Labour MPs are now openly plotting against Starmer ...Middle East

With the supportive sound of fists banging on desks ringing in his ears, Sir Keir Starmer left a meeting of his Labour backbench MPs to join a friendly dinner with colleagues in Parliament.

But, as anyone who watched The Traitors knows, it doesn’t matter what they say when you’re in the room. Just yards away from where the premier was eating, knots of Labour MPs simultaneously gathered to plot in the private MPs’ bar, the Smoking Room.

“We were here until late talking about the who and the how and the when to replace him,” a minister told The i Paper the following day.

Following conversations with dozens of MPs, Cabinet ministers and party strategists, it is clear that while a challenge against Starmer is not imminent, conversations around his future have stepped up a gear in recent weeks.

The Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is suffering a generational split as MPs elected only sixteen months ago fret Starmer’s mistakes will see them booted from office at the next election.

In contrast, the Cabinet and other senior party members consider the long-term. Having experienced the Corbyn years in opposition, to them the dangers of changing leader are obvious.

“There’s certainly a problem in the PLP, most of them are new. They were recruited in the image of Keir; they’re not political, they’re not tribal. They’re very impressive, but they’re not particularly loyal to anything, and they haven’t been in politics before, and they’re looking at the polls and thinking: ‘I’ll only be here for one term. I’m certainly not going to vote for stuff I don’t want to’,” a Cabinet minister told The i Paper.

The dinner on Monday highlighted Starmer’s increased engagement with MPs, including time in Parliament and inviting backbenchers to meals. “He’s suddenly turning up everywhere, like he twigs that he’s in trouble,” as another Labour MP put it.

Despite his attempts, the chatter continues, only intensifying as Chancellor Rachel Reeves hinted at a tax increase on Tuesday.

A Labour MP, elected in 2024, said Starmer and his supporters are in denial about the peril they face as the PLP is “feral,” despite Starmer’s attempts to connect.

The MP added: “It’s a mix of everything. It’s the botched reshuffle. It’s all the poll ratings. It’s having to break the manifesto commitment to raise income tax in the budget. It’s Peter Mandelson. It’s a belief among the PLP that the prime minister and Downing Street don’t really like them or respect them. Eventually, that feeling becomes mutual.”

A third Labour backbencher said: “There’s one question on the timing of when he’s replaced and there’s another question on the process. In the last couple of weeks, both conversations have stepped up again, so people are now talking about what the process might look like and what timings would be best, rather than it just being grumblings.”

Losing the Caerphilly Senedd by-election to Plaid Cymru concentrated