There are many uncertainties but Wes Streeting’s resignation spells the end of Keir Starmer’s premiership – although Starmer, the master of process, could yet use all his procedural skills to delay his departure. After all, his reaction to all his political blows so far has echoed Monty Python’s knight, “’Tis but a scratch”.
That does not, of course, mean that Streeting will be the next leader of the Labour Party and prime minister. In a new poll of the party membership by Labour List, Starmer would be defeated by Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham or Ed Miliband, but he would beat Streeting.
Nor, as I write, is an imminent leadership contest a certainty. Streeting has yet to present the national executive with a list of 81 Labour MPs supporting his challenge. Only that can trigger game on.
If he has that support, the control over who enters shifts to the National Executive Committee. They will determine the timetable for the contest – that could exclude Burnham even if he is permitted to resign as Mayor of Greater Manchester, finds a parliamentary seat and wins it.
Starmer blocked Burnham last time, but with his power draining away, it seems unlikely that the NEC would do his bidding once a contest is inevitable.
Of course it is possible that Starmer could give up and announce a timetable for his departure now. But nothing we have seen from this stubborn and proud man so far suggests that he will do that. Then again, even Mrs Thatcher was eventually persuaded to give way.
Streeting’s resignation letter says he wants a wide contest in the party and that is likely to be the will of the rest of the party, even though it will leave the governance of the country in the air for weeks if not months.
Burnham is desperate to run but may not make it. The King of the North taking over King’s Landing is very much a hypothetical.
Rayner now looks to be the strongest challenger, unless she decides to hold the door open for someone else. Her clearing of wrongdoing over her second home in Hove has cost her £40,000 in unpaid tax, plus lawyers’ fees, although No 10 will presumably still argue that she was in breach of the ministerial code because she did not uphold the highest standards.
But will others let her through? For all his modesty, Miliband is now the senior figure in the Cabinet and must be tempted by making a grab for No 10. Many in Labour think a female leader is long overdue. There are possible candidates in Louise Haigh, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and Deputy Leader Lucy Powell.
My current reading of the mood in the Labour Party is that Labour’s transferable vote system just about guarantees that any of the above would eventually beat Streeting in the party leadership contest – whatever the wishes of the country as a whole.
If there is not a contest now – it is a racing certainty that someone will come for Starmer with a challenge this year.
Bluntly, he has passed the point of no return with his party. He is more unpopular than Labour “on the doorstep”. The voters simply do not like him. They hate his voice and even his glasses and hairstyle. They regard the North London lawyer as an inauthentic champion of “working people” – even if his father was a tool maker.
It is a terrible thing to depose a prime minister after less than two years in power. But he does not have the qualities of a national leader. He cannot speak to the nation and appears to find even normal personal relations with his colleagues troublesome. If he makes mistakes, he throws underlings under the bus. Labour was terrified by its setbacks in the local elections. The party seems to have no heartlands left – not Wales, not Scotland, not the Red Wall, not the cities and not the towns. His reset speech on Monday flopped, as did his King’s Speech.
Sir Keir Starmer is over. He will not see this Christmas in No 10.
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