“Bloody shambles”, a senior minister sighs. “Real question marks over his judgement.” “Still a shitshow”, another texts simply, adding: “Terminal inability to make decisions”.
Those blunt verdicts frame Sir Keir Starmer’s march into recess: a leader who has steadied himself enough to stave off immediate crisis, but whose authority and judgement are still being openly questioned as the party looks ahead to a decisive spring.
Sir Keir has been on something of a charm offensive, hosting Scottish and Welsh colleagues at Chequers in a bid to reknit frayed loyalties.
“My God, he’s actually got a sense of humour – why don’t we ever see that side?” one backbencher remarked afterwards.
MPs I speak to are, broadly, in a better mood than they were 10 days ago. Even so, ministers concede the road ahead remains uncertain.
“I don’t know,” one says eventually when I ask whether the prime minister will survive beyond May.
The “only way” of replacing him “without too much pain”, another minister suggests, would be if Starmer chose to stand down himself. “At some point there’s only so much one man can take.” The minister would not say whether that would be their preferred outcome.
One backbencher, not a usual critic, puts Starmer’s chances of surviving past May at 50 per cent.
For now, the short-term outcome is continuity rather than catastrophe. One MP describes Monday’s events as a “remarkable” turnaround: “Shockingly, it seems like we’ve turned a corner.”
But, as one minister warns, “the…
