Stasis

Starmer holds on. Government stands still.

Keir Starmer survived the week, just.

He now has a window to shore up before the Gorton and Denton by-election, scheduled for 26 February, and then local elections on 7 May.

These two moments are de facto votes of confidence: judgement days on the current administration and Starmer’s leadership.

Diane Abbott MP, who was stripped of the Labour whip, put it bluntly:

“I can’t see him lasting beyond May’s elections…because they’re going to be catastrophic elections. And I think the idea is let him stay in there and take responsibility.”

Starmer may fight it out till the spring, but between now and then, the focus remains on his effectiveness as leader - endangering the process of government.

Formal business continues. Ministers will still appear on the morning media round. PMQs will go ahead. But meaningful government stalls as attention turns inward.

Whatever you think of ex-Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg, his monologues published on YouTube provide an insight into the situation Starmer finds himself in. He lived it twice, with testimony from inside the bunker as Boris Johnson and Liz Truss navigated crises that would result in the end of their time as prime ministers.

“I had a ringside view of what was happening and the same thing is playing out now,” said Rees-Mogg in a video this week. “The formal things happen, but the business of government stops. I mean the evolving of policy, the decision making, the ability to push things through. This stops.”

In a co-ordinated response to the Anas Sarwar press conference and pressure on Starmer to resign, each member of the cabinet came out in defence of the prime minister. The damage had already been done though. As Rees-Mogg explains:

“You look at what is going to happen and recognise that actually, it’s not. If you’ve got a big policy initiative that you would like to push forward, you know that in reality things are about to change and therefore however strongly you believe in it, it won’t happen with the leader that you’ve got.”

“You’ve got the distraction, you’ve got the recognition in your own heart that you’re not going to do these things…And you’ve got the civil service effectively downing tools, not necessarily malevolently, but recognising that it simply isn’t going to happen.”

We should take Rees-Mogg’s words with a hefty pinch of salt. We are a long way off the chaos seen towards the end of Boris Johnson’s tenure, where at its height 62 government and party figures resigned. Starmer still has a functioning cabinet.

This certainly hasn’t stopped those in senior Labour positions spending bandwidth warming up for a potential leadership battle.

Duplicity and political ruthlessness also described by Rees-Mogg:

“You have people who swear blind loyalty to the leader who you know perfectly well have been briefing against him to the newspapers or are working on a campaign to get somebody else elected.”

Starmer may be there as PM to feel the warmth of the May Day sunshine. The point isn’t whether he goes. The fact that we’re even discussing this reveals the freeze already underway. As this week shows, the government is easily put off course while waiting for a verdict on its leader.

I wrote in January how government policy globally was becoming desperately reactive, with presidents and prime ministers lurching to prevent collapse rather than building coherent strategy.

The UK now finds itself further along this trajectory: velocity → reactivity → paralysis.

We can’t afford months of paralysis. The accumulated cost is too high. Economic challenges in particular must be tackled now, not in a quarter’s time: the difference between a business investing and hiring, or pausing plans.

With just 0.1% GDP growth eked out in Q4 2025, the margin is narrow. Any drift could be enough to turn weak positive growth into contraction.

Imagine your roof is leaking. Water pouring in. Instead of fixing it, you think: I’ll wait for it to stop raining. Spring will be here soon.

In the meantime, your home and belongings are ruined.

I’d say look at the forecast, but as we all know, the rain isn’t stopping any time soon.

The only worse outcome than having the “wrong person lead” is months of nothing. The country doesn’t have the luxury of waiting. Stasis, in the hope of a sunnier day.

Written by Lewis Thomas