What a wild week in Westminster!
I’ve spent every day on Downing Street outside No 10 at the heart of a political hurricane, as the catastrophic results from last week’s elections have sent the Labour Party into a collective nervous breakdown and open civil war.
As you’ll have seen on TV, the weather has mirrored the politics: rain, hail, wind, even thunder. With occasional bits of brightness.
The whole thing feels surreal. This is a party elected on a promise to “stop the chaos”, and the infighting of the Tories, who cycled through leaders.
They said they would restore calm, competent government.
But here we go again. We are almost certainly heading to our sixth Prime Minister in just seven years.
They say a week is a long time in politics. Wrong. This week, even an afternoon has felt like an age as things change at dizzying speed.
Take yesterday. At lunchtime, I was outside No 10 when Health Secretary Wes Streeting finally resigned, accompanied by an excoriating letter including the line: “Where we need vision we have a vacuum”.
But just a couple of hours later, as I sat in the comfort of our QE2 studio with Martin Daubney on his show, everything changed again.
The Mayor of Greater Manchester and “King of the North” Andy Burnham had finally found an MP (Josh Simons) to stand aside for him and trigger a by-election.
The stakes at the Makerfield by-election could not be higher. This is what a Reform win would really meanAnd being at Sir Keir Starmer’s “reset” speech on Monday morning feels like ancient history. I asked him if the working class were wrong to feel that Labour has abandoned them and that he doesn’t “get it”.
He didn’t answer the question remotely, instead launching into a rant about Nigel Farage and why “more Europe” is the answer.
As the Prime Minister and his wife, Victoria, stepped out of the famous black door to go to the King’s Speech on Wednesday, the rain suddenly turned to vicious hail.
Struggling to hang on to my massive GB News umbrella, it reminded me of Rishi Sunak making his resignation speech in the rain.
Downing Street is nearly always cold, but it felt Baltic two weeks from the supposed start of summer. Despite thermals, winter boots and a big coat, I was shaking with cold at times.
The sun that finally hit the door yesterday afternoon never made it across to where the wall of press were camped.
So where are we now?
With a Prime Minister in office but not in power.
We may see more resignations, and the whole thing could snowball again.
But at the risk of making a prediction which could be proved wrong before this newsletter even reaches you, I think it’s more likely now that MPs will wait to see what happens with Andy Burnham.
The sense I get, and from people right up to Cabinet Ministers, is that he is the only one the party can unite behind.
Polling suggests he’s the only one who would be more popular than the existing PM with the public (a low bar, admittedly), and so by far their best chance of having any hope against Reform at the next general election.
The stakes at the coming Makerfield by-election could not be higher. Though Burnham is popular in the North-West, current polling, without him standing, has the seat going to Reform and the local council seats went to them last week.
Nigel Farage has told GB News they will throw everything at it.
If Burnham wins, he’ll likely be the next Prime Minister and give Labour hope they can win again.
If Reform wins, it will not be just a disaster for Andy Burnham, but for Labour itself.