It was an evening to remember at London’s Grosvenor Park Hotel — a fundraiser for glioblastoma, the brain cancer that killed former Labour general secretary Margaret McDonagh and cabinet minister Tessa Jowell. Most of the cabinet, Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and much of old Team Blair were in the room. Table by table, Labour factions eyed one another. Everyone, one New Statesman reporter noted, behaved well. Streeting gave the main speech, about cancer. Starmer moved through the room, relaxed, cracking jokes at his own expense. Yet everywhere, people were discussing the near inevitability of a leadership change.
The prime minister, the same report says, “seems to lack the basic social skills necessary for survival”. I know of two senior people fired recently, both abruptly sacked by phone — and not by Starmer. In one case, the person asked whether they could speak to the PM and was told: “That’s not an option.” This treatment, the reporter writes, has caused many senior Labour people to become hostile. Starmer has said and done some good things in the past fortnight, “but, honestly, this feels over already”.
“Starmer faces leadership doubts amid resignations and backlash over new digital censorship rules for under-16s.”
Meanwhile, Kemi Badenoch is seen as doing better, even by Conservative opponents. Her response to Henry Nowak’s murder — “I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter, I don’t want to hear about ‘white lives matter’, everybody matters” — is described as mainstream conservatism, a dividing line with Reform. She is reaching out to previous Tory leaders, particularly David Cameron, a change credited to her new parliamentary private secretary, Salisbury MP John Glen.
Starmer, for his part, has pried the door to full government digital censorship further open this week. He announced that digital platforms have a three-month period in which to implement measures preventing under-16s from taking or sending or receiving nude photos. Apple and Google have some age-verification features, but these don’t work across everything. The Government has threatened to legislate if the measures are not made more robust. Further restrictions are expected next week, reportedly addressing infinite scroll, “harmful” websites, and digital content algorithms. Conservative MP Laura Trott immediately declared this wouldn’t be enough censorship.
The national mood remains bleak, the New Statesman reports — but adds that Bermondsey, where the author will be lounging this summer, “is better than ever”.