"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." That memorable line from a great journalist, name of Charles Dickens, could easily have applied to a trio of leading UK figures amid an ongoing political and media firestorm that has left their authority dangling by a gossamer thread.
Step forward then, Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Tim Davie. OK, you might not be facing so brutal a fate as the guillotine that confronted Dickens' hero Sydney Carton but the shadow of a different kind of axe potentially looms over you.
The Prime Minister
"We should have been celebrating our election victory anniversary in champagne, but it tasted more like hemlock," was how one normally loyalist senior Labour MP with a classical bent put it to me.
"Instead of a victory anniversary, what the bewildered public witnessed was yet another prime ministerial U-turn, a party at war with itself and a chancellor sobbing her heart out in the Commons at PMQs", briefed another.
"Put your money on Angela Rayner as prime minister within 18 months and Nigel Farage in Number 10 after the next election", was the message another hitherto Starmer-supportive MP emailed me. With no shortage of opportunist ammo after the welfare bill retreat, several right-wing titles — particularly the Mail — became obsessed with the notion of a Rayner premiership coup. Devoting several page leads and op-eds to the topic.
The opportunistic glee of Tory politicians and those right-wing papers over the government's woes was predictable enough, so it's the reaction of Labour's natural media allies that ought to have Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street running scared.
Just raise taxes!
Take for example, The New Statesman edition that followed Starmer's humiliating second round of major concessions to his welfare 'reform' rebels to avoid defeat on a flagship policy. With the 3-word front page headline the NS declared, 'JUST RAISE TAX!', the inside pages would have made unpalatable reading for both Starmer and Reeves and the PM's increasingly divisive chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.
The opening lines of Tom McTague's editor's note spoke volumes: "Another week and another crisis for Keir Starmer after another U-turn. It should not be like this, of course. He is one year into a five-year parliament with a working majority of 165. The Conservative Party is in free fall. Nigel Farage leads a party with just five MPs (*another one had to step down amid Sunday Times allegations of impropriety post publication). And yet something is clearly wrong in this government. The Parliamentary Labour Party is refusing to be led. Hostile briefings are everywhere. The chancellor is under attack; so too the prime minister's most influential adviser. Starmer himself appears remorseful, apologetic and unsure what to do, searching for a sense of mission and direction, assailed from all directions by the kind of advice no one wants."
Later in his editor's note, McTague sharply observes: "Without a clear direction, Starmer is being pulled in all directions. His friends urge him — in private and, it seems, in public, to ignore the Blairites, move left and abandon his hopes of recovering voters lost to Reform. A battle is now underway for Starmer's ear — and for the soul of this government."
Flick a few pages further on in the same edition and star columnist Andrew Marr might be on the receiving end of an unappreciated thank you from the Reform leader. Under a headline, 'Farage will likely be our next prime minister — and his party is preparing for power', Marr (no fan of Farage personally or Reform politically) warns: "The likely outcome of the next election is a Reform government. A recent pollster's deep dive into the views of 870,000 tactical voters, plus 1.1m who identify with the Tories but voted Reform, and then 1.68m pro-Farage, Reform-base voters, searched for a Tory route back to power and concluded...there isn't one."
Elsewhere in his double page essay, Marr writes: "A very senior City figure said to one of Reform's leaders last week; 'You know it's now yours to lose, don't you?"
Marr continued: "Something profound has changed in the political landscape of Britain. But Westminster piously averts its eyes from the bleeding-likely. Not the prime minister: Starmer has elevated Farage into the position of his main opponent. But that is still based on a gut assumption that in the end, 'they' will never elect him. This may prove a huge mistake. Internal party polling confirms that the toxicity of Farage is overrated, and falling. Labour is losing voters to its right but at a steady pace, and far fewer than it's losing to the left. So it is high time to look reality in the face and think about Reform not as a boats-obsessed irritant, but as a plausible party of government.
A Toby-jug populist no longer?
