Number 10, OGL 3, via Wikimedia Commons
The commentariat believe that the political tectonic plates are moving. Certainly, Sir Keir Starmer seems beleaguered, unhappy and so far away from control that historians will marvel that the largest parliamentary majority in Labour history has unravelled so far and so fast. Rayner and Mandelson in successive weeks have consigned Phase 2 to Davy Jones’ locker. The economy is heading south alarmingly. Friends say that Sir Keir never understood politics; that is clear. However, to general surprise he seems not to understand Human Rights Laws even though he wrote a book on the subject. His struggles with the dinghies look to overwhelm him in the way that the real waves spare the dinghies themselves.
It was said that Andy Burnham, the self styled King of the North, was after the Crown but difficulties of getting back in at a by election in the present ferment cannot be underestimated nor can a campaign against him based on the saga of Stafford General Hospital, partly on his watch as Health Secretary be discounted. It was said that the deputy leadership campaign of Lucy Powell was a shadow for him but now a fresh face has appeared.
Step forward Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. He remained in post despite Sir Keir apparently asking him to move. This sums up our present Prime Minister’s general uselessness. Gladstone’s dictum was that the first quality needed in a Prime Minister was to be a good butcher. Sir Keir has failed on first encounter. His great Labour predecessor Clement Attlee would not have done so (“not up to it” was his characteristically laconic reply to a despairing Minister on complaining of the sack).Dan Hodges tweeted to the effect that Miliband was after unfinished business. John Rentoul in the Independent replied it was nonsense but a few hours later, presumably after consulting his sources, reversed course. So it appears that Ned has designs again on Downing Street. If he succeeds , then this will be a political “first”. It is common for a Prime Minister to be appointed mid Parliament. As far as I can see none have ever been appointed Prime Minister in this way for the first time who had previously lost a General Election as Leader of the Opposition. Modern party politics can usually be dated to Joseph Chamberlain’s organisation of the Liberal party as Lord Mayor of Birmingham and the Second Reform Act in the 1870s and since then nothing of this nature has ever happened. In my lifetime Ted Heath became Prime Minister in 1970 after losing in 1966, Harold Wilson became Prime Minister in 1974 after losing in 1970 but they gained office through the ballot box. None of the “appointee” Prime Ministers since the War (Eden, Macmillan, Home, Callaghan, Major, Brown, May, Johnson, Truss , Sunak- note the trend line in competence- what a depressing line up !) had a background of having previously led the Opposition into a General Election and having a raspberry blown by the electorate as a response.
What should we make of this ? The British constitution is a flexible institution but is this a step too far, at least in peacetime ? Miliband is undoubtedly a man on a mission. Sadly that mission is to take Britain back to the Stone Age with his Net Zero policies hobbling the economy with high energy prices, driving industry abroad. Ironically this country still has a few decades of its own natural gas and oil remaining, and no shortage of coal that could still be opencasted to profit. This ought to make this country the envy of “less happy lands” but we are not permitted to exploit them and build a secure and prosperous future for our people. No doubt this does not alarm a hereditary Marxist of East European extraction. He thinks that he will always be part of the nomklatura, even if, as appears likely on present trends, he will lose his Doncaster seat to Reform next time. But for the rest of us, a man who so casually knifes his brother in the back is likely to have scant regard for our welfare. If it does come to pass, Farage and Reform will hardly believe their luck. I don’t pretend to know whether it would be met with a cynical shrug of the shoulders or outrage by the population generally. There may be “interesting times” ahead.
© Bergen 2025
