A tale of two leaders is becoming a ‘Dickens’ of story and this week could be a crucial chapter

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair” Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens 1859

So the ‘Tale of Two Cities’ famously opens. For Sir Keir Starmer and for Kemi Badenoch, this coming week is both the best and worst of times.

Let’s start on the left then move to the right.

Keir Starmer is Prime Minister, he has a 156 seat Commons majority – more than the whole Parliamentary Conservative Party. He deals with world leaders, and trumpets deals. He’s ringing the changes with his ‘Plan for Change’. He’s ‘fixed the foundations of the economy’, ‘secured our borders’ and put Government back in the ‘service of working people’. He strides the world stage, he’s the bees’ knees he’s the cat’s pyjamas. It’s the best of times. Or at least that’s the spin.

Except even he’d have to accept the man with the plan for change desperately needs a change of plan.

This weekend his very position at the top is in question.

It is quite astonishing that five days shy of Starmer’s first year in office amongst an increasingly Starmer-sceptical media a journalist with such Labour credentials as John Rentoul should write:

“He is not under imminent threat, but previously I thought it likely that he would lead Labour into the next election. Now I think the balance of probability has switched.”

How on earth did the Prime Minister get here?

Simply put, he’s not up to it.  Much as the last Conservative Government had said – but had lost the right to be listened to – he never had a plan but if you could name something he’d tax it, and he’d say whatever was needed on any given day just to win, and reverse it when it suited.

Today we can add that the ‘Change’ he promised of better times to come in reality looks worse by the day. His closest ally the Chancellor looks a busted flush. The accusation you can’t trust what he says has cemented. And, whilst he blames problems of his own making on the last Conservative government, he’ll quite shamelessly take full credit for any of their achievements, even if he ordered his troops to vote against them at the time.

He recently tried to sound tough on immigration, despite illegal boat crossings rising by over thirty per cent since the election, and suggested that without firm action Britain risked ‘becoming an island of strangers’. Then after a month of flak from the left he admits:

“That particular phrase – no – it wasn’t right. I’ll give you the honest truth: I deeply regret using it.”

It’s almost as if he hadn’t seen the words until they came on the autocue – but like Ron Burgundy – he just read them anyway. I think he knew exactly what he was doing, and got spooked by the reaction he got on the left.

And then we come to the week ahead, the last of his first year in office. It looked like this time he was going to tough it out on welfare but that majority of 156, won in a loveless landslide and shallow as a puddle, found hidden depths.

No more performing seals at PMQs, they were going to turn on him over disability benefits, and would have, if he hadn’t performed – and this is the killer in image terms – a totally predictable U turn.  The big tough lawyer has turned regular cave man, or as rebel leader Meg Hillier might have texted him: “Cave in, man!”

And he did.

It turns out being Prime Minister takes more than devolving authority for a while to a Gray eminence, being a Lord Alli clotheshorse, or a Morgan McSweeny mouth piece. A weather vane is even more useless if it operates in a complete vacuum.

If your most consistent set of performances in office is to do something of limited worth, and questionable saving, surprisingly  unpopular, only to then change then your mind at the point you’ll be neither thanked nor admire then you can expect question marks over your leadership. As Patrick Maguire notes this weekend

“Now even loyal advisers admit the prime minister too often fails to take ownership of the policies that have done such damage to his reputation — be they immigration or welfare — before airily disavowing them.”

So, what of the other leader in the tale?

All of this should mean not just the best of times, but the sweetest of times for a Conservative leader of the opposition, surely?

Labour have surprised everyone by, forgive my vulgar repetition but it was from a Labour source, being “this shit, this quick”.

Cometh the hour cometh the woman, to deliver the knockout blows. Nothing boosts an opposition leader more than seeing off a sitting Prime Minister, just ask Keir Starmer.

But here’s where so far, the traditional equation isn’t working.

The public indifference or anger with Labour, exists still for voters with the Conservatives. Their bad fortune is not our good fortune. They fall in the polls, so do we. It’s not the best of times for Labour but it’s not for the Tories either.

The quick and easy answer – and boy do they love quick and easy answers – is Reform. The not so new new-kids-on-the-block are the net beneficiaries of what at least a dozen of them will write under this article “uniparty failure”.

It’s more complicated than that but they know that is how many voters see it.

Meanwhile closer to Conservative home, it’s our job at ConservativeHome, to seek out the other factors in play within the party as to why the worst of times for Starmer aren’t yet translating into better for Badenoch.

I’d echo Tali Fraser’s warning to the whip that branded her hostile for reporting discontent amongst MP’s. We aren’t your problem. Far from it. To say the parliamentary party is dispirited and feels unloved by the leadership team is true, though admittedly a perennial back bench complaint in any party. That’s hurting the leadership, and more than it does us to report it.

The team at the top it’s fair to say, are not themselves ‘loved’ and there are open questions about why some people remain in their top roles when they are described as ‘about as active as John Cleese’s parrot’

The chatter aside, we’ve also pointed to the numbers. The Polls are entering that stage where if the Conservatives fall further, then Reform will crow ‘we told you so, and said you’d disappear’.  We might.

As I wrote last week, and am told the shadow cabinet have echoed – something has to change.

So far, despite almost every non-Conservative and media player I know asking ‘so when will you lot have another leadership contest’, I genuinely haven’t found, even from those who never wanted or liked Kemi Badenoch, any serious demand that that is either the answer, or the desire, right now.

However if Starmer keeps wobbling, and questions build around whether he leads Labour into the next election it is inevitable that that question will change to “Labour’s asking if their leader will, so when will you lot ask the same on your side”. It’s no good complaining about it, it’s just what happens. The political betting will do it’s usual odds on who goes first or for one to stay until an election and the other not.

This week though there is an open goal, and Kemi has an opportunity to make it better times for her and worse for Keir.

No, we won’t get a Welfare vote that might have been like a confidence vote, now Meg Hillier herself has backed the revised welfare package.

Welfare spending will continue to balloon of course, and Labour backbenchers will love having discovered they can lead their PM not just the other way round.

However he’ll live to fight another day and get his anniversary on Friday.

But on Wednesday Kemi could begin to disentangle their respective leadership stories.  Stuff, that if resonated wider, starts to shift some of the disillusion with Starmer, onto her slate rather than ending up in Clacton, or tickling Zia.

She should, probably must, really punish him at the despatch box for his failings. Proper blood sports stuff.

That might, right now, be the far far better thing that she could do.