Why Did Louise Haigh really resign as Transport Minister ?

 Editor's note: Given the chnage in fortunes of the two principal players in this political saga, I though I'd wheel the blog out again with an update.....

----------------------

The rather unexpected announcement on 29th November 2024 that Louise Haigh had resigned as Transport minister inevitably precipitated much speculation about ‘goings on in high places’. The party line explanation she offered for her 'resignation' was the bog-standard  ‘I don’t want to be a distraction’ recipe, accompanied by the usual weasel words of support from the PM for the decision and good wishes for the future….which, if course, tells us precisely nothing about what really happened.

To establish what really went on, we need to look at the background. Several pertinent facts emerge:

1)       * Starmer knew about Haigh’s 2013 conviction for ‘making a false report to the police’ about her mugging when he appointed her to the ministerial posts she has occupied. This rules out concealment on her part as a direct cause for her dismissal.

2)      * Since the election in July, Haigh has been in the spotlight several times as ‘not seeing eye to eye’ with the PM, most notably over the P&O ferries debacle, which earned her an stern reprimand from the PM. Some were quite surprised at the time that she survived as a minister at all.

3)      * Haigh was the only remaining Cabinet member regarded as ‘soft left’ and who supported Corbyn for the leadership.

4)      * Starmer has been trying to purge the parliamentary party and the rank and file of the hard left for the last 5 years, and will be acutely conscious that he has so far failed to do this. It's also of note that, whilst Haigh’s presence in the cabinet was always at his discretion, Angela Rayner, his deputy’s, isn’t as she holds a post elected by the party over which he has no veto. She would be the most likely candidate to replace Starmer after a Momentum 'coup'.

    My guess is that Starmer will have realised his mistake in appointing Haigh some time ago, and will have sought guidance from his advisors in true Shakespearean style as to "..who will rid me of this troublesome priest ?..". 

He has no doubt been waiting for an opportunity to unseat Haigh as a ‘dissenter’ without the need to sack her openly, and may actually have deliberately leaked the info. regarding her conviction to the media. The media attention this produced gave him the cue to offer her the alternatives of resignation with 'honour’....or an ignominious sacking and the inevitable end of her political career. 

In another twist to the tale, Haigh must naively have assumed that Starmer had her best interests at heart, and relied on him to ensure that the government's propriety and ethics team were notified of her conviction when she was appointed as a cabinet minister, as would normally be required. The fact that Starmer did not do this at the time is highly significant, and actually does leaves him open personally to the accusation of lack of probity. So far this does not seem to have gone anywhere, but may yet come back to haunt him. As a former human rights lawyer and Director of Public Prosecutions, he must have been well aware of this aspect of parliamentary protocol.

If things did play out in this way, it would indicate a positively Machiavellian ‘stitch-up’ on his part, and will certainly have given some food for thought for the rest of his team….

However it played out in the event, Haigh’s departure is unfortunate, since she had already made good progress with rail reform, and showed promise as a champion of bus service improvement. Her departure leaves pensioners concerned once again about their bus passes – Haigh was quite forthright during media interviews in promising not to abolish the English concession ‘while I’m in charge of Transport’, and this may actually have been another ‘nail in her coffin’.  

Her replacement, Heidi Alexander, formerly looking after Justice, and back in parliament this year after a stint managing London Transport under Sadiq Khan, may well be less favourable towards continuing bus concessions, although it must be said that Londoners do currently get the best deal of all from the English Concession, with many additional 'perks' compared to the basic bus only recipe offered by the shire counties…..

What we can plainly see from this rather unsavoury tale is that the current leadership, while just as error-prone as the Tories were, has an altogether more authoritarian and bullying character. Starmer is quite merciless when it comes to any form of dissent within his cabinet, and will ruthlessly eliminate anyone who doesn’t mirror his views.

Sounds familiar, perhaps ?….

One aspect of authoritarian governments dependent on the power of one individual that can hasten their demise is their lack of flexibility and their consequent inability to adapt. I suspect this one may not survive all that long. Only time, of course, will tell....

Update 12.8.26: And so it did - and very nicely too - for Louise, that is, but not for her ertswhile boss. Haigh read the runes correctly after her demise as a minister and saw an opportunity in what we all suspected would sooner or later befall Starmer. She was instrumental in Burnham' s campaigns, both for the Makersfield by-election and the Labour leadership, and she is now sitting pretty as his principal advisor and most trusted advocate for his policies. Reckoned to be 'the most powerful woman in Britain', her fortunes are definitely on the up. Hopefully the fact that she 'has the PM's ear' will ensure our bus passes are safe...for now, at least....

First published 30.11.24

Revised 13.8.26

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What’s Happened to my Bus/Train/Flight ? The Canny Traveller's Guide to Finding Your Way Around on Public Transport in UK

Editor's Note: As a frequent local bus user, I was inspired recently to write a brief guide  for my website's travel page  on how to get the best out of our bus and train networks . Herewith a copy for the blog...it now includes some additional info on local UK air travel....  ------------------------- Our UK public transport network has come a long way on since the days before the internet became widely available in the late 1990s..... Working out how to get from A to B without major trauma during those somewhat simpler times relied on having a good sense of direction, a detailed knowledge of bus/train timetables, some decent maps, a knowledge of how to read them....and being reasonably mobile.  Timetable information was usually only available from tourist information offices, bus and train stations, etc., and only in paper form. It was quite often already out of date by the time you got hold of it. There were no digital bus signage boards for guidance, and few...
Read more

Monkeypox – It's back again - How dangerous is it, and what should we do about it ?

This blog was originally compiled at the time of the Monkeypox epidemic in 2022. A new and more infectious variant of MPox which also has a higher fatality rate, has hit Africa in 2024, and looks as though it has now arrived in UK. Young children are particularly hard-hit by this variant of the virus. Read on to find out more about how the last full-scale epidemic developed, and see also the update compiled this month at the end of the article....hopefully this will provide some insight into what we should expect in UK. T here has been much speculation in the media recently about the current Monkeypox outbreak – not surprisingly perhaps, in view of our recent experience with Covid… Some pundits are even predicting that this could be the fore-runner of the next pandemic   - how realistic a view is this, and should we be worried ? Looking at the evidence objectively, at present the answer to both questions is: No, so far….but we should not be complacent. First, let’s look at th...
Read more

Solar Panels: Are They Right For Me ?

I first published the text of this post on my website. As  a consumer interested in installing solar panels in UK,  I wanted to see what detailed advice was available on how to go about it, but didn't really find anything suitable. I decided to share my experience, as far as it went, in the hope that it would make life a bit easier for anyone else in the same boat.   There is plenty of advice out there on the web, but it seems to be mostly from installers, who will naturally want to extol the benefits of their product, and won't necessarily want to highlight the pitfalls. I've tried to do just that by taking the reader through what is likely to happen if you embark on a quest for solar panels yourself.  I hope it's useful in helping you answer the question in the title...... --------------------------------   Solar Panels: Are They Right For Me ? Despite the relatively slow uptake of domestic micro-generation technology over the past decade, m any of us are...
Read more