Tiptoe through the tulips - political sketch

Barely six months into his new government and Sir Keir Starmer is losing ministers at a rate of knots to rival his Tory predecessors.

To paraphrase Lady Bracknell, to lose one minister may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness. And it is arguably carelessness - though possibly also naïvety - that lies at the heart of Starmer's travails with his former Transport Secretary, Louise Haigh. To add to his woes, Tulip Siddiq has just resigned as Economic Secretary to the Treasury, a role which included monitoring City curruption. Having referred herself to the PM's standards adviser and received rather less than fulsome support from that quarter, she was left with little choice.

In fairness to him, Starmer had to fill a large number of senior government posts in very short order on gaining a landslide majority at the general election on 4 July. He did so knowing of Haigh's spent conviction for fraud, having accepted her assurance that her sentence was given on a technicality and that she was not guilty of an actual crime. 

As former DPP - a fact he never tires of reminding us of -  Starmer must have felt that the legal grounds for his decision were sound, and good for him for giving her a second chance. Unfortunately, the British press and media adhere to the 'Caesar's wife' principle when the subject of suspicion is a woman.

For all I know, Siddiq may be the victim of a double prejudice, not just as a woman but as a woman of colour. Come to think of it, that may be a triple prejudice as she is also a Muslim. Her aunt, Sheikh Hasina, the disgraced ex- (and now exiled) Prime Minister of Bangladesh, was clearly a corrupt old tyrant but, hey, which of us gets to choose our families? 

Still, one might have expected Siddiq to know which member of her family gifted her her expensive London home. Perhaps only the mega-rich can afford such incuriosity. Or was it that when ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise? It is useful for a politician to be able to fall back on plausible deniability I suppose. Ah well, no-one said life is fair - and in high-profile politics the stakes are high and a fall from grace invariably brutal. 

For both Haigh and Siddiq it was the optics that counted against them and both women realised, having become the focus of unrelentingly negative attention, they had no option but to resign their posts. Siddiq had the double misfortune of finding her boss, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, under the spotlight at the same time as herself, with fevered speculation that Reeves might be sacked or forced to resign after a wobble in the markets risked derailing her controversial economic policy.

Luckily for her, following a feisty statement to the House of Commons on her return from her much-crticised trip to Beijing, and the fortuitous release of marginally more favourable inflation figures, she was able to sit secure on the government front bench during today's PMQs. It seems her position, if not exactly unassailable, is now looking markedly less precarious. 

The perception seems to be that Starmer, notwithstanding his reputation for a readiness to throw colleagues under the bus, will have to stand by her now or risk being dragged down with her. But while the future may look slightly more secure, it is far from rosy.

For, rather than a bed of roses, politics is a veritable bed of thorns.


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