Mandelson did for Morgan, now Kemi wants Keir’s scalp but be careful what you wish for

Lazarus didn’t have a better revival, if you are in the Labour Party.

One day after the resignation of his Chief of Staff, the ‘brains of the operation’, Mandelson protogé and eventual sacrificial lamb, Morgan McSweeney, the man who relied so heavily upon him was on the ropes. Ugly for Starmer was the Monday mood in Westminster, and yet the coup that couldn’t deliver the coup de grace announced itself in Edinburgh.

It’s a really heartwarming thing to see so many people that you know have doubts, like you, about Starmer’s ability to do the job, suddenly spontaneously express their strong conviction that this ‘man of integrity’ in his borrowed suit and glasses is the man to lead them. Almost as if it was co-ordinated, by his allies.

The Cabinet had spent the middle of the day with their tanks strangely quiet, their ranks confined to barracks, waiting to see which way the wind blew, as Kemi Badenoch stalked the skies, and Sky, eager to add another ‘kill’ to the fuselage of her fighter plane. But despite Anas Sawar firing the opening salvos, battle did not commence.

And then arose a faintly ‘saintly’ Sir Keir from a meeting of the PLP. A shame the ‘best speech of his life’ took place behind closed doors, rather than the nasal Nightol he usually serves up in public, and suddenly all is well in the best of all possible Labour worlds. They’ve really turned the corner. The leopard has abandoned spots as yesterday’s fashion.

The truth is the PM ‘saved the day’, or rather his bacon, and will be back at the despatch box this afternoon, where the woman he once felt able to write off will no doubt be right up in his face.

Actually Starmer has merely bought time. How long? Probably the length of an HMRC tax investigation, or May.

I’m old enough to remember when, having survived Conference 2025 with aplomb, we warned that with Robert Jenrick in the Party (he was actually already in Reform – he just hadn’t told anyone yet) that May 2026 was the moment Kemi was most vulnerable.

However with a sustained personal, if not party, revival and Robert Jenrick actually gone that threat has not only reduced substantially, it’s flipped onto a Labour leader who once, filled with confidence, liked to dangle that threat over the Conservative leaders head at PMQs. I doubt he’d risk that today.

One wonders, since he’s expressed his full confidence in so many people shortly before they’ve fallen – or been thrown- under a bus, if he’s confident in himself? The illusion of the big Starmer reset being real, rather than him being taken hostage by his Cabinet and his party – will unravel as he is forced, sans Morgan, to ‘talk left and govern lefter’.

But I have a doubt? What’s Kemi Badenoch’s play here?

She’s gunning for the PM, and with a substantial stack of ammunition on his poor judgement over Mandelson, taking the risk with national security by making him Ambassador to Washington, she’s harried him and will continue to with relentless accuracy. There’s lots more to come out, even today.

But do the Conservatives, who shied from a leadership challenge in the last nineteen months for the very same reasons Labour have for the moment, really want Starmer out?

Strategically it’s a tricky question. What’s the end game we are after? Almost all potential replacements for our adenoidal overlord are flawed in ways that will either see them unable to win over the membership of the Labour party or those that can run a government so akin to socialism the country and economy implode further and faster than Keir and Rachel have delivered already.

ConservativeHome columnist Miriam Cates pushed at this in her role as GBNews presenter when interviewing Kemi this week. She asked the Conservative leader who she thought could fill Starmer’s shoes, and predictably but effectively Kemi said “me”.

Right so we get, I even fully support, that aim. Kemi for PM and all that. But we’re not there yet. The mission seemed to be ‘Operation Remove Starmer’ not Operation General Election. Indeed, Kemi herself has said some while back that Labour are not under any obligation to call an election until 2029 and with as majority their size they won’t. Angela Rayner made much of the fact that every new Conservative Prime Minister should have sought a fresh mandate from the people. She’d be reminded of that if she won any race.

Right now it will be a Labour somebody who’d replace Starmer.  The Reign of Rayner? Downing Streeting? back on the Milibandwagon? Engineering the destabilising impact on the country of a leadership contest mid term, a process the Conservatives now know is downright toxic to voters and have for that reason avoided having their own repeat, might look a little off. Quite a lot off actually.

And whilst they continue to crow – and I don’t remotely blame them – about poll leads, and uniparties, and bang on about Bangor, Reform, even with Farage performatively putting his party on an ‘election war footing’ are no more ready than the Conservatives to actually fight one right now. And our poll numbers still show, that an increasingly popular Kemi can’t save the Conservative brand alone.

Take candidate selection processes as just one example of why Reform and the Conservatives are not ready yet. Which is fine because it’s three years away, right?

Unless the cautious careful  planning, the deep dives into policy to build a platform for government are suddenly to be rushed forward to bring down a PM, which might in short order in a number of scenarios eventually bring down a Government.

Besides there are advantages of having a deeply unpopular and mortally wounded and weakened individual struggling on in the top job. Maybe that’s the plan. I can see that.It’s a bit party before country, but then Starmer is the hypocritical expert there.

Maybe I’m instinctively too cautious, maybe I lack the killer instinct, happier with the logic of phased  well thought out plan over four years to change, learn tough lessons, acknowledge mistakes, offer a consistent message to voters over years, and develop the language, policy and mindset to tackle the challenges the country faces, which no party, including our own, has yet demonstrated that it truly understands when it comes to the scale of the the remedies required – all of which will be bad medicine to the voters.

Credible radical unpopularism is, if you’ll forgive me, a bastard to sell on doorsteps.

I await PMQs with interest today. It will be hard to get the audible gasp of last week’s skewering. The fact at the PM is at the despatch box at all shows that so far, the when, if perhaps not the if, is still not fixed.

But if it is to be ‘Keir today, gone tomorrow’ I just wonder if we need to be careful what we wish for.