Was Keir Starmer’s leaving party the boozy birth of a new Labour force?

A £10,000 bar tab was drunk, there was a ‘lot of anger’, and now ex-ministers are thinking how to cooperate in future Keir Starmer’s leaving party had been planned for some time. But in years to come it might be seen as the birth of a new Labour movement. Dozens of ministers, aides and Starmer himself headed to the Grafton pub in Kentish Town on Monday night to drown their sorrows, hours after the former prime minister left Downing Street for the last time. By 7pm, revellers had exhausted a £10,000 bar tab. But as a boozy late-night karaoke session started, several were learning they had lost their ministerial jobs, victims of what some believe was a purge of Starmer allies being punished for their loyalty to the former prime minister. Now the group – at the centre of which are 11 former cabinet ministers – are considering how to cooperate in the future, whether in supporting the government of Andy Burnham or, occasionally, pointing out where it is going wrong. “There was a lot of anger at the party,” said one person who was there. “There were some decent, competent people who seemed to be losing their jobs simply because they did not call for Keir Starmer to quit