Starmer’s spokesman has just confirmed there are no plans to celebrate Labour’s one-year anniversary. Just as there were no plans to celebrate the first 100 days…
Downing Street says it did a reception with public sector workers earlier in the week which is good enough. Asked about dismal poll ratings the spokesman said Brits are “impatient for change.” One way to put it…
The once-back-scratching media and pollsters are rounding up how it’s gone instead. Not pretty…
Sources inside government dispute that Reeves has a secret ‘personal issue’ which caused her to cry. After the extraordinary scenes in the Commons at Wednesday’s PMQs Reeves rushed to Starmer’s NHS speech the next day and told reporters she was dealing with “a personal issue” and added: “Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.” Very much wanting to move on – hard to do when you’re the Chancellor and you cried live on TV for about thirty minutes…
A Downing Street source tells Guido there is no one in the No10 political team who believes Reeves and “nobody here knows what the personal issue is.” There are now widespread fears “she has lied to the PM who has assured the nation.” A government source tells Guido: “It’s as it appears. Hoyle being a *****.” So, nothing…
Rumours quickly spread that Lindsay Hoyle had an altercation with Reeves – observers saw Reeves burst into tears after Hoyle asked her to give slightly shorter answers in oral and topical Commons questions. A Downing Street source adds: “We all think it’s total b*llocks. She had a series of minor rows, and was hurt by Badenoch and lost it.” Unsustainable for a Chancellor…
Starmer said to Nick Robinson that her “personal matter” was “nothing to do with politics” and “nothing to do with any discussion between me and Rachel, nothing to do with the matters of this week.” Guido hears there are fears in Downing Street elucidated by one source that “if she has done her usual lying it is very bad for the PM too.” Starmer has gone to pains since Wednesday to say their fates are bound together…
The Chancellor’s team maintains there is a hidden personal issue. Kemi’s spokesperson did ask about this after PMQs and was right to – but the Lobby has gone silent on the matter. This was on live TV, is no one interested in the reason?
The malaise inside Downing Street extends further than political staff. The civil servants are distraught too…
Guido hears abnormally high numbers of mid-ranking Civil Service staff in No10 are plotting their exits. A raft of junior and brash Labour political staff are said to make work frustrating…
Sources inside government say they know of at least ten non-political staff who want to go. Some have been ringing around potential new employers…
Restlessness is particularly high in the No10 press office – no surprise there – and the parliamentary team. When senior Civil Service staff holding things together at the Cabinet Office are also planning to leave you know the rot is deep…
A pointed Cabinet readout has appeared in The Times this afternoon:
“In a pointed address to the cabinet on Tuesday morning, the prime minister said he “will not countenance” criticism of Morgan McSweeney… ‘We will learn from our mistakes, but we will not turn in on each other,’ Starmer said. ‘We will not resile from our record of achievement and we will not turn on our staff — including our chief of staff, without whom none of us would be sitting around this cabinet table.’”
Starmer is responding to Guido’s exclusive stories over recent days on the turmoil inside the Downing Street operation. It’s not happy families…
The PM himself freewheeled over the weekend and gave a series of disastrous interviews – including ‘dropping a Baldwin’ – which effectively placed blame for the first year of Labour on his staff. That went down as well as you might expect…
Starmer u-turned on his criticisms of the first year in office at Cabinet too:
“He then reflected on the last year in office, saying we could all rightly look back with a real sense of pride and achievement. The Prime Minister said that because of tough decisions the government had taken, it had a platform to build on, with three trade deals, a spending review that was received well by the public and an industrial strategy received well by businesses both large and small.”
Starmer’s friend and hagiographer Tom Baldwin continues touring the airwaves offering his criticisms of the McSweeney operation. Old hands inside government are briefing Starmer against the current personnel set up. Push and pull inside Downing Street…
There are swirling rumours about the fate of the man who made Starmer. The McIavelli was subject to media briefing over the welfare rebellion last week…
Government sources say there were fears that Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney was on the verge of resignation on Friday after Starmer began his impromptu media round by ‘dropping a Baldwin‘ then giving further whingeing interviews over the weekend which went down terribly. A personal repudiation of the ongoing McSweeney project which took Labour from its worst loss since 1935 to a landslide within five years…
SpAds to whom Guido has spoken for the most part don’t expect him to quit. As pundits point out Guido is arrestingly well-sourced – Starmer is being advised by old timers Louise Casey and Jonathan Powell who are not fans of the current personnel set up in Downing Street. Ire is directed at the political team in Downing Street which is seen as excessively junior, as well as at political director Claire Reynolds, who is said to have bungled the management of the now-rebellious Parliamentary Labour Party over welfare. Last month Reynolds was reported to have told MPs that the Labour vision for Britain was a “work in progress.” If Morgan stays there has got to be staff movement somewhere…
Appetite for changes to Downing Street’s personnel has grown over the weekend. A weekend in which Starmer pleaded that he has not in fact been in charge…
The PM ‘dropped a Baldwin‘ on Friday and his hagiographer took pains to spell out that Starmer hated 1. His Rose Garden speech, 2. His Island of Strangers remark, 3. Briefings in Westminster, and that he regretted most of the strident stunts executed by his team. That and a subsequent Sunday Times interview have not gone down well inside government…
The PM also claimed to be too distracted by the Middle East to pay attention to what was going on at home. One Downing Street source tells Guido there is serious consternation inside and the interviews have gone done very badly with SpAds: “he basically blamed us all for allowing him to make poor decisions. That’s not leadership… he can’t be doing that and expect loyalty.”
A shake-up is becoming more likely. Guido hears Starmer is receiving advice behind the scenes from Whitehall veteran Louise Casey who is “not a fan of a lot of the current set up around” the PM. National Security Adviser and Blairite old hand Jonathan Powell also has Starmer’s ear and believes that personnel are “amateurish.” The old guard stepping in…
The mood is febrile and changes to both the political and official personnel rosters – awaited for later in the year – are expected to be accelerated now. Something has to change…
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.”