“I think nearly any observer is flabbergasted that two years after winning a landslide majority, he can find himself in this situation. Her challenge came from the parliamentary arithmetic and the Gordian knot of Brexit. Neither of those exist in this situation.”
5) Don’t go abroad
Prime ministers in peril can be tempted to project business-as-usual with a bit of international summitry — but this can cut valuable face-to-face time with persuadable MPs and allow plotters to plot.
With a leadership contest already underway, Margaret Thatcher infamously pressed ahead with attending a Paris meeting on the future of Europe. She learned that her premiership had been dealt a major blow in the contest’s first ballot while still in France.
Kempsell said: “The hard political management problems that I’ve seen under several prime ministers always occur when the prime minister is traveling. When they are out of the country, people behave differently … their loyalty can slip and they start having secret meetings.”
6) But most of all … they need a reason to back you
Ultimately many of Starmer’s MPs just aren’t enthusiastic about his vision or personality. In the end that will be his undoing, said Barwell: “You can buy yourself time with all sorts of tricks and gimmicks, but it’s not going to solve the problem. That’s why I think this is ultimately going to play out with him going.”
And it becomes a vortex as policy is swallowed in the news agenda — and government time — by leadership speculation. “The bunker itself destroys the chance to get anything meaningful done,” said Kempsell, and can leave people “disappearing into the plughole of the news cycle and just trying to survive?”
Timpson recalled Liz Truss, who lasted only 49 days, gathering her staff for a war room in the Pillared Room in Downing Street. “Frankly, it wasn’t a lack of coordination that was the problem,” she said. “It was a complete lack of substance, of a future of that administration. It was on its knees.”