"The conversation begins with Farage, still regarded by his competitors as a Toby-jug caricature of a populist, pint in one hand, cigarette in the other — entertaining and dangerous but not a serious threat to them." But one of those who work closely with him tells me: "Nigel is a different Nigel. More reflective, more thoughtful, more determined than ever. I think he really believes he can be the prime minister in a way that he did not last year, and frankly, he feels the weight of that."
Significantly, as Marr flags up, a policy committee now reports directly to the party's board and the party is 'mopping up' private advice from Iain Duncan Smith's Centre for Social Justice, the Centre for Policy Studies, the Prosperity Institute and other assorted right-leaning think tanks. In addition, leading military, policing and economic experts are volunteering policy advice to Reform's new Millbank Tower HQ, former Cabinet Secretary Simon Case has suggested Reform should now be invited to pre-election briefings and several prominent KCs have been brought in to draft legislation for a planned Great Repeal Bill that would launch a Trump-style mass deportation programme.
In line with its front page, the New Statesman both acknowledges and recommends tax rises. Tax rises are, of course, inevitable as newspapers both left and right recognise in the wake of the welfare bill retreats and the U-turn on pensioners' Winter Fuel Allowance. The enough to make you weep questions for Starmer and his beleaguered chancellor are which ones come the Autumn Budget? Not least with the very real prospect making the front pages that scrapping the 2-child benefit cap may no longer be on the agenda and a mooted refusal to guarantee millions of children the legal right to special needs support in school have the potential to ignite backbench revolts on the scale of last week's welfare bill humiliation and further damagingly devalue both Starmer and Reeves authority. In addition, a headline-dominating pay rise showdown with striking BMA doctors looms dangerously on the horizon.
(*For some of us, it rekindles our argument that Labour didn't need to lock itself into an economic straitjacket via a manifesto pledging not to raise income tax or VAT to win an election a discredited Tory government was always destined to lose).
Should she go or should she stay?
If the New Statesman was tough reading for the prime minister, the Labour-supporting Observer wasn't much better. 'If Labour lacks a compelling story, the buck stops with Starmer, not his tearful neighbour,' the headline on chief political commentator Andrew Rawnsley's latest column (July 6th). "The prime minister has a big decision to make on Rachel Reeves' future, but it is the bond markets that may yet keep her at Number 11', the sub-heading. But Rawnsley, a veteran Labour insider, goes on to write: "The case for moving her is so easy to argue that one regularly hears it from the averagely vituperative Labour backbencher. There is only one change to the cabinet's personnel that might make a seriously consequential difference, for good or ill, to the government's direction and public perceptions of its performance. There is a big decision for Sir Keir to make and that is whether to keep Rachel Reeves at the Treasury or find himself a new chancellor."
Rawnsley also wrote: "In the eyes of her angry band of critics, Ms Reeves tops the list of those responsible for leaving the government shipping water in a sea of troubles... she made the horribly unpopular, since reversed, decision to remove the winter fuel payment from the majority of pensioners. She drove the attempt to cut welfare payments which culminated in humiliation on the floor of parliament. Worse for her authority for those in the know, the negotiations with the Labour rebels were primarily not conducted by her, but by Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and one senior figure to emerge from this stramash with her status enhanced." But, perhaps with those twitchy bond markets in mind, the final paragraph of Rawnsley's column captures Starmer's great dilemma. "Should she stay or should she go? If Rachel Reeves stays, there may be trouble. If she goes, it could be double."
An anniversary own goal
For some of us, the football-loving prime minister's disastrous anniversary week began with an arguable own goal via a profile and interview in the pro-Labour Observer (June 29) produced by his friend, former party adviser and authorised biographer Tom Baldwin (a relationship easily seized on by media critics and political enemies). Headlined on the front page, 'Regrets, I have a few...' it was a strange potpourri of mea culpa, apology, self-serving mitigation. Most noticeably, "Island of strangers wasn't right, I deeply regret using it," in reference to his big, controversial speech on migration. But for a prime minister to admit he hadn't read such a key speech before delivering it or spotted the Enoch Powell echoes (most of us spotted and reacted to that within seconds) both beggars belief and feeds into the escalating doubts over Keir Starmer's political instincts and with it, his prime ministerial credibility.
