We are entering a week that will define British politics for years to come. After months of anguished prevarication, Labour MPs have finally – and definitively – concluded that Keir Starmer is not up to the job. The question they are now wrestling with is not whether to remove him as Prime Minister but how the process of his removal will play out. And yet, as all sides in the coming struggle for power privately acknowledge, the stakes could hardly be higher – not just for themselves and the future of the Labour Party, but for the country itself.
We should not be squeamish about the prospect that lies before us: civil war within the Labour Party. While every faction of the party is now united in its hostility to Starmer, there is deep division over what should come next. Those on Labour’s broad right, led by Wes Streeting, are weighing up whether an early move against the Prime Minister is worth the risk of Angela Rayner, the most prominent figure from Labour’s disgruntled left, taking control. On the other side of the ledger, however, is the sense that Rayner’s campaign is already weakening, amid claims that other leading figures from the soft left – from Louise Haigh to Ed Miliband – are sceptical of Rayner’s leadership ambitions and are moving towards Andy Burnham.
What makes this contest so dangerous, however, is that neither side in this struggle can accept the victory of the other. To the Labour right, Rayner is a Liz Truss-style crisis-in-waiting — an existential threat to the party and the country, who would open the door to bond market turbulence and a Nigel Farage victory. To the Labour left, however, Streeting is viewed in similarly apocalyptic terms: a Rishi Sunak-style status-quo candidate who represents the very politics that has led the party to the precipice. One side sees calamitous risk, the other calamitous continuity.
Watching these events unfold from Manchester with a mixture of alarm and hope is Burnham, the one figure who both sides of this impending ideological war say they could work with. While Catherine West’s stalking horse announcement on Saturday took Burnham – and Streeting – by surprise, those close to the mayor of Greater Manchester believe it has at least forced the process closer to its conclusion. They are confident that support is growing within the cabinet and wider party for a “managed” contest to replace Starmer in which he will be allowed to take part.
Burnham, though, has yet to convince Rayner that this is the case. Rayner last week told Burnham that she did not believe the NEC would sanction his return. According to those close to Burnham, she will not accept that anything fundamental has changed. Rayner also told Streeting directly that she had “no hard feelings” towards him, but was clear that she associated him with the backroom factionalism of “the Ms” — as she refers to Morgan McSweeney, Matt Pound, Matthew Doyle and other members of the old Labour Together group.
Streeting, meanwhile, has concluded that the dam holding Labour MPs from moving against the Prime Minister is likely to break after Starmer’s speech on Monday. Starmer’s performance over the weekend was seen by many in the cabinet as lamentable: his statement in the aftermath of the defeat “tone deaf”; the appointments of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman important but irrelevant to the problems revealed by the election defeat; and the first drafts of his speech – circulated to colleagues over the weekend – utterly underwhelming. “He’s chosen his worst format to save himself,” one leading party figure put it to me in despair.
According to those around the cabinet table now challenging his leadership, Starmer does not appear to be able to answer the simple questions: why is he Prime Minister and what does he want to do? By not being able to answer these questions convincingly, those he relies on in government now believe they are feeding into what one called the very “cynicism and despair” that crushed them at the ballot box last week. “This country keeps voting for change but we don’t give it to them,” one senior Labour figure put it to me over the weekend. “That is the biggest dilemma facing Labour – if we can’t, between us, Labour and the Greens risk handing this country to Reform.”
Those close to Streeting believe that once the dam breaks this week, a contest for the leadership may become impossible to stop. Streeting has long concluded that while Rayner is popular among party members she is beatable in a straight contest and may not even have the numbers among her colleagues to get on the ballot paper. The Health Secretary, however, believes that other candidates from the soft-left of the party could seize the moment to challenge for the leadership. Lucy Powell is seen by some to be playing “an interesting chess game”: she could use her successful election to the deputy leadership as a springboard in the event of a contest taking place before Burnham’s return. Many in the cabinet believe Al Cairns also “wants a crack”. Yvette Cooper and John Healey, meanwhile, are seen as viable outside late runners.
Streeting’s allies argue there are now three qualities any candidate needs to answer to win the Labour leadership: they must show they can win; that they can deliver in office; and that they have a vision the party – and the country – can get behind. Streeting believes last week’s election results on his constituency patch – where Labour vastly outperformed the national trend – showed he could win. His team believe NHS waiting list figures out on Thursday will prove he can deliver in office. And in a long-planned speech later this week, he will get the chance to set out his own vision for the country. Yet it is on these very questions that Burnham also believes he has the advantage over all the other candidates in the field.
Neither of them, however, can control what is going to happen over the next few days – how the Prime Minister performs, whether Catherine West decides to follow through, or what Angela Rayner decides to do. Labour stands on the precipice. What it decides in the coming days will shape not simply who emerges on top, but what sort of party they will have left to lead.
[Further reading: Keir Starmer is all alone]
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