The prevailing mood inside Labour MPs nowadays echoes Edgar's law. It declares that the extent of any misfortune is only assessed against unforeseen calamities. As the playwright lets the banished son of the visionless lord of Gloucester say in King Lear: “The direst does not exist, as long as we are able to utter ‘this is the worst’.”
A Succession of Deepening Difficulties
Per this principle, there exists no survey so gloomy regarding the party that cannot be succeeded by one even bleaker; no fiscal forecast so terrible that the Treasury won't exacerbate it with contradictory signals on tax; no misgivings regarding the leader that cannot be intensified by malevolent briefing about a leadership challenge.
Immigration Rules Announcement
Against this backdrop, this week's revelation of strategies that aim to reduce the amount of displaced persons allowed into Britain, based upon an infamously harsh Scandinavian model, was taken less badly with Labour MPs than predicted. There appeared glimmers of MP frustration but no conflagration of dissent.
Tightening asylum rules is far from Labour's comfort zone, however the present arrangement is evidently broken while citizens are furious. Most MPs grasp the reasoning that acceptance and intercommunal harmony are more readily developed if assurance exists that the nation's borders are safely guarded.
Rising Unhappiness
Quiet backbenches can also be ominous. MPs have learned that each issue is discussable under an aimless chief of malleable conviction. Current proclamations might be reversed shortly. There is no need to rush over the top when victories can be won by attrition.
A common complaint involves the leader is barely running the administration at all, following the transfer of political judgment to his chief of staff. However, this doesn't mean the head of government misses managerial vigor, he merely chooses to avoid arbitrating in departmental disputes or engage in extended discussions.
Management Method
Starmer came to party politics during later professional life, originally joining the legislature at the age of 52. He has no feel regarding party traditions – the collection of past debates, campaigns, figures and traditional touchstones which link a chief to the larger group and its perception of shared purpose.
His innermost beliefs stay concealed to government members. Per a high-ranking Labour figure puts it: “The leader is remarkably distinct as a prime minister through suggesting that his individual beliefs are not for public consumption.”
Governmental Outcomes
The product packaged as the Prime Minister during the previous electoral contest has likewise failed to provide its purported benefits: managerial competence resulting in countrywide revitalization. Had the UK maintained a two-party system, the memory of how bad things were with the previous government may continue tolerance for the party.
This foreshadows a devastating defeat of Labour candidates in municipal and devolved elections next May. It shall represent a time of great danger for the leader, assuming he survives until then.
Future Considerations
Absent in these calculations exists consensus on the identity of a replacement and how their programme may differ with existing administration plans. This defect in the transition plan is referenced by supporters of the leader as one of many reasons to remain with the current leader.
While restive MPs might recoil from those warnings, they similarly perceive in them the well-known, empty ringing of limited aspiration that creates despondency at the status quo. It signifies the tone of inability to define Starmerism as anything more than a sequence of tactics for clinging on.
Concluding Thoughts
It is hard to inspire faithfulness toward such a purpose. And most Labour MPs have attempted. They have followed the party line, supported it during canvassing, followed party discipline, accepted guarantees that their concerns were heard.
Leadership removal is fraught with risk, however, does it present greater hazards than pretending that the existing prime minister holds responses about important matters that he never even names? The literary maxim recommends carefulness regarding the replacement of a sitting prime minister. The successor might prove more disastrous.
“The heaviness of this troubled period we need to follow; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.”
