John Rees on why the bell is tolling for the prime minister

Prime Minister Keir Starmer is battling to stabilise his government after a week of disasters. Only days after he launched ‘phase 2’ of the Labour government, meant to overcome the plummeting approval ratings that he is suffering after just a year in power, Starmer lost his deputy prime minister and deputy leader of the Labour Party, Angela Rayner, over a property-tax scandal.

And then, a few days after that, Starmer had to sack his own personal nominee as US ambassador, Peter Mandelson, after embarrassingly personal and supportive emails between Mandelson and the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein appeared in the press. The security services have said that they advised against appointing Mandelson, depositing the blame squarely on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street.

But that’s not the end of it. The Labour Party deputy leadership election triggered by Angela Rayner’s departure has narrowed down to two candidates, Bridget Phillipson and Lucy Powell. The latter Starmer recently sacked from government and the former has been briefed against by Downing Street sources. By electing one of them as deputy leader, Labour MPs are making their dissatisfaction clear to Starmer.

Meanwhile Starmer is being pictured welcoming Israeli President Isaac Herzog this week and US President Donald Trump next week, neither of whom are remotely popular with Labour voters.

And there’s more. Away from the headlines about Rayner and Mandelson, another crisis is brewing, a crisis that may have even more serious long-term consequences for Starmer’s ability to survive. The TUC meeting at its annual conference in Brighton registered increasing frustration with the government.

The unions passed a ‘wages not weapons’ motion attacking the massive hike in arms spending which is central to Starmer’s rearmament programme. The most conservative union leaders, including those most supportive of Starmer, saw the previous year’s motion in support of arms spending overturned by an alliance of the radical union leaders most critical of Starmer.

Union leaders were already angered at the loss of Angela Rayner because she had piloted the new employment legislation, which reformed some of the most anti-union parts of employment law. Rayner had already watered the bill down but it is now likely to be made even weaker than it already was.

The breach with the unions is likely to be made even wider when Iron Chancellor Rachel Reeves announces her autumn budget. Starmer’s initial austerity programme sought to tread relatively lightly on the main body of working people while making punitive attacks on the weakest sections of society, the old and the sick. However, the revolt against the cuts in winter fuel payments and Personal Independence Payments produced a flurry of U-turns.

Now Reeves’ second attempt at austerity will likely involve generalised tax increases justified by the need to increase arms spending. Union reaction is unlikely to be positive. Meanwhile, the cost-of-living crisis continues and unemployment is rising. Electorally, Starmer is now challenged on the right by Reform and on the left by resurgent Greens under the radical leadership of Zack Polanski and by the emerging threat of the new left party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.

It all adds up to the fact that Starmer and his political guru, Morgan McSweeney, are running out of road. On the right, health minister Wes Streeting is positioning himself as successor, and on the centre-left, Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is doing the same thing.

Meanwhile, the bookies have the probability that Starmer will be gone next year or the year after at over 50%. They may well be right.