I was halfway through a rather robust Eggs Royale with a senior Downing Street advisor—whose name I shall withhold, though I will say he has a spectacular eye for a focus group—when the subject of Trevor Phillips’ Sunday morning ambush arose.
Phillips, in a display of what I can only call appalling journalistic aggression, had the audacity to corner Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy on live television. His crime? Suggesting that the Labour Party, which currently points a self-righteous finger at everyone else for being institutionally sexist and racist, is effectively being steered by three white blokes.
He was referring, of course, to Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the two men perpetually hovering in his peripheral vision like vultures waiting for a gazelle to stumble: Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.
Nandy, displaying the kind of plucky deflection one expects from a cabinet minister who knows she is entirely boxed out of the succession planning, called the leadership speculation froth and nonsense. She then cheekily reminded Phillips that she did try to fix the white-bloke problem by running for leader in 2019. A sweet anecdote. We all chuckled. But the underlying accusation from Phillips cannot go unanswered.
As someone who has dined extensively with all three of these men, I find the reduction of their vast, sprawling, multi-faceted personalities to three white blokes to be deeply offensive. It demonstrates a profound ignorance of the rich tapestry of the British centrist male.
Let us start with Keir. To dismiss the Prime Minister as just another white bloke is to ignore the unique, agonizing specificity of his existence. He is a former Director of Public Prosecutions who speaks as though he is actively trying not to wake a sleeping baby. He possesses a highly specialized form of North London whiteness that requires him to look perpetually pained whenever someone mentions the working class. You cannot simply lump him into a demographic category; he is a bespoke demographic of one.
Then we have Wes Streeting. I had a flat white with Wes only last Tuesday. To the untrained eye, yes, Wes might appear to be a white bloke in a navy suit. But Wes is a millennial white bloke. He knows what a meme is. He has undoubtedly considered buying a standing desk. When Wes looks across the dispatch box, he doesn’t just see the opposition; he sees an opportunity to triangulate a slightly more efficient private-public partnership for NHS procurement. If you cannot see the staggering diversity of thought between Keir’s cautious legalism and Wes’s polished, focus-grouped ambition, you simply aren't paying attention to the nuances of identical policies.
And what of Andy Burnham? The absolute nerve of Trevor Phillips to include the King of the North in this monolithic categorization. Andy Burnham has an accent. He has been known to wear a cagoule in public without irony. He occasionally expresses a human emotion on television. In the sterile, airtight corridors of Westminster, Andy Burnham is practically an exotic import. He represents the crucial demographic of white men who are annoyed they have to take the train down to London. To call him just another white bloke is to erase the entire cultural heritage of being slightly miffed in Manchester.
Nandy’s reminder that she attempted to fix this in 2019 was a charming bit of self-deprecation. But let us be brutally honest: the country was simply not ready for a woman from Wigan to lead the opposition at that time. They were barely ready for a man from Holborn and St Pancras. The delicate ecosystem of British politics requires a very specific type of calibration. You cannot simply swap out a centrist white man for a woman and expect the markets to remain calm. The bond markets, as I was told by a rather frantic hedge fund manager over oysters at J Sheekey, require the steady, unthreatening gaze of a man who looks like he knows how to properly load a dishwasher.
When Kemi Badenoch steps up to the dispatch box for the Conservatives, she undoubtedly brings her own perspective. But is it truly more diverse than a coalition of a cautious lawyer, an ambitious podcaster-in-waiting, and a northern mayor who looks like he’s permanently late for a football match? I submit that it is not.
The Labour Party has achieved something remarkable. They have managed to assemble a leadership troika of men who went to different universities, had different upbringings, and yet have miraculously arrived at the exact same conclusion about maintaining the two-child benefit cap and refusing to properly fund local councils. That is the magic of the broad church.
The public doesn't want ideological variety, they want to see three highly competent variations of a regional bank manager nodding solemnly at a spreadsheet.
Lisa Nandy was right to call the leadership challenge speculation froth and nonsense. Nobody is challenging Keir Starmer right now. Why would they? The country is broke, the rivers are full of sewage, and the trains don't run. Wes and Andy are far too intelligent, and far too identical in their political instincts, to want to catch that falling knife. They are perfectly content to stand behind Keir, a solid, impenetrable wall of beige, waiting for the precise moment the polls dip low enough to justify a polite, orderly succession.
So, I ask the electorate, and I ask Trevor Phillips: can we please move past this divisive identity politics? Let us stop obsessing over the fact that the three most powerful figures in the Labour Party look like they could all be cast as the sensible detective in an ITV Sunday night drama.
We should be celebrating them. In a world of chaos and uncertainty, there is something deeply comforting about knowing that no matter what happens, your country is in the hands of a white man who is very, very concerned about the deficit.
I, for one, sleep soundly knowing that if Keir should ever falter, there is another man standing right behind him, ready to put on the exact same suit and do the exact same thing. That isn't a lack of diversity. That's a contingency plan.