By the end of anniversary week, it was impossible even for left leaning papers and commentators (me included) not to reflect on the latest polls confirming the government and Starmer personally have the lowest ratings ever for a government after its first year in office.
As Andrew Marr's NS essay concluded: "The parliamentary dramas of this summer have been hard to tear our eyes away from. But beyond Westminster, a far bigger story continues to grow."
Undoubtedly true, and whether Keir Starmer can even survive as PM — whatever he decides about his chancellor's fate — without his authority irrevocably damaged will be firmly at the heart of it.
Rachel Reeves
If 'can Keir Starmer survive as PM', can Rachel Reeves survive as a chancellor is the more immediately burning question of this heatwave summer? In the short term, the answer appears to be 'yes', but there are those within Cabinet as well as on the government backbenches who think the answer should be 'no' and that the PM's own survival could ultimately depend on wielding the axe and replacing her.
For several days, the unprecedented sight of Reeves' painful, pale, tear-stained presence beside her boss at PMQs last week dominated front pages, news bulletins, ignited passionate debate among newspaper columnists, both female and male, and prompted long phone-in rows on shows like Nicky Campbell's BBC Radio 5 daily gig.
Inevitably, her harrowing appearance went viral on social media within seconds and ended up compounding the question marks over Keir Starmer's political instincts. When Kemi Badenoch seized on Reeves obvious distress and challenged the PM on whether she was about to be sacked, he didn't respond or offer any reassurance on his chancellor's future. Inevitably, too, Badenoch has come under fire and been accused of betraying the 'sisterhood' in some quarters but — for once — I defended on air her decision. So extraordinary was the live TV vision of the weeping chancellor that it would have been remiss of the opposition leader not to draw attention to it and pose a pertinent question.
Inevitably, too, it inspired a classic cover for the latest Private Eye, with the image of the crying chancellor seated beside an apparently oblivious Starmer at PMQs. The banner headline 'A WEEP IN POLITICS' with puns including 'Two-tear Keir' and 'U-turning on the waterworks'.
Prime ministerial blind spot
It beggared disbelief when Starmer subsequently claimed he hadn't been aware of Reeves' plight (despite Badenoch's intervention). Which, if true, would make him the only person in the commons who wasn't and question the efficacy of those much-mocked, very expensive freebie specs supplied by Labour donor Lord Alli. And the PM's political instinct deficit was displayed when — inevitably — his initial failure to deny Reeves could be sacked sparked a Truss-style market panic until Number 10 rushed out a denial and suggested she'll be chancellor for the rest of the parliament. Now, there's another potential U-turn looming or a hostage to electoral misfortune, take your pick?
Mystery still surrounds the reasons for Reeves' tears. An undisclosed 'personal matter' has been briefed out, along with an apparent short spat with Speaker Hoyle minutes before she entered the chamber. Neither of which totally convince. She more wore the look of someone who had spent a sleepless, tearful night tossing and turning after strongly arguing against the PM's major concession on the welfare bill the day before and facing the nightmare of where it leaves her 'fiscal rules' and her autumn budget (assuming she's still around to deliver it?). Not to mention her self-styled 'Iron Chancellor' persona looking distinctly rusty.
