Sir Keir Starmer has not spoken to his probable successor as prime minister since the day Andy Burnham was selected to fight Makerfield on May 19. This is the most passive-aggressive coup in modern history.
By pretending Burnham’s not there, political reality can apparently remain deferred and unconfronted. But time is up. Over the weekend, the reality has become overwhelming. From 200 miles away in Manchester, the show of strength could no longer be ignored.
Even as Starmer repeatedly insisted he would stay in post, his authority has evaporated. In Cabinet, Shabana Mahmood, Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband and Heidi Alexander are the ones we know for sure who have privately asked him to agree a timeline for his departure. There are probably more.
There are certainly other Cabinet ministers who have privately told The i Paper in recent weeks they think Starmer should go – even if right now they hold back in letting their views be known, so it looks as if Starmer came to the inevitable conclusion on his own.
The last person to come to terms with the political reality is in No 10. Even as they carry out the wooden lectern into Downing Street, the Prime Minister will still believe he has a five-year mandate; and, like the late Queen Elizabeth II, it’s his duty not to abdicate.
After all, he was the one who rescued the Labour Party from the grim, unelectable, Jeremy Corbyn years and led it to a landslide general election victory.
Burnham will make a triumphant camera-heavy arrival at Euston on Monday as he takes his seat in Parliament. His gamble of taking on and defeating Reform UK in the Makerfield by-election has given him, his supporters argue, a personal mandate to change Labour. Starmer, they say, failed that test when Labour was wiped out at the local elections.
It’s a bold claim and the Prime Minister is right to scoff at the idea that Burnham has some huge mandate. Only 24,927 people voted for Burnham last week. In 2024, Starmer’s Labour secured 9,708,816.
But you can’t govern without authority, and the power has shifted. Burnham effectively ran against Starmer in Makerfield, just as leader of Scottish Labour Anas Sarwar did in the Holyrood elections. More than 100 of Starmer’s party have told him to go. Now, only the ultra-loyalists remain. On Sunday, they were noticeable by their silence.
Starmer, encouraged by his wife Victoria’s support to remain in post, is perplexed by his personal unpopularity; and by extension, his Government’s freefall connection to voters. Last week, at the G7 meeting in Evian with other world leaders, he was relaxed and jovial. His super-skill is the ability to compartmentalise. It’s what made him fight until the pressure was overwhelming.
Luke Tryl, director of the More in Common think-tank, who conducted multiple focus groups in Makerfield, said three reasons explain Starmer’s unpopularity.
“From winter fuel, his gloomy pronouncements on the economy and his handling of freebies turned the public against him from early on. Secondly, he simply never connected as leader, his U-turns made him look weak. In Makerfield, I repeatedly heard him described as ‘out of touch’ contrasted with Burnham’s ‘relatability’.
Most importantly, because Starmer lacks a distinctive political vision of his own, people have projected their wishes on to him. In fact, it sometimes feels like Starmer has become a vessel for everything people don’t like about a ‘broken status quo that doesn’t work for them,’” Tryl told The i Paper.
At the Makerfield by-election count and ensuing celebrations from Burnham’s supporters, the key adjective seemed to be “dignity”. They don’t want a messy coup with Starmer dragged from office. Instead, they just made the strength of their position from Manchester quite clear.
And in London, members of the Cabinet wanted “respect” for Starmer, while being firmly of the view that means leaving without a fuss. Starmer’s lack of political hinterland, once a virtue, is now his undoing. It’s what annoys his MPs the most.
Both determinedly beta males, Burnham and Starmer are like the Hugh Grant and Colin Firth characters in the film Bridget Jones’s Diary. If they had finally squared up via a leadership contest, it would have been the political equivalent of a fight with fingers in nostrils and inadequate ju-jitsu moves. No one in Labour wants to see it.
Perhaps more importantly, the consistent message across all wings of The Labour Party is they don’t want voters tarring them with the same brush as the Conservatives. The last Tory administration was riven by an endless search for a new leader, a new winner, like a junkie keening for their next fix.
Yes, he was captured by a wing of The Labour Party blind to Peter Mandelson’s failings. Yes, he suffered from inadequate preparation, strategic disarray and significant self-inflicted mistakes; ranging from reducing the winter fuel allowance for pensioners, to cronyism and free suits and glasses. But he is, fundamentally, a decent man. We might even miss him when he’s gone.
Starmer’s connections with his backbenchers are so notoriously poor that there is a joke among Labour MPs that the worst question they could ask Starmer is what their name is. But, at least he’s met them. Burnham will be playing catch-up.
There are also 200-odd members of the party on the same wing as Starmer. “I’m wondering how big and progressive his big tent is,” one Labour MP said on Sunday, as others war gamed who Burnham would pick as his Chancellor and place in his top team.
Unlike the Tories, this coup may have been bloodless, but all the same structural and economic problems remain. The same party management problems are there. And Burnham has even less time to fix them before the next election.
But perhaps we are all to blame. Our Amazon-speed demands for change by tomorrow means no modern politician can possibly keep up. Burnham might be a better communicator than Starmer, but six prime ministers since Brexit is not a good look for any modern democracy.
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