Frightening the Horses

I wrote a blog entry some time ago suggesting that Starmer’s politics operate like a controlled burn. He unveils a policy that looks bold enough to stop Labour’s left from rummaging in the shed for pitchforks, then steps aside while the PLP tears into it like a parish council arguing over who signed off the new flower beds. After the requisite amendments, rebellions and earnest speeches, the MPs emerge claiming a heroic victory, and Starmer quietly pockets the neat, diluted version he intended all along. It was neat, predictable, and for a while it worked.

Looking at the evidence now, the pattern is almost embarrassingly clear.

Take the two child benefit cap. Labour defended it with almost devotional intensity, punishing rebels and chanting fiscal restraint like a cloister. Then, once the Treasury spreadsheets finally stopped having palpitations, Reeves abolished it and the PLP applauded as if they had personally liberated the nation. Workers’ rights followed the same choreography: a bold opening promise, then the internal sanding down, then the final policy – slimmer, safer, precisely calibrated for the markets.

And the great 28 billion green investment pledge? Once a triumphant banner waved at conference; now quietly replaced with a set of sober planning reforms and sensible grid upgrades. All worthy. None transformative. Another grand ambition trimmed to fit the fiscal corset.

This is exactly the pattern I wrote about: Starmer proposes, the PLP disposes, and the final shape of the policy is whatever frightens neither the voters nor the bond markets.

But the political weather has shifted. Labour’s lead is narrowing. Starmer’s personal ratings are sinking with the kind of steady determination that suggests geology rather than politics. What once felt like calm now feels like drift. What once reassured now irritates. And inside the party, MPs are tiring of being marched through these staged confrontations only to be presented with a final version that looks suspiciously like the leader’s original intention.

The danger for Starmer is simple: this choreography only works while he looks inevitable. Once he starts to look vulnerable, Labour MPs – who have never been sentimental about leaders – begin to look elsewhere.

Which brings us to the question I didn’t address in my original blog: if Labour decided it needed new hands on the reins, who could take over without frightening the horses or sending gilt yields into cardiac arrest?

Reeves is the obvious heir – the markets trust her, and she has the moral centre of a graphing calculator. Streeting has media instinct but splits opinion. Cooper would calm Whitehall at forty paces. McFadden radiates competence so efficiently that he may actually run on battery power.

But there is now someone else – someone who, at the time of my original piece, was still largely invisible to the wider public.

Darren Jones.

And not Darren Jones the committee interrogator, but Darren Jones the Chief Secretary to the Treasury – the Chancellor’s deputy, the government’s chief spending disciplinarian, the man who sees every pressure, every risk, every departmental claim, every hidden pothole under the fiscal tarmac.

If Rachel Reeves is the architect, Darren Jones is the structural engineer making sure nothing collapses.

He is calm, forensic, properly numerate, and utterly uninterested in political theatrics. He doesn’t radiate ideology; he radiates competence. I saw an interview with him recently and was struck by how rare it is, these days, to watch a politician answer a question with clarity rather than choreography. He would not frighten Middle England. He would not frighten the spreadsheets. And he has not yet accumulated the factional baggage that weighs down most senior figures.

In other words: he is the sort of person the PLP suddenly discovers when grown-up government becomes fashionable again.

And then, standing apart from all this, is Angela Rayner – the party’s paradox. She speaks to voters Starmer can’t reach. She has authenticity Westminster cannot fake. But she is also the one figure the markets would panic over before she’d even unpacked her mug in No 10. Not because of her politics – which are far more moderate than the caricature – but because British public life still mistakes a working-class accent for economic danger.

So yes, the theory I floated still holds. Starmer proposes something broad, the PLP trims it, and the final version arrives pre-sanded and non-threatening. But the conditions that made this workable are slipping away. The public now wants movement, not maintenance. The PLP senses drift. And when MPs begin glancing at the horizon, they notice not only the familiar names, but the quietly formidable ones – the Darren Joneses – who don’t frighten anyone and actually know how to govern.

The horses may still be calm, but the stable door is rattling. And for the first time, a very competent Treasury minister might be standing on the other side.