By Cicero, Political Correspondent
When Sir Keir Starmer swept to power, he promised “a government of service, integrity and accountability.” Just over a year on, that slogan reads less like a mission statement and more like the opening gag in a Private Eye cartoon. A string of senior resignations—each more embarrassing than the last—has left the Prime Minister looking less like the captain of a steady ship and more like the manager of a sinking football team.
A Rogues’ Gallery of Resignations
Angela Rayner bowed out spectacularly in September after an investigation found she had underpaid £40,000 in stamp duty on her luxury Hove flat. A Deputy Prime Minister lecturing the nation on fairness while dodging the taxman? The irony was too rich even for Westminster.
Louise Haigh, Starmer’s Transport Secretary, resigned when a decade-old conviction for fraud by false representation resurfaced. Her crime? Misleading the police about a stolen mobile phone. You couldn’t make it up: the woman in charge of Britain’s railways derailed by a dodgy phone claim.
Tulip Siddiq, the “anti-corruption minister”, was forced out when her family’s links to corruption probes in Bangladesh came under scrutiny. Having the anti-sleaze minister toppled by allegations of sleaze abroad was, as one Labour backbencher muttered, “like appointing Count Dracula to head up the blood bank.”
Rushanara Ali, the Homelessness Minister, found herself accused of evicting tenants only to re-let her property at a much higher rent. Champion of the homeless by day, landlord of the year by night.
Vicky Foxcroft, a whip, resigned rather more honourably—unable to support government cuts to disability benefits. Even so, it was another crack in the facade of party unity.
Anneliese Dodds, in charge of international development, quit in protest after Starmer sanctioned cuts to the foreign aid budget. Again, integrity versus reality: the minister for development walking away because the government was under-developing its own promises.
Andrew Gwynne, junior health minister, was booted out when offensive WhatsApp messages surfaced. The man in charge of public health undermined by his own unhealthy chat group.
Paul Ovenden, Starmer’s Downing Street director of political strategy, fell on his sword after old lewd comments about Diane Abbott emerged. Strategy clearly didn’t extend to scrubbing his WhatsApp.
And finally, Oliver “Ollie” Steadman, a Labour councillor turned political fixer, charged in the tawdry “honeytrap” scandal targeting women in Westminster. Though he’d already left his council seat in 2024, his re-emergence in court this month ensured Labour’s sleaze list gained yet another entry.
Mandelson’s Return and Fall
Even the old New Labour guard couldn’t escape the mudslide. Peter Mandelson, brought back as Ambassador to Washington, was unceremoniously sacked after questions arose about undisclosed correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein and the small matter of not being vetted before his appointment. “Third time unlucky,” quipped one veteran MP, recalling Mandelson’s multiple exits from Blair’s cabinets.
Starmer’s Integrity Gap
To be clear, not every resignation was about personal corruption. Dodds and Foxcroft walked out over policy disagreements, highlighting the tension between Starmer’s iron grip on fiscal policy and the conscience of his social democratic wing. But it is the pattern—the sheer volume of exits, and the grubby ironies surrounding them—that is beginning to gnaw at Labour’s claim to moral superiority.
Westminster wags now joke that Labour’s whips office should install a revolving door: one side marked “Appointment”, the other “Resignation Letter.”
The Private Eye View
If Private Eye were to distil the past year into a cartoon, it might show Sir Keir standing at a lectern reading out “Service, Integrity, Accountability” while, behind him, ministers sneak out the back with bulging briefcases marked “Rent”, “WhatsApps”, “Stamp Duty” and “Epstein Emails”. The caption? “All in service of themselves.”
For the public, weary after years of Conservative chaos, the hope was that Starmer’s Labour would look competent and clean. Instead, the government of integrity is starting to resemble a Punch and Judy show: the righteous rhetoric up front, the slapstick sleaze behind the curtain