Rosie Duffield never dreamed, she insists, that she would end up leaving the Labour party. And how lucky for her, in some ways, if she genuinely didn’t see this near inevitable breach coming; not even, presumably, after she accused Keir Starmer dramatically in June of “gaslighting” her like an abusive partner. For who could have stood in good conscience on a Labour ticket, in the year of a widely predicted Labour landslide, if they had suspected that barely three months after winning they’d be off? “Sometimes I feel completely independent,” she told an interviewer in June. But if she’d guessed that by September she would be sitting as one, then surely the only honourable action would have been to fight (and almost certainly lose) her Canterbury seat as an independent candidate. Lucky for Duffield, then, that she seemingly realised only after securing another term in parliament that it was time to go.
But Starmer has arguably been lucky too. Her eye-wateringly savage resignation letter – accusing him of presiding over “sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice … off the scale”, as well as the “cruel and unnecessary” means testing of winter fuel payments – could have done far more damage had it come from someone less isolated within the party. On the left, many who share her doubts about welfare reform still don’t want to hear it from the MP famous for liking a tweet that stated only women can have a cervix. (Though Duffield swears she isn’t quitting over it, three years of being ostracised and attacked for her gender critical views, only to see Starmer eventually come around to something closer to her position, have clearly left their mark).
Starmer loyalists, meanwhile, may be reluctant to take lectures on conduct in public office from someone forced to quit the frontbench for breaching lockdown rules to meet her boyfriend. Still others will be exasperated with her for choosing this precise moment – just when the spotlight was shifting to Boris Johnson being resolutely not sorry about Partygate – to drag up the prime minister’s free Taylor Swift tickets again. For all these reasons and more, even those MPs who share some of her concerns would mostly rather lobby behind the scenes for concessions in the budget, or for someone to come in and knock a few heads together in No 10. But Starmer would be wise to treat this as a dry run for tougher times, all the same.
For Duffield isn’t alone in complaining that Starmer’s inner circle is too blokey (though Sue Gray helped redress the balance, at least until she too got briefed against) or thinking the juxtaposition of benefit cuts with the Labour donor Lord Alli’s largesse looks bad, regardless of either’s individual merits. The resentments noted in her letter about favoured people being promoted over the heads of longstanding MPs, or Starmer seeming aloof from backbenchers, are versions of time-honoured gripes aimed at almost all prime ministers, but they’re likely to grate more over time. Even hairline cracks can widen under the kind of pressure this government will face as it heads into an autumn of exceptionally tough decisions.
None of this is unprecedented, still less terminal. In what’s now fondly remembered as his honeymoon period, Tony Blair endured a painful revolt over lone parent benefit cuts and a much more serious donor scandal over the Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone’s gifts to Labour. Motorsport’s exemption from a ban on tobacco sponsorship – a decision that Blair’s government always denied was influenced by Ecclestone’s donation – provided the perceived quid pro quo that Lord Alli’s donations palpably lack. What separates successful leaders from the rest isn’t the magical ability to avoid trouble, but the ability to learn and adapt when it happens.
Nobody in Downing Street needs telling that there are gaps in their operation that need filling urgently, mostly on the civil service side. But there are also political skills in need of fine tuning. One is the ability, when under fire, to get everything out in the open fast – and then come out fighting. Starmer’s freebies are almost pathetically unscandalous compared with Boris Johnson’s secretive efforts to get donors to fund his wallpaper or his nanny, which shocked even Dominic Cummings. But it’s the daily drip, drip of endless petty revelations, combined with often visible irritation at being challenged over them, that is toxic.
Another lesson to be learned is that it’s not enough to stick rigidly to the rules when the rules themselves look outdated. MPs have enjoyed corporate jollies to Wimbledon or Lords for decades without anyone complaining much, while political donors have long picked up the tab for holidays or clothes. But the public mood has hardened and a government that came in promising sober servitude needs now to review the parliamentary rules, setting boundaries on hospitality and gifts more in keeping with professions like teaching or medicine. From a position of greater strength, Starmer could then ask tougher questions about whether the public really want to drive donor cash out of politics, if the alternative is taxpayers stumping up for state-funded political parties instead.
But the final missing piece of the jigsaw is something Team Starmer never quite mastered in opposition, which is knowing when to make the call, send the note or arrange the friendly private tap on the shoulder that makes backbenchers – no matter how difficult, or downright exasperating – feel someone cares, and earns some loyalty in return. Judging by the storms that lie ahead, morale is going to matter more, not less, before the year is out.
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Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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