One backbencher mulling a run for leadership said the party needs 'to install a new leader' who can help them win the next general election
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he intends to lead the U.K. for
10 years even as calls for his departure grow from within the governing Labour
Party and rivals threatened to launch a leadership challenge in the coming
days.
Starmer told the Observer newspaper on Sunday that he wanted to remain in
his job for a decade, answering “yes I will” when asked if he would lead Labour
into the next election — due by mid-August 2029 — and then serve a full second
term.
\However, that prospect looks increasingly implausible as rebel Members
of Parliament consider ousting him following heavy losses at a set of local
elections last week in which the governing party shed almost three in every
five seats it was defending, while populists on the right and left, Reform U.K.
and the Greens, made big advances.
Despite securing a landslide general election win in 2024, the prime
minister’s immediate future is in doubt following a torrid 22 months in office
dominated by a series of political scandals and widespread complaints both from
his party and the public that he’s failed to make progress on Labour’s core
pledge of delivering change.
“What I heard loud and clear from voters was their deep sense of
frustration that they’d voted for change in 2024, they were hopeful that that
change would be delivered, and they don’t feel that we as a party or we as a
Labour government have delivered what they wanted,” Education Secretary Bridget
Phillipson told Sky News on Sunday, even as she defended the premier.
Labour lost about 1,500 council seats in England, including across
swathes of traditional strongholds in London and northern England. The party
was also defeated in Scotland and sank to a dismal third in a vote for the
assembly in Wales, where it’s topped the ballot in every vote for the Welsh and
Westminster parliaments for more than a century.
Those results led to a growing clamour on Labour’s back benches for the
party to change tack, with more than 30 Members of Parliament calling for a
change of leader. Catherine West, a little-known backbencher and former junior
minister, said she would attempt to launch a leadership bid in the days ahead
if a planned reset speech by Starmer on Monday fails to signal a sufficient
change of direction toward bolder policies.
“We need to install a new leader who can take us towards beating Reform
in the general election to come and give us a second term,” West told BBC TV on
Sunday. She added that she’d had “lots of interest” from Labour MPs, but
wouldn’t formally ask for their support until after she’s assessed Starmer’s
speech on Monday. She repeatedly declined to say whether she’d be able to win
the support of 20 per cent of Labour MPs, the threshold required by the party’s
rulebook to trigger a leadership election.
Starmer will use the speech to outline his plan to turn the party’s
fortunes around, including by taking the U.K. closer toward the European Union.
It is being viewed as a major moment after which Labour lawmakers — including
more plausible contenders than West — will decide whether to move against him.
Supporters of Health Secretary Wes Streeting and former deputy premier Angela
Rayner, two potential challengers who have been the subject of months of
speculation, said they were weighing their options this weekend.
On Sunday, Rayner called on the PM to urgently change the direction of
his government but did not explicitly challenge Starmer. She added that it was
a “mistake” to block Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, another potential
leadership candidate, from running in a by-election earlier this year that may
have led to his return to parliament.
“The PM must now meet the moment and set out the change our country
needs,” she said in a statement. “Labour exists to make working people better
off. That is not happening fast enough, and it needs to change — now.”
West, meanwhile, has described herself as a “stalking horse,” meaning a
lower-profile politician who challenges a party leader with little serious
intention of taking their job, but with the aim of precipitating a contest in
which a more credible candidate emerges.
Phillipson told Sky News she thought a leadership contest was not the
answer to Labour’s woes, insisting she thought the premier should lead the
party into the next election. She declined to endorse Starmer’s claim that he’d
lead the country for a decade, pointing only to the party’s previous promise to
oversee a “decade of renewal.”
People familiar with the matter said West’s challenge is viewed in Labour as appearing to benefit the leadership chances of either Streeting or Rayner, and damaging Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s prospects of taking the top job — because he does not currently have the parliamentary seat he would need to be able to stand. The people spoke on condition of anonymity about internal party ructions, as did allies of Burnham, Streeting and Rayner.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that the majority of the so-called soft-left
faction of Labour MPs, including Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, wanted to put
off a contest until Burnham is able to secure election to Parliament in a
by-election. Yet Labour MPs said the flaw in that plan is that it could
incentivize Streeting and Rayner to move now before Burnham, who boasts
superior poll ratings, can make it to Westminster.
The Labour Party is waiting to see whether either Streeting and Rayner
announce their intention to challenge Starmer the coming days, perhaps after
his speech on Monday, lawmakers said. An ally of Streeting distanced the health
secretary from West, saying he had not spoken to her in months. Neither
Streeting nor Rayner’s camps ruled out making a move in days ahead.
Supporters of Burnham said he intended to make another attempt to run for
Parliament, after he was blocked by Starmer’s allies from doing so earlier this
year. Labour MPs said they expected one of their cohort to soon stand down and
trigger a by-election in which Burnham would attempt to stand, setting up
another battle with the premier.
It leaves Labour in a chaotic position where supporters of Starmer and
Burnham are both attempting to put off a challenge over the coming days, albeit
for very different reasons.
Backers of Burnham warned that if a contest happens now while he is
ineligible, they may end up with a leader that many in the party do not really
want.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite trade union and a
long-standing left-wing critic of Starmer, told the BBC she was “sure” Starmer
would not lead Labour into the next election and that any new leader would need
to change the government’s direction.
“It’s no good just tinkering around the edges — they must take a
completely different economic direction and political direction,” she said.
“We’re in a situation here where they could be extinct. There’s no God-given
right for Labour to exist.”
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/starmer-pm-decade-challenges-labour-party