Labour's Traitors tribute act will have voters switching off
4 min read
The briefing war this week turned what was Westminster bubble chat into a national story. From a public opinion perspective, it was a disaster.
The late-night briefings, the secrets, the plots; all we need now is Claudia and a castle. It’s no wonder Wes Streeting leaned into the obvious comparisons with Celebrity Traitors. But while the TV show keeps us glued to our screens, the drama being broadcast live from Westminster makes us switch off.
“The bit that resonated with me was ‘stop the chaos’. We've had so much chaos in the last 14 years, it’s been awful. They just don’t know what they're doing, and we've got to give someone else a chance.”
Those words came from Johannes, a pensioner from Portsmouth, during a focus group in May 2024. We had just shown him a video of Keir Starmer’s speech promising a kind of politics that “treads more lightly on all our lives".
Starmer, then only months away from becoming prime minister, had tapped into a deep public exhaustion. Years of infighting, leaks and resignations had made the Conservatives seem addicted to drama. Alongside the sense that the country was broken and desperate for change, that chaos pushed voters away from the Conservatives and toward something new.
Less than eighteen months later, three-quarters believe that the government is chaotic. This summer, we found that seven in ten thought the current government was at least as chaotic as the last, including a third who said it was more so. This has also started to emerge in focus group conversations, as Rebecca from Pontefract told us, “everything’s a shambles when it comes down to it. All the prime ministers, all the MPs."
From the ‘freebiegate’ scandal that christened this government, to its near-implosion over welfare this summer, and most recently, Angela Rayner’s resignation. Add to this the many departures from within Downing Street – with Morgan McSweeney potentially the next name on the list – and the upheaval has seemed constant.
The decision to put Streeting under the spotlight the evening before his scheduled morning media round was a disaster in public opinion terms. It poured petrol on a smouldering fire that, until then, was only really visible in the SW1 postcode. Now the smoke can be seen across the country, and it is damaging for three main reasons.
Firstly and most obviously, it makes the government look chaotic and self-indulgent. Briefing against a cabinet minister always signals that the prime minister lacks confidence in his colleagues, but doing so against the minister responsible for the NHS – the issue that matters most to so many Labour voters – is particularly damaging.
Second, it risks damaging Starmer's personal image. In focus groups before the election, some voters expressed discomfort with Labour’s treatment of Diane Abbott. One voter from Swindon North told us he struggled to trust a leader who had “basically stabbed their own party member in the back". Attacking another senior figure may revive those doubts about whether Starmer is a team player – and if there is one constant in public opinion, it’s that Brits value fairness.
The third impact – and perhaps the one with the most profound consequences – is the growing perception that the government lacks control and agency. The argument from the PM's allies that a leadership contest could unsettle the bond markets only reinforces this impression: that the government is hostage to external forces, unable to act in the country’s interests. Relying on that logic to defend the status quo is a textbook example of the “politics of can’t” that has left so many voters weary.
The outcome of this sense of chaos and powerlessness is that this de-risks choices like Reform UK and the Green Party. Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski are both offering a “politics of can”, and even if the public doubts their promises, more voters are now willing to roll the dice on something entirely new.
18 months in, the sense that Starmer’s government isn’t in control – and is as addicted to chaos as the last lot – really does mean it is a last chance saloon with the public. The government has a small window, starting with the Budget, to convince the public it really does have their priorities at heart.
Luke Tryl is the Executive Director of More in Common UK.
