Briefing Encounters

This is an adapted version of my analysis from the LabourList email this morning. To receive our email every weekday morning please subscribe here. 

Last night saw some of the oddest briefings to the Times and the Guardian BBC and various other outlets I have seen in a very long time. 

Despite the crisis at the BBC and ongoing budget speculation, Labour MPs were texting each other (and me) last night about a furious round of briefing against Wes Streeting – and the calls were coming from inside the house, in this case Number 10 Downing Street. 

The extraordinary briefings from ‘senior Downing Street aides’ were about a campaign to protect Keir Starmer from a rumoured coup. The oddest part is that most of the MPs I spoke to – who range in their politics and previous loyalty to the leadership – say that any coup just wasn’t on the immediate horizon. The word used most often about this briefing to me was “insanity”.  

SW1 runs on rumour and gossip as we all know. And the fact that the significant grumbles of MPs were getting sharper as a make or break budget approaches is undeniable. 

But no one I spoke to said that there was a challenge imminent with minds focused on the budget and the tough job the government has in laying the groundwork for the difficult pain to come. That job has just got significantly more difficult as Labour reverts to talking about itself and its leadership rather than the country, the economy and the everyday concerns of voters. 

Starmer once argued that ‘stability is change.’ What happened last night feels like neither stability nor change. In fact it has horrible echoes of the last Parliament.

So why this briefing now? The truth is no one I spoke to could understand the thinking behind it. This post on X  from Ross Kempsell is a neat summary of the response I was getting. Though a better one comes in one word that I heard from more than one MP – Insanity.

Starmer’s allies briefed against a leadership plot to try to smoke it out – but that briefing exploded the question of his leadership. So instead of smoking out a plot, Starmer actually set fire to himself – so in effect he has moved against himself to take himself out as leader

— Ross Kempsell (@RossKempsell) November 11, 2025

That this happened is bizarre. That it happened the night before Streeting was due on the broadcast round is even weirder. My guess is the thinking was that Wes would have to go on record declaring his loyalty to Starmer. The problem with that is – he’s done so repeatedly already. Normally when a Minister is forced onto the radio after disloyal briefing it because they were the briefer and the morning round is a punishment.

This time, Streeting – widely acknowledged as one of the government’s better communicators – managed to profess loyalty to Starmer, call for the PM’s staff to be sacked and pivot on the NHS reform. Whoever’s genius idea this was ,it hasn’t just backfired, it hasn’t just blown up in their faces it has nuked what respect anyone had for the Number 10 operation and put the boss at significantly more political risk than he was at the start of the week.

I, like most of you, would rather be talking about how we’re going to fix the country today. Starmer may be getting on with the job at hand but he would be better served if he were able to do so without staff who keep accidentally tying them behind his back.

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