LABOUR Rejects STARMER’S Line — The COUP GROWS

Right, so Keir Starmer is standing in the middle of his own polling collapse pretending the ground hasn’t already slipped, talking about loyalty while the Parliamentary Labour Party trades leadership chatter like it’s office gossip. The numbers are dire. The favourability is stuck in the basement. More than half the country thinks he should resign. And yet Starmer still acts like the problem is disobedience rather than the charts in front of him. You can hear the strain in every denial. You can feel No.10 tightening every time another minister tries to distance themselves. The budget is coming. The local elections are coming. The party can see what those two collisions will do. The public, regardless of their personal politics all have a reason to dislike Starmer for one reason or another and has already walked away. The PLP is only now admitting they might have to follow, but when so many of them are little more than Starmer clones themselves, that not too much of a surprise. It isn’t drama. It’s the end-phase. Starmer is finished, not if, but when but for Labour it makes no difference, because there is no saviour coming to rescue them no matter when he goes.
Right, so the Prime Minister is standing in the ruins of his own authority, pretending the ground underneath him hasn’t already shifted, pretending the public haven’t already turned, pretending the party hasn’t already started gaming out the timetable of his exit. The coup chatter is not gossip any more. It is the sound of a premiership losing structural integrity. It is the noise a political machine makes when the person at the centre stops holding its weight. You can hear it in the way journalists have been chuntering about it. You can hear it in the tone of the interviews. You can hear it in the tight language coming out of No.10. He talks about loyalty. He talks about discipline. He talks about fighting anyone who challenges him. He talks like a man who still thinks the title protects him. It doesn’t. Titles don’t stop a collapse. Numbers do, and his numbers are gone.
The polling has been telling the story for months. The approval charts have flattened into a single downward line. The approval charts are buried. The unfavourable numbers keep rising. His net rating has crashed past the point where leaders normally start packing up. Most of the country now thinks he should step down. The graph tells the story before anyone else opens their mouth. A Prime Minister not even two years into a landslide term polling worse than Theresa May in her end-phase and Boris Johnson in his scandal phase. You don’t get numbers like that by accident. You get them when a public stops listening. You get them when a leader stops connecting. You get them when a government loses the plot so completely it cannot say what it stands for beyond a handful of worn-out talking points.
The PLP has been following those numbers like a weather chart. They know what comes next. They know a bad budget is coming because the pre-briefings have already softened the ground. Global headwinds. Inherited problems. Fiscal realities. Tough decisions. Every one of those phrases is a sandbag placed in front of a breach. The Treasury knows the budget is going to hit badly. No.10 knows the budget is going to hit badly. The markets will feel the tremor. The press will smell the weakness. The public will see and no doubt feel the squeeze. And the MPs will have to stand in front of cameras and tell their constituents that everything is fine while the numbers behind them say the opposite.
You can see the timing forming. MPs don’t move on principle, especially this bunch of pre-approved Starmerroids. They move on survival. They move when the threat becomes personal. They move when they know they cannot win an election standing next to the same leader who is dragging their seats into danger. Things are already bad, but a bad budget will accelerate that countdown. The local elections deliver the verdict too. They aren’t too far away and look set to be historically bad for Labour. Councillors fall. Activists stay home. Voters stay cold. And MPs look at the results and see their futures printed in black and white. That’s when a party starts to fracture. That’s when backbenchers start to write statements. That’s when shadow ministers start making calls. That’s when the men in grey suits start whispering about unity for the cameras and removal for the whip’s office.
Starmer can feel some of this, assuming he feels at all. He cannot admit it, but he can feel it. You see it in the way he has denied, via his spox of attacking his own Cabinet. You see it in the way he swears he will fight anybody who challenges him. That is not the tone of a leader in control. That is the tone of a leader trying to appear in control because the alternative would expose the truth. Power doesn’t need to be declared. Power is either there or it isn’t. The moment you need to say you’ll fight is the moment everyone knows you’ve already lost the fight. The language comes late. The denial comes late. The defiance comes late. It always comes late.
Inside the party you can feel the fear moving in short bursts. MPs who defended him six months ago no longer raise their voices. MPs who liked his message six months ago now talk about drift. MPs who backed him because he was safe now talk about danger. The discipline is fraying. The tone is shifting. It starts in private groups. It moves into corridor whispers. It moves into briefing rooms. It moves into the lobby. Then it moves onto the front pages. This is how a coup atmosphere hardens. It doesn’t arrive in a moment. It accumulates. It stacks. It becomes the new normal.
And in the middle of this, you get the name Wes Streeting floating around like some kind of predetermined answer to a question nobody asked sincerely. A question nobody in their right mind wants as the answer to anything except perhaps is he going too? The press love him because he fills a gap. He is ambitious enough to take the oxygen. Visible enough to be recognisable. Sharp enough to brief against. Hungry enough to talk to the right journalists. But ambition is not the same as support. Visibility is not the same as legitimacy. The truth is he is detested across the Labour spectrum. Not because of his ideology. Because of his personality. Because of his manner. Because of the way he steps forward when the cameras are on and sideways when the blame is handed out. The left hates him for his NHS stance. The soft-left hate him for his opportunism. The right hate him for his ambition. The rest just don’t trust him. He is the archetype of the politician produced by te same machine that produced Starmer. A manager in a suit. A triangulator in a soundbite. A profile without a base. A guy who has never worked a proper job in his life because politics and his ambition within it has been his everything.
