Starmer’s Number 10 is built on sand

The Labour right want Mandelson’s protege Wes Streeting in Downing Street

Keir Starmer may have rallied enough Labour ministers and MPs behind him this week. But his leadership is finished—it’s not a question of “if” but “when” he will be forced to go.

Starmer has faced several calls to resign after the scandal over Peter Mandelson’s links to billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein deepened.

The Scottish Labour leader, right winger Anas Sarwar, was the most senior Labour politician to call for Starmer’s head at a press conference on Monday.

His intervention came after a spate of resignations from Starmer’s top team.

Morgan McSweeney—a key architect of Starmer’s leadership of Labour—was forced to resign as Downing Street chief of staff over the weekend.

He was a protege of Mandelson, who resigned from the Labour Party after the latest release from the Epstein files. Communication chief Tim Allan was next to resign on Monday after only five months in the role “to allow a new Number 10 team to be built”.

He spent Monday at a golf course instead of at Number 10. Like McSweeney, Allan had been friends with Mandelson for years.

Some backbench MPs from the rump of the Labour left have called for Starmer to go.

But Labour cabinet ministers slowly came out in support of the prime minister on Monday.

The bosses’ Financial Times newspaper said it was “like members of a Communist Politburo” as they “declared their enduring support for their embattled leader”.

And on Monday evening, Starmer addressed a meeting of Labour MPs, where he was greeted with applause.

Why have they rallied around Starmer? Partly, it’s because the possible challengers are tainted by scandals of their own.

Angela Rayner, touted as a “soft left” candidate, resigned as housing secretary last September because of a tax dodging scandal.

Health secretary Wes Streeting is tainted by his friendship with Mandelson.

It points to a much deeper problem for Labour. Starmer was swept into Downing Street on a wave of anger against the Tories, promising “change”.

But he was determined to prove that a Labour government was no threat to the super-rich, big business or the British state.

This meant picking set-piece battles—over the two-child benefit cap, winter fuel payments and benefit cuts for disabled people—which chipped away at Labour’s support.

Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves brought in “fiscal rules”, which require Labour to cut net government debt as a share of the national economy by 2029-30.

These are wholly self-imposed and show that Labour is wedded to free market economics.

Starmer’s only strategy for delivering some reforms to Labour’s working class voters was through “growth” that never materialised.

All this has much deeper roots than Starmer.

While Labour reflected working class people’s aspirations, it has always sought to rule in the “national interest” and manage the British state.

When capitalism is booming, it’s able to bring in reforms with less resistance from the bosses.

But, in times of crisis, Labour governments have always opted to make working class people pay rather than confront the system.

A Labour Party under a “soft left” leader may see a bounce, but it would still be caught in the same fiscal trap that sees it push austerity mark 2.

Despite the depths of anger at Starmer, there is still a pressure to line up behind Labour in a series of electoral tests.

First will be the Gorton and Denton by-election on 26 February. And then on 7 May there are council elections in England, plus the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections.

One argument says you have to back Labour to stop Reform UK and the far right.

But a Labour government that adopts the language of the far right on immigration and hammers living standards is not a barrier. Starmer fuels the rise of Nigel Farage’s far right party.

Our key task is to build the movement against the far right which focuses on mass campaigning and has the radical spirit of Minneapolis.

And we have to push for a much higher level of working class resistance on the picket lines and streets.

From sea to river

Developing Britain’s largest untapped oil field will fuel climate disaster and bring more suffering to Palestinians.

A proposal under the Conservative government to drill at Rosebank in the North Sea was declared unlawful last year.

Environmental campaigners successfully pointed out that the plans didn’t take into account the greenhouse gas emissions from burning oil and gas from the site.

But the fossil fuel corporations have come back for more. British firm Ithaca Energy and Norwegian energy giant Equinor are still pushing to get the project approved.

The Labour government is considering a new set of proposals after a public consultation.

Burning 300 million barrels of oil would be catastrophic. And, if the government approves development at Rosebank, it risks breaking the Geneva Convention.

The majority stakeholder in Ithaca Energy is the Israeli Delek Group. It is blacklisted by the United Nations because it supports illegal settlements in the West Bank.

The same companies that are driving us to climate breakdown are profiting from a brutal system of apartheid in Palestine. The Palestine movement should get behind the campaign to stop them.