As Labour MPs wargame how to depose Sir Keir Starmer, some have a strategy from the Margaret Thatcher years in mind.
In 1990, the former Conservative Prime Minister was told her time was up by a delegation of “men in grey suits” from her party. Now, Labour MPs are discussing sending a deputation of women to tell Starmer to resign.
There are two principal ways to remove a Labour prime minister. The most straightforward of these would be for Starmer to step down, possibly urged by his Cabinet. But a group of senior backbenchers could also take soundings from colleagues and tell the PM to go, Labour MPs said.
They suggested Dame Meg Hillier, influential chair of the Treasury Select Committee, as a possible candidate for the job if there is a groundswell of backbenchers who want Starmer to quit. Hillier won plaudits from colleagues in the summer after she co-ordinated efforts to block the unpopular welfare bill. She could be accompanied by Debbie Abrahams, chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, who also enjoys widespread respect, they said.
“Meg Hillier has the gravitas to go to Keir and tell him his time is up. Plenty of people like her and she is well plugged in and has organising power, she showed that on the welfare rebellion. Perhaps she takes Debbie Abrahams with her? Meg doesn’t want the job herself, and she is someone who Keir would listen to. You’d need someone with gravitas and grey hair; no offence to Meg.”
Dame Meg Hillier, influential chair of the Treasury Select Committee, could be sent to No 10 to tell Starmer to resignHillier declined to comment.
But another Labour MP suggested Hillier would not be a correct fit for the job, suggesting it would take a person in the Labour Party “with a much closer relationship with Keir to tell him that his time is up if it gets to that point”.
“Perhaps they need to be a proper friend, someone who goes to Arsenal games with him. The proper person for the job is, of course, the Chief Whip [Jonathan Reynolds] or one of the Cabinet who is close to him like [Labour Party Chair] Anna [Turley],” they said.
Starmer and Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, are both fighting for their political futures after the Prime Minister admitted on Wednesday that he appointed Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington despite knowing the peer continued his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after the paedophile’s conviction.
Some in the Parliamentary Labour Party [PLP] are now openly calling for both men to quit, although a quiet majority thinks a leadership contest ahead of May’s elections would be disastrous.
“The mood in the PLP is febrile, and while a month ago it was mostly a minority of the Scottish and Welsh MPs calling for an early leadership replacement because they thought the SNP will keep Holyrood or we lose Cardiff, that is now not the case,” a Labour source said on Thursday.
“More and more people are now talking up a ‘Chris Pincher moment’. No one saw it coming as the final straw that brought down Boris Johnson. It could be an as yet unknown unknown. It could be something we can’t see yet that prompts MPs to either start writing letters, or a delegation to No 10 or a Cabinet resignation. That could be a loss in [the by-election in] Gorton and Denton or something we don’t know about yet.”
The most chaotic option would be Labour MPs turning on Starmer without an obvious candidate or slate of candidates. The party leader cannot be subjected to a formal vote of confidence by Labour MPs. Currently, at least 80 MPs would have to support a sitting Labour MP as a challenger candidate. Some have suggested a “stalking horse” could run – a candidate with no interest in winning – to prompt a contest. This would leave proper contenders with no blood on their hands.
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