Starmer 2.0

PM hopes to retrieve votes with a new authenticity

- Jessica Elgot Kiran Stacey

Two days after Keir Starmer had been disowned by the Scottish Labour leader last week and as a row raged over another controversial peerage, the prime minister decided to pick a fight with a billionaire.

It was a dark week for Starmer, with the departure of his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who had become a divisive figure and who took the hit for the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.

But last Thursday morning had - for a change - been dominated by a different story. Jim Ratcliffe, the Monaco-based Manchester United owner, said the UK had been “colonised” by immigrants, citing wildly inaccurate figures.

The previous afternoon, when the comments were first broadcast, Starmer tweeted to proactively condemn them as “offensive and wrong”. Britain, he said, “is a proud, tolerant and diverse country” and he called on Ratcliffe to apologise. It is small in the scheme of things. But it was a gesture that aides say will be a symbol of a much bigger shift.

“A few months ago we would not have done that,” said one adviser. “There would have been an internal row over whether it would look soft on immigration. But we know what the prime minister thinks, we know what he would want to say, so why are we hesitating?”

Starmer’s premiership is assumed to be doomed given the widespread anger at the last 18 months among MPs and the public. But there is a growing consensus within the cabinet that the lack of a plausible successor, and of one with the guts to challenge Starmer, means he may survive for much longer than predicted.

“Everyone is chastened by the coup that never was,” one cabinet minister said, referring to Anas Sarwar’s call for Starmer to resign, which no one else followed.