By Kevin Maguire

Copyright newstatesman

Pummelled Starmer resembles a man who kicked a black cat on Friday the 13th under a ladder, pondered a bewildered minister. Donald Trump’s state visit was the last thing the PM needed after the Angela Rayner, Peter Mandelson and Paul Ovenden disasters. Nor can things improve when King of the North Andy Burnham’s ally Lucy Powell is the bookies’ favourite for deputy leader, beating Starmer’s choice Bridget Phillipson, before November’s anticipated Budget tax hikes. Napoleon Bonaparte wanted lucky generals. The minister wondered whether Starmer used up all his luck in opposition when the Tories gifted him Boris Johnson’s parties and Liz Truss’s financial mayhem followed by Rishi Sunak’s election campaign shambles. “I’d give Keir a lucky rabbit’s foot to change his fortunes but the way things are going,” cried the subordinate, “he’d probably catch myxomatosis.”

Labour conference delegates discovered their party packs were a bit light this year. Passes arriving in the post arrived without the usual guides to the four-day jamboree, listing fringe meetings and carrying welcome messages from senior bods. Why? According to a lucky few who saw the brochure, it included a double-page spread from a grinning Angela Rayner, erstwhile deputy prime minister. A scramble to print new guides is said to be under way.

For the six MPs who remain without the Labour whip, a trip to party conference is off the cards. Suspended MPs are unable to claim security clearance to head up to Liverpool despite remaining members and paying PLP dues. As one pointed out, recently disgraced Mandelson remains on Labour’s books and so is welcome to attend. The whipless martyr grumbled it’s a bit rich to ban half a dozen politicians for backing anti-poverty measures while still giving zillionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s “best pal” a free pass.

Call it a summer romance. This time last year, Danny “Freddy” Kruger was chair of Robert Jenrick’s unsuccessful bid for the Tory leadership. Airwaves were filled with the sound of Kruger singing tunes for Jenrick. “He is a serious man for a serious moment,” was a line among many. Fast forward to September 2025 and there was Kruger trilling for his new pin-up: Nigel Farage. Kruger’s defection to Reform UK further pulled the rug out from under the Tories and Kemi Badenoch. “I wished that [Jenrick] had won because I think he would have done things differently,” Kruger told a press conference in – where else for those claiming to represent an alienated working class? – a plush Mayfair hotel. Snouts whisper that like every other Tory, shunned Jenrick had no idea Kruger was about to go.

Just as Tory and Lib Dem MPs clamoured for the release of supposedly incriminating government documents on the Mandelson vetting process, a PM protesting his ignorance received an unfortunately timed visit in Downing Street. On 15 September the black security gates were opened to admit a truck from Pulse Environmental, a firm specialising in “immediate secure information destruction”. Insert your own fresh conspiracy theory here.

Diane Abbott isn’t the only Labour figure savouring the downfall of Morgan McSweeney’s henchman Ovenden, after a sexually explicit insult he made about Britain’s first black female MP regurgitated online. A minister believes Ovenden leaked information that saw them sacked. What goes around, comes around.

From fixing the NHS to clearing court backlogs, the government is desperately searching for ways to patch up the crumbling state. The running joke among civil servants is that ministers hail technology as the saviour for everything. “I’ve yet to see a problem that this government doesn’t think a technological solution can’t fix,” grimaced one. “It begs the question: who invents this technology? Is it really going to be government?” Sounds more Little Britain “computer says no” than “Yes, Minister”.

Though it had enough momentum to launch not once but twice, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party seems to have dropped off the radar. Internal strife may be a reason. A snout in the left-wing insurgency reports that Corbyn’s wife, Laura Alvarez, does not get on with his party co-founder Sultana. Might it have something to do with the premature Twitter announcement that Sultana made to bounce her hubby into action?

Boaties puffing along the Llangollen canal in north Wales may have been surprised to spy a chap manning a narrowboat tiller wearing a jacket emblazoned with the insignia of HMS Prince of Wales, one of the Royal Navy’s £3bn-a-pop aircraft carriers. Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke, a sub-lieutenant at Dartmouth naval college before jumping ship, was presented with the coat while a defence minister. His party’s own political journey is from formidable battleship to a listing hulk abandoned by mutinous crew.

All five of Reform’s MPs, including Farage and deputy Richard Tice, were once Tory stalwarts. Kruger’s defection wasn’t universally mourned by former colleagues. “Reform is the best political laxative in history,” mused an ex-minister, “because they are flushing all the shits out of the Conservative Party.” Charming.

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