a head”…
Starmer’s former top spinner Paul Ovenden has written another punchy intervention in the Times this morning, attacking Labour directly for fighting to give ‘Boriswave’ migrants “lifetime benefits, paid out of the pockets of other already hard-up, fed-up constituents” and warning Britain “can no longer borrow our way out of every difficulty“. Is anyone in the Treasury listening?
“At a time when our national debt is 93 per cent of GDP, borrowing costs are soaring and we have barely scratched the surface of the £320 billion of debt we accrued at the start of this decade, a disinterested observer could only conclude that either MPs know something wonderful about the public finances that no one else does or there is an acute madness inflicting the body politic.”
He also compares the current moment to Suez and says “we are about to wake up collectively to how much poorer, weaker and softer we are than we pretend“. Maybe he realised he was in the wrong party all this time…
Lisa Nandy in the latest edition of the House Magazine:
“[Andy Burnham] a friend of mine. He’s my mayor, and he was my neighbouring MP for seven years. I think he’s a huge asset to the party. And I’ve said before, I’ll say again, I’ll support him in whatever he wants to do.”
“I think it is right that members are allowed to make their own choices about who they want to be their candidates in elections – I’ve always thought that right. And while I respect the views of colleagues on the National Executive Committee, I… had I been sitting in that seat… I would have voted to allow him to stand, as Lucy [Powell] did.”
Burnham’s allies don’t even bother hiding their allegiances in public anymore. As Guido has previously reported, it might not be a long wait for the King of the North’s next attempt to return to Westminster…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”