‘Never Here' Keir's lack of face-time whips up biggest rebellion of his career

Telegraph

13 hours ago

MPs and their staff gathered on the House of Commons terrace on Thursday, brought together by cheap drinks, a splendid view of the Thames and a desire to shake off the drama of the week in Westminster.
Sir Keir Starmer, facing the biggest rebellion of his premiership, was nowhere to be seen.
'You don't see him on the terrace,' a minister said, reflecting a frustration among Labour MPs that so-called 'face time' with the Prime Minister has been seriously lacking since his election win last July.
'A lot of the MPs elected last year don't know him, they haven't met him, and they don't have a pre-existing relationship with him,' they said.
'That means they don't really have loyalty to him. He and his allies haven't reached out to build those relationships.'
Downing Street's obvious shortcomings in 'party management' were laid bare this week, when more than 120 Labour MPs signed an amendment that would kill off Sir Keir's welfare reforms.
Sources said No 10 staff were taken aback by the scale of the revolt, which threatens to force a government defeat on Tuesday.
It would be an embarrassing and troubling moment for Sir Keir, who has a majority of 156 seats and believed, until recently, that he did not need to spend time in Parliament hobnobbing with his colleagues.
Data show that he has voted just seven times in Parliament since last July – missing a vital opportunity to spend time in the division lobbies, talking to Labour MPs and hearing their concerns.
In their first year in office, the previous four Tory prime ministers each voted at least 22 times. Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Sir Keir's Labour predecessors, voted 13 times and 41 times in their first year, respectively.
This week's welfare rebels say they are just as angry about the lack of care from Downing Street as they are about the Government's policy – to reduce the number of people who can claim disability and sickness benefits. The frustration with Sir Keir's lack of engagement is making the rebellion even worse.
'He's a fundamentally unsociable person,' said one MP who plans to vote against the Government's bill next week. 'It wouldn't take a lot, even just a text now and then, to know that he cared.'
Defenders of Sir Keir say he has had an extraordinarily hectic first year in government, managing a long list of foreign trips that have seen him dubbed 'never here Keir'.
Those visits have paid dividends in the form of three trade deals, a leadership role in the 'coalition of the willing' and a friendship with Donald Trump.
But critics in the party say that Sir Keir must remember that his position in No10 is based on support among Labour MPs, not foreign leaders.
'It's been noticed and there's a lot of resentment in the party towards Keir, in that people don't feel seen, loved and heard,' said one Labour MP.
Veterans of party management in the Commons say that the prime minister's personal touch is crucial in maintaining a happy party – and winning votes.
Bob Blackman, the chairman of the Conservative Party's 1922 Committee of backbench MPs, said that the most important thing is for the prime minister to be available to backbenchers when they vote.
'Starmer has only voted seven times in the last year,' he said. 'When you're in the lobbies, you get the chance to say, 'Can I have a quick word, PM?', and you catch up.
'That's one of the ways that the PM can glad-hand people and let them let off some steam.
'If you're not in the Commons and the tearoom making yourself visible and available to backbenchers, then they feel estranged from the PM and get terribly frustrated.'
Mr Blackman served as the committee's executive secretary from 2012 to 2024, overseeing dozens of rebellions against Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss from Tory MPs.
He said that when the anger was rising among MPs, he would advise the chief whip that 'the PM needs to go into the tearoom after PMQs and have a bite to eat and a cup of tea'.
'That's quite important in the whole scheme of things, and to my knowledge Starmer doesn't do that at all,' he said.
Among Labour MPs, some of the blame has been placed on Claire Reynolds, Sir Keir's political secretary, who is in charge of maintaining good relations with backbenchers.
They point out that some Labour MPs have never even met the prime minister – a sign that she has not been doing her job properly.
Neil Duncan-Jordan, one of the Labour backbenchers to have signalled their opposition to the Government's benefit cuts, was asked by BBC Radio 5 Live's Matt Chorley if he had ever had any contact with Sir Keir.
'Never had a conversation with him'
'No,' he said. 'I think there's a handful of us. Obviously I've been in the chamber when he's been in, answering questions and so on and so forth, but I've never actually had a conversation with him.'
Sir Anthony Seldon, the political historian, said a hands-off approach to Parliament was becoming an increasingly common phenomenon among British prime ministers.
'The trend is for prime ministers to do it less and less, and it is because the job has become more demanding, because Parliament is no longer the theatre that it was,' he said.
He said the modern prime minister's time is taken up with 'overseas duties and dealing with the media', making Parliament more 'marginal' to Downing Street.
But he warned: 'At the end of the day, prime ministers don't fall because they lose the support of The Telegraph or the BBC, or GB News. They fall because they lose support of Parliament.'
One notable exception to that rule is Sir Keir's political hero, Sir Tony, who stood down after 10 years in power to make way for Mr Brown.
Sir Tony also had little interest in attending parliamentary debates and votes, and told MPs that at the end of his last Prime Minister's Questions in June 2007.
'I have never pretended to be a great House of Commons man, but I pay the House the greatest compliment I can by saying that, from first to last, I never stopped fearing it,' he said.