Labour MPs have put Starmer on notice after election battering. Can he turn it around?Even the prime minister's most loyal ministers are pushing him to change, writes Laura Kuenssberg.21 mins agoBBC InDepth

“Over to you Keir,” says a senior minister, not mincing his words.

Not everyone in the Labour Party wants there to be a challenge to the leadership, but even Sir Keir Starmer’s most loyal ministers are pushing him to change – and fast.

The prime minister is nothing if not a determined man. But can he show he can turn it round?

Millions of voters have told him they aren’t impressed with what he’s been doing in 22 months of government – and, as each hour passes, more of his colleagues are going public to say, neither are they.

Labour has been battered at these elections – and it being expected makes it no less painful.

At count after count, seat after seat, the party lost to Nigel Farage, a man many in Labour deride as a vaudeville performer who harbours offensive views.

In other parts of the country, Labour gave ground to another leader, Zack Polanski, who used to be an actual performer, a hypnotist, and a Lib Dem.

The success of Reform UK under Farage is extraordinary, and the progress of the Greens under Polanski is impressive too.

But for some in Labour the grating thing about their dismal position now is it’s different to losing to the Conservatives – that feeling is familiar, it’s in their DNA.

So how can Labour escape this new bewildering world of pain?

Starmer’s allies say the best thing to do is to be better, move faster, govern more effectively, and to show voters “the change” – the most overused, ill-defined couple of words in politics.

What they really mean is they want to appear like a group of people who know what they’re doing, and will make a meaningful improvement to your life. “We made unnecessary mistakes,” Starmer said on Saturday, including not doing “enough to convince [the public] about the change that would impact them, how their lives would be better”.

“The hope wasn’t there enough in the first two years of this government,” Starmer added.

Downing Street is already trying to show he is cracking on – surprising Westminster by bringing in Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman as unpaid advisers on global finance and women and girls (although precisely how Harman’s new job differs to the appointment she was given last year is not clear).

Global finance and women and girls are, of course, important issues. It’s hard not to conclude those decisions are also to beef up the prime minister’s political security – one of Brown’s nicknames was the “clunking fist”, after all.

You might wonder if the best way of showing you’re all about “change” is by bringing back faces from the past. One Labour source joked, “there are rumours that they’ve brought an ouija board through the green baize door to consult Clem Atlee and Harold Wilson”.

The prime minister’s next move is a big speech on Monday – billed as him promising closer ties with the European Union, a drum Starmer’s been banging since our interview at the start of the year.

Then there’s the King’s Speech on Wednesday, when the monarch will set out the new laws that the government wants to pass. It’s a big fancy occasion, with the trappings of power on full display – but all the gleaming horses and trumpets in the world won’t give the government the veneer of authority without credible and coherent plans.

The Labour Party and its MPs are desperately hoping for something to catch voters’ imagination. One source involved in preparing for the speech told me there’d be plenty of Labour-friendly measures on offer. But would there be anything dramatic or dazzling to change the conversation? They weren’t so sure.

Another cabinet minister told me in recent weeks Starmer has been “bluntly self critical” and has recognised privately that he has to step up. The minister told me a leadership contest now would be a mistake, adding “he is the most astonishing adaptor and survivor”.

The trouble is, Starmer has already had several resets and reboots to his still young government.

There’s plenty of evidence from his own track record that he won’t give up – but history is less on his side when it comes to governments in predicaments like this. That’s why some ministers have already concluded “it’s terminal – I just can’t see a way through”, as one told me.

As for a solid, better offer than Starmer? Well, the evidence for that is patchy too.

I don’t expect we’ll hear anything from Andy Burnham this weekend. He isn’t even an MP, and after Labour took a pasting across his backyard in the North West, perhaps it looks harder for him this weekend too.

I also don’t expect Angela Rayner to say she’d take a tilt at the job this weekend, though she’ll make plain her concerns about the direction of the party.

And some allies of the PM insist “there is a quiet majority in the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] who think, ‘Oh my god, what are we doing?'”

Without a clear contender, ready to go, the prospect of forcing Starmer to lay out a timetable now for leaving No 10 would, these allies say, look crackers to already-fed-up voters. They feel it would send the message: “Dear country, we can’t make a decision, so we want a bit more time ’til we do.”

And if the prime minister accepted calls for him to set out this timetable for his departure, another minister warns the game would effectively be over straight away. “If you say you’re going, you’re done as soon as you’ve said it.”

Labour still has a huge majority and we are living through a time of huge international turmoil. Loyalists point to the government’s achievements like increasing the minimum wage, or improving NHS waiting lists. Getting rid of leaders, as the Tories discovered during their 14 years of power, can end in disaster too.

But the truth this weekend? “We just can’t seem to stop talking about the leadership,” as one cabinet minister, who wants “resilient” Starmer to stay, puts it. That conversation simply is not going to go away.

Support for the prime minister across the country has dramatically fallen, as this week’s hard evidence has shown. With the growing tally of MPs calling for his exit, support for Starmer within the party is ebbing away.

It feels increasingly like the prime minister is on borrowed time. This weekend, Labour’s stuck in an unhappy, angry stasis – no one ready to move; fewer and fewer happy for Starmer to stay.

Top picture credit: PA

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