Starmer must dismantle Labour’s boys’ club – or accept he cannot lead

If the day started with the big question being whether the departure of Morgan McSweeney has cleared the air with the Labour MPs gathering at a parliamentary party meeting tonight, the focus has now moved from the matter of when (not if) Keir Starmer will hand over the leadership, to whether it is going to be prised from his hands. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s direct call to dump Starmer was like a bruise being repeatedly punched.

“There have been too many mistakes ... too much has happened,” said Sarwar, in a hammer blow to his “friend”. “No one knows or hears the good things – they are being drowned out. That is why it cannot continue.” His insistence that Starmer is “a decent man” now sounds like a lament – and the nice way of telling a prime minister to go.

Sarwar’s solemn denunciation feels much like the first northern brick tumbling from the wall of an unsteady internal coalition, not least given that the Scottish party leader owes his own perch in Scottish politics to Starmer’s backing. Resignations, as we know from recent years of Tory turmoil, are contagious. It might not be long before the leadership in Wales follows suit, at which point the opposition becomes geographical as well as ideological.

Cabinet support for Starmer is the blocking manoeuvre. They are still broadly aligned behind him, no matter how gritted their teeth – because the alternative is a chaotic rout, a very likely messy leadership contest, and an early election benefiting Reform. Even Angela Rayner has given him her backing.

The shock factor here, however, is how quickly much of the Starmerite superstructure has collapsed.

Tim Allan’s departure as communications chief – punctuated by a WhatsApp profile image that read “Out of office, gone golfing” – is symptomatic of an entire operation in crisis. As flippant farewells go, it ranks alongside the ill-fated “Sorry, there’s no money” note left for the incoming Tories by a departing Treasury chief secretary, or David Cameron whistling to himself as he walked away from the lectern after tendering his resignation to the nation.

The abrupt manner of Allan’s departure makes clear that this was not a planned exit. True, he was a close member of the post-Blair inner circle, so might well worry about the near-full disclosure of messages from the so-called Mandelson files. But that risk would have been apparent for days.

Instead, something dramatic appears to have happened in his dealings with Starmer in the past 24 hours. Allan is a communications pro, and will surely be aware of the damage another resignation can cause to an embattled leader. Did he, as rumoured, want the chief of staff job – rather than the grind of communications – and find himself rebuffed? Is that why he turned?

Even Allan’s formal exit comments, referring to the need to “allow a new No 10 team to be built”, made no clear reference to whether the man he served – Starmer – should remain. If there is a lingering sense that Allan’s job was impossible, some of that was down to the paucity of material. For someone who had been trained on the old Tony Blair algorithm of political communications, adapting to the slower Starmer must have felt like encountering a very beta product.

Yet there is an awkward silence about the role of a largely male team making key decisions – including the Mandelson appointment – in full knowledge that the vetting process had raised Epstein’s conviction for sexually soliciting underage girls, with strong indications that the real extent of his crimes was far larger. Why, knowing this, was the warning ignored?

The charge that Starmerite Labour operates as a “boys’ club” has hung around from the start. But it is undeniable that the main drivers – those who were in positions of power when Peter Mandelson nudged his way through a network of strongly interconnected figures – were men.

The most senior operational women in the Starmer team have been the stalwart Jill Cuthbertson – a veteran of decades in No 10, but not a figure who drove key decisions – and Vidhya Alakeson, herself sidelined from a political director role in the autumn reshuffle. As McSweeney’s deputies, the two split responsibilities, with Cuthbertson focusing largely on logistics and operations. Now, following his exit, both have been elevated to the position of joint “acting” chiefs of staff.

Both are now back on the “glass cliff edge” – a shorthand for the tendency to appoint women only at times of peril or emergency, after the men have failed or left the scene.

On the back benches, the sense that No 10 has a tin ear for women’s voices is widespread – and especially so among female MPs, many of whom wonder if the PM is truly interested in what they think at all. It has also raised the spectre of Sue Gray, ousted by McSweeney in October 2024 after an uneven power battle. Gray, a career civil servant, was not especially suited to the chief of staff role – she also made unforced errors – but the messy manner of her dismissal left a sense of anxiety about the position of women at the heart of power.

Wisely, perhaps, the PM praised McSweeney’s election-winning legacy. He needs to limit the amount of bitterness on display to an aghast public. But that has not cured the instability – it has merely been the warm-up to the next bout of chaos.

There are many logical reasons why Labour should delay any transition for a couple of months, until the test of the May elections has passed. That, for now, appears to be what Starmer wants, and his cabinet – so far – will back. But for how long? That is a different question altogether, and so far, events have outrun the prime minister’s ability to control them.