Starmer faces his unhappy backbenchers
Photo by Henry Nicholls -Monday's meeting could have gone very differently for Keir Starmer. The Prime Minister, flanked by the Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was met with rapturous applause as he entered the stuffy committee room where more than 200 Labour MPs awaited him. This rousing welcome is pretty standard for a prime minister (particularly for one only nine months into the job). Privately, however, the party's backbenches are, as one MP put it to me 'almost universally pissed off'.
The Prime Minister had spent much of the day parading the UK's new EU-reset deal, but he used his speech to the PLP to take aim at Reform. He told gathered MPs: 'the Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power.' It makes sense in the wake of the local elections, in which Reform won control of 10 councils. If a general election were held today, the renegade party would likely take a sizeable chunk out of Labour's numbers. Starmer described Nigel Farageas a 'state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist, without a single patriotic bone in his body.'
According to insiders, however, Starmer's rallying cry did not have the galvanising effect he might have hoped for. One MP told me that compared to July last year – in which members of the 2024 intake were 'brimming with enthusiasm' – the mood is 'very subdued'. Among the primary concerns are recent government announcements on welfare cuts and Starmer's 'island of strangers' immigration speech last week. Last year's Winter Fuel Payment cut, an issue which featured heavily on the doorstep during the locals, continues to haunt Starmer's administration too.
During the meeting, the Prime Minister took 26 questions, of which I am told he answered three. One Lancashire MP pointed out that the party is on its knees in the county after the locals (Reform now control Lancashire County Council). There is little they can do to coax voters back from Reform, and so asked why the party doesn't stick to its traditional values anyway. Diane Abbott used the meeting to take direct aim at Starmer's immigration white paper in a speech which one MP described as a 'scolding' (although another tells me privately that she went on for too long and eventually lost the room). Many MPs used their questions to ask Starmer directly – what do you stand for?
Though criticism from the left of the party following last week's speech was inevitable (particularly those elected pre-2024), it is becoming increasingly clear that even newbie Starmer loyalists are feeling disaffected (a few tell me they didn't even go to Monday's meeting). It is a surprise, then, that this gathering of the PLP was not a more fractious affair. But unless something is done to mend the fractures, Starmer's party will only grow unhappier.
[See more: Labour's Europe deal is a trap for Brexiteers]
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