Streeting is useful in one way. His existence proves the hollowness of the Labour party today. The fact that he is the first name journalists reach for tells you everything about the quality of the bench. A party that purged its left. A party that sidelined its soft-left. A party that elevated loyalty over talent. A party that selected MPs for obedience rather than political instincts. Of course there’s no successor. Starmer engineered it that way. He didn’t want rivals. He didn’t want a bench of leaders. He wanted a bench of deputies. A hierarchy that pointed inward rather than outward. A structure that could only operate with him at the centre. When the centre collapses, the structure collapses with it.
But then some, particularly amongst journalists who raise another name repeatedly. Andy Burnham, the media fantasy candidate, invoked whenever journalists need a character who looks and sounds like a politician rather than a spreadsheet. The public like him. The journalists like him. The PLP does not. The rulebook does not. The hierarchy does not. Burnham cannot run without being an MP. That requires a seat, a by-election, NEC approval, a compliant CLP, and a PLP willing to allow a popular - these days outsider - back into their house. They will not. They never do. They want loyalty. They want predictability. That is why one is floated as fantasy and the other as threat.
All of this sits on top of a deeper problem though. Starmer didn’t just centralise power. He didn’t just purge opponents. He didn’t just set narrow boundaries. He didn’t just pick MPs for steadiness. He hollowed the party out. He turned it into a management board. A place where decisions are signed, not made. A place where politics is treated like admin. A place where the only people who rise are those who pose no risk to the leader. And when you do that long enough, when you build a whole government on that foundation, you end up with a Cabinet full of people the public cannot name, a PLP full of people who cannot lead, and a government with no ideological centre, no emotional connection, no strategic spine, and no capacity to respond to crisis beyond saying the words “responsible” and “grown up”.
The next test is the budget. Everyone knows it. Even the government knows it. You can feel the pre-emptive framing. You can feel the Treasury softening before the blow, Rachel Reeves getting her excuses in early. When a government is confident, it sells a budget as opportunity. When a government is weak, it sells it as necessity. Starmer’s government is very much in the necessity phase. Warning people about difficulty. Preparing people for anger. Bracing for numbers. When a leader prepares the ground this heavily, they know the impact will be severe. And if the impact is severe, Starmer will look to Reeves. No Prime Minister lets a bad budget sit without a shield. No Prime Minister walks into pressure without a fall person. Reeves is loyal, but loyalty does not protect you when the leader steps back and the party steps forward. He may sack her. He may not. The pressure will push him towards it. The logic will push him towards it. The politics will push him towards it. It will not save him. It would only confirm what the country already sees.
And then the local elections will come afterwards in May. For me, that’s when I think the knives will come. A bad budget wounds you. Bad local elections finish you. Councillors fall. Constituencies shift. Volunteers go silent. Doorstep anger gets louder. The charts drop again. The PLP will read those results like death notices. They talk in coded terms. They talk about unity. They talk about discipline. They talk about renewal. They talk about review. Everyone knows what the words mean. Everyone knows what comes next. When your councillors lose, your MPs panic. When your MPs panic, your leader falls.
Through all this, Starmer keeps talking about loyalty though. He’s supposed to be running the country, but every time loyalty comes up, it should serve as a reminder that its run for his sake. His Labour Party. Keeps talking about order. Keeps talking about responsibility. Keeps talking as if the problem is disobedience rather than collapse. Leaders always do this when the end starts forming behind them. They think the problem is morale. They think the problem is messaging. They think the problem is factions. The problem is numbers. Always numbers. And he no longer has any.
This is what a slow-motion political implosion looks like. A leader who cannot read the room. A party that cannot find a successor. A Cabinet that cannot carry weight. A project that cannot generate trust. A government that cannot turn the tide. A public that cannot connect with the message because the messenger is lousy and nobody likes what he has to say. You can watch the damage stack in real time. Poll after poll. Leak after leak. Briefing after briefing. Each piece small on its own. Each piece part of a larger structure that no longer holds.
Starmer can delay the timing. He cannot delay the direction. The budget will harden the suspicion. The elections will harden the verdict. The PLP will move. They always move when the public withdraws consent. The collapse is not sudden. It is procedural. It is mechanical. It is the machine doing what it does when the centre stops holding.
Starmer is finished, but as in all things in his political career, he can’t see it coming and will determinedly limp on at all of our expense for as long as he possibly can. His eventual replacement though is guaranteed to be no better.
Whilst we all brace for that budget to force us to tighten our belts once again though, Starmer has decided to blow a billion quid on an all new nuclear capable asset just to please Donald Trump. Maybe Donnie will give him some attention if he throws more our money at him for something we really do not need when we’re already saddled with the expense of Trident, so get all the details of that story here.
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