Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is facing the first explicit threat of a leadership challenge from one of his MPs – but just how much of a threat does it pose to him?
The former minister Catherine West’s interview with Radio 4’s PM programme immediately raised eyebrows around Westminster.
Plenty of Labour MPs from across the party have told us they didn’t see it coming.
“What the hell is going on?” said one figure on the Left. “Crikey,” said another.
But another told us they were aware of her plans from messages that had been shared between some Labour MPs.
They characterised her intervention as an expression of exasperation and frustration.
“It is a howl of pain,” said one minister, reflecting that so many people in the Labour Party this weekend are hurting.
“Many have lost their social circle in their patch. Dear friends, who have worked incredibly hard as councillors, who have been thrown out and it’s not their fault,” one MP said.
Downing Street are trying to ignore West’s challenge and various leadership camps are denying that they had anything to do with it.
It may peter out.
But “it might just break the impasse,” said another MP, by giving others a vehicle to express their view that the leadership needs to change.
For a challenge to get off the ground, 20% of Labour MPs, 81 people, have to back it.
West says she currently has 10 supporters and so is a long way short of that.
Some MPs have told us she has no chance of getting the MPs she would need.
An MP on the right of the party suggested that she might be inadvertently helpful to the PM.
If she can’t get enough supporters Sir Keir could then declare that there was no appetite for a contest and move on.
But others – including an ally of the prime minister – think she might cross the threshold.
Within the party there is feverish private discussion about Sir Keir’s future, with some anticipating a move from one of the challengers in the coming days.
As one veteran Labour figure put it: “Basically nobody beats Andy Burnham. So if you want anyone other than Andy you need this to happen sooner rather than later.”
Others are desperate for their colleagues to calm down.
It would be “ego over country,” said one MP from the 2024 intake. “It’s self-centred. If you want it to be better then get stuck in. We’re in government, this isn’t a game,” they added.
Another, a veteran, said: “I take a day off and all hell kicks off. It’s all a bit of a fiasco. People are disorientated, cheesed off and fed up. There is a general view that in time Keir will have to go, but we don’t want blood on the walls. Let’s give it time, and give it time for Andy Burnham to come back.”
Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, is not an MP, barring him from any leadership contest. The party blocked him from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election earlier this year, fearing he would launch a leadership bid if he won. The Greens then defeated Labour in that seat.
EPAThe thinking amongst Burnham’s supporters is this. Around 20 of them have so far publicly called for Sir Keir to announce a timetable for his departure (a further 10 MPs just want him to go). If he does so, then the party’s ruling national executive would no longer block Burnham from returning to Westminster because there would be no leadership challenge to a soon-departing Sir Keir. The hope is enough MPs could “live with” Burnham that a messy contest could be avoided entirely and he moves in to No 10 as Sir Keir moves out.
But if West provokes a contest now, that rules Burnham out. So some of his supporters have been trying – so far unsuccessfully – to persuade her to abandon her plan and adopt theirs instead.
But Sir Keir is ruling out both an abrupt and a more orderly departure, telling the Observer he is prepared to lead his party in to the next election, and serve a second term as prime minister.
The whispers at Westminster are that it may take cabinet-level resignations to force a rethink. But there doesn’t seem to be huge enthusiasm to be the first to go.
On Monday, Sir Keir will attempt to reboot his ailing premiership with a speech which will set out “with clarity” his values and convictions.
And on Wednesday, it is the State Opening of Parliament, where the government will set out its planned new legislation for the year or so.
The question is whether the Labour Party will give Sir Keir the time to implement it.