'Starmer and Reeves must change to survive' was the July 4th headline on the well-connected, Labour-supportive Patrick Maguire column in The Times. Wrote Maguire: "After a fortnight that has put the prime minister's authority through the shredder and a weeping chancellor through the wringer, it is just as easy to identify the four people who hold the uncertain fate of Labour as an effective governing force in this ugly new era of rule by backbenchers and bond markets." The four? Starmer, Reeves, McSweeney and Angela Rayner, argues Maguire. Rayner is pivotal, according to my sources. For it was she who — cannily without personal fanfare — brokered both sets of concessions that saved Starmer from defeat at the hands of his own mixed bag rebellion from the left, centre and right of the party. That said, my sources confirm a Daily Mail line about the growing policy tensions between the government's most powerful women, Rayner and Reeves. And, as another normally Starmer loyalist MP tells me: "Don't swallow Angela's interview denials about having ambitions to become prime minister. Take them with a beer-barrel size cellar of salt."
Back on the significant subject of the chancellor's tears, the reaction of female columnists and podcasters made for a fascinating mix. On their excellent Sky 'Electoral Dysfunction' podcast, Beth Rigby, Harriet Harman and Ruth Davidson were broadly sympathetic and questioned Badenoch's tactics in seizing on it so heavily. Ditto the Guardian's Amelia Gentleman who argued, "Cry Freedom...Rachel Reeves helped normalise women's tears at work" (July 5th).
While the Mail's front page (July 3rd) trailed Sarah Vine's column under, 'Rachel needed a hug. Instead Starmer sucked her dry to shore up his own position like the political vampire he is.'
Moir's no pity
By striking contrast, the next day's Mail (July 4th) promoted a searing Jan Moir column headlined, 'Rachel Reeves' tears put triple glazing on the glass ceiling. She made all women look weak...'
Moir's opening few paras set the tone: "Call me cold-hearted but no, I don't feel sorry for Rachel Reeves. Am I supposed to be awash in sororal sympathy for a 46-year-old woman in high office who wept in post this week? Count me out, sister. Not just because Rachel's tears appeared to be exclusively for herself. It is more that after everything she has done and all the fiscal harm she has caused, we are the ones who should be crying. Indeed, as the tears slalomed down Rachel's cheeks, I felt more like barking with mirthless laughter, not popping the corks on my own tear ducts in a moist show of solidarity."
For her part, the Guardian's brilliant acid queen, Marina Hyde, weighed in via her July 5th column with, "Well, British politics has served up another week of compellingly packaged action. Like Drive to Survive, but for clown cars. Leave it to 'no-drama Starmer to come up with the only thing weirder and more awful than watching the chancellor of the exchequer sob on the front bench — wheeling her out a mere 22 and a half hours later for an unscheduled appearance at a wellbeing centre(!) where Rachel Reeves had to get her happy face on and pose for selfies... Yes, imply some allies of Reeves, who are now suggesting that because the (debunked) possibility that the chancellor was crying about losing her job clearly spooked bond traders, she has actually emerged in a stronger position from the whole business. Again: really? Having to physically hug your boss to calm the markets doesn't look like a textbook power move."
A pro-Labour female PR exec friend called me to point out the professionally expert makeup job done on Reeves face to contrast it with her commons look when she was unexpectedly rolled out as the prime minister and health secretary announced the government's 10-year health reform plan and lauded her with gushing praise. She was made available for a few media questions in which she talked about "cracking on with the job". Quipped my PR friend: "Cracking on with the job? Cracking up were the words that sprang to my mind. It was clumsy PR to add her to the schedule, fooled very few people and only made Keir Starmer and his comms team look desperate, insensitive and rather daft."
At risk of 'labouring' the point, regular readers will recall how this column has repeatedly referenced Starmer and his team's lack of clear storytelling, narrative-building skills (in sharp contrast to those of the Blair team in its early years) being partly responsible for this government's woes. Even allowing for the fact Blair and co inherited a healthier economic climate and the wild west of cyberspace wasn't an omnipresent problem, the last few weeks graphically reaffirm the deepening comms / presentation crisis.
Last word goes to a (male) Labour minister who likes the chancellor personally: "How much stock can she put on the PM saying she'll be in office for the rest of the parliament? Very little is my guess. You wouldn't bet against her being sacked or shifted either before the budget or soon after if the prime minister thinks that helps his own precarious position. She's in a Mission Impossible situation after all the U-turns — whether or not you agree with them — and for her own mental state, I would like to see her step down. Her authority is shot and that's certainly not all down to her."
To cap it all, the high-profile backlash over the delays and compensation figures for victims of the Post Office and contaminated blood scandals is also hurting the PM and chancellor in the court of public and media opinion even though it's a mess they largely inherited.
Tim Davie
'This time it's personal... culture secretary has BBC's Teflon Tim in crosshairs'. So ran the headline in the Sunday Times with the paper declaring, 'The broadcasting of 'Death to the IDF' chants at Glastonbury is the latest in a string of scandals to put the director-general's future in doubt'.
Just two days earlier, BBC Chair Samir Shah — the only man with the power to sack DG Davie had declared the board had 'full confidence' in him. Announced Shah: "I'd like, first of all, to apologise to all our viewers and listeners and particularly the Jewish community for allowing the 'artist' Bob Vylan to express unconscionable antisemitic views live on the BBC.
"This was unquestionably an error of judgment. I was very pleased to note that as soon as this came to the notice of Tim Davie — who was on the Glastonbury site at the time visiting BBC staff — he took immediate action and instructed the team to withdraw the performance from on-demand coverage'.
Glasto fiasco pitches Nandy versus Davie
So a firm show of support or the equivalent of the football chairman who declares full confidence in the manager weeks or months before wielding the axe with a thank you statement and a generous payoff cheque? In truth, with so many investigations under way, Shah could hardly have done anything but express support for his DG at this stage.
But what was missing from the Shah support statement was any mention of Davie's personal involvement in deciding not to cut the live feed of Bob Vylan's performance, an element leaked to the Daily Telegraph and which has escalated the political and media fallout around the DG's future. (I was broadcasting on Times Radio when the Telegraph story dropped, changing the programme focus somewhat and the public phone-in response that followed.)
The 'Glasto Fiasco' as it's been dubbed has certainly split opinion among BBC staff about the DG who — lest we forget — is also the corporation's editor-in-chief. Tim Davie's supporters stress the 'impossible workload' attached to his role. Some have suggesting reintroducing the role of deputy director general filled by a figure with the editorial background and media 'smarts' Davie is said to lack. One rumour doing the rounds suggests the ever-rising star of Amol Rajan could be drafted in.
Following protests from the BBC's own Jewish staff and an accusation of 'antisemitism' by the chief rabbi over the Glastonbury furore, Davie has gone out of his way to meet and reassure them. But the political and media storm shows little sign of disappearing.
'BBC CHIEFS SHOULD FACE CHARGES OVER GLASTONBURY,' screamed the Daily Mail front page on June 30th and several other titles — not necessarily on the Right — made similar points. Police have already launched a 'hate speech' criminal probe into the behaviour of both Bob Vylan and the Irish rap act Kneecap at Glastonbury, the latter were already the subject of a decision by the BBC not to broadcast their appearance. Critical papers didn't hesitate to show that even a cursory Google check should have flashed a red-light warning about Bob Vylan's propensity for headline-hitting controversy.
"While Davie's focus should be on negotiations with the government over the royal charter, which determines the future governance of the corporation, he has instead spent the past week getting a kicking from the culture secretary," was how the Sunday Times depicted it.
Certainly, Nandy has made no secret inside and outside parliament of expressing her view that the BBC has a 'leadership problem' and on Saturday in an interview with sister title The Times, she pointedly declined to say she had confidence in Davie and the paper claimed she has privately described him as "not up to the job".
Unconfirmed rumours inside the DCMS also suggest Nandy's anger level was exacerbated by Davie allegedly not "fully levelling with her" about his involvement in the plug not being pulled immediately Bob Vylan's crowd-inciting IDF death chants began and why the performance was still available for another four hours. Sources close to the culture secretary stressed she first phoned the DG within minutes of the chants being broadcast but that she only became fully aware of Davie's role via the leaked Daily Telegraph story. If true, her anger isn't difficult to grasp.
Meanwhile, the news the BBC's music head, Lorna Clarke, and some of her team have 'stepped back' from their duties pending the internal investigations has sparked anger among some staff with one WhatsApp group speculating that a 'blame game' could be under way to protect more senior figures and arguing that Tim Davie should resign. The cross-party DCMS select committee is now also poised to hold its own inquiry and summon both the director general and the chairman to appear to face questioning.
Some Whitehall insiders also suggest Nandy is flexing her muscles after apparently seeing off rumours that Starmer was planning to sack her and even disband her department.
According to the Sunday Times, the culture secretary, who also made her views known to BBC Chair Shah, wants to use the charter renewal talks to make the BBC 'more accountable' and is seeking more powers to sack board members, including the director general. In return, the corporation could be granted a longer charter period to give it more stability 'instead of having its operations and even existence so regularly reviewed'.
The assumption among the BBC hierarchy that a Labour government would prove considerably more supportive than its Tory predecessors is starting to dissipate.
But the Sunday Times also focused on Tim Davie's 'bumpy ride' since becoming DG five years ago come September. Starting with the scandal he inherited around the Martin Bashir / Panorama / Princess Diana / Earl Spencer case, there have been another 10 controversies "significant enough to hurt the reputation of the corporation. Half of those concerned allegations of inappropriate — and in some cases illegal sexual behaviour by staff or former employees, including criminality by the former news anchor Huw Edwards," flagged up the ST's reporting team, Media Editor Rosamund Urwin and Political Editor Caroline Wheeler.
Within days the BBC was at the centre of fresh newspaper and broadcast headlines over the sacking of the MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace, with fresh criticism of its handling of the scandal. It erupted as Banijay, the production company that produces the show for the corporation issued its own investigation report and the BBC acknowledged it was looking into 50 fresh sexual misconduct allegations against the so-called 'Cheeky Chappie' star. In turn, Wallace launched a ranting public attack on the BBC itself.
It all plays into the longstanding question: Why is the BBC's PR operation so bad at handling its own scandals and controversies? An upcoming new book on the Bashir / Panorama affair is set to add to the BBC's reputational headaches.
While two Gaza-related documentaries — one the BBC did screen and one it didn't — have split opinion among many senior BBC journalists. A report into "serious flaws" over the BBC's failure to establish the easily checkable info that the child narrator of a documentary about the plight of children in Gaza was the son of a Hamas official before the programme was aired is due to be published any day. It will be highly critical although isn't expected to target Tim Davie personally.
But the decision to drop another 'Doctors Under Attack' has been branded a 'cop out' by some senior journalists. Tim Davie was reportedly taken aback, according to The Guardian, when awkward questions were raised at a virtual 'town hall meeting' with BBC staff. The questions outnumbered those over pay and redundancy issues.
The BBC's decision to drop the documentary it had commissioned and allow the production company — the multi-award winning Basement Films — to pass it on to Channel 4 who screened it to acclaim last week throws up more questions about the DG's editor-in-chief credentials and the quality of some of his key advisers. The big difference between the Gaza documentary the BBC did screen and the one it's accused of 'bottling' is that the latter clearly identified some of the medics caught up in the Gaza carnage as Hamas sympathisers.
As one very senior BBC correspondent put it to me privately: "This tale of two Gaza documentaries illustrates so many things about the corporation's crisis management approach and Tim Davie's personal lack of an editorial background. There's a growing feeling senior management have become unduly risk averse over Gaza because the BBC is accused of both being biased toward the Palestinians and biased toward Israel.
"Tim Dave was undoubtedly a brilliant head of the BBC's commercial operations but when being director general also involves being editor-in-chief, it poses a whole set of questions. The big one we're all asking ourselves is: Will he still be at the helm when the tricky charter renewal negotiations come to a head and who in government will the BBC be negotiating with anyway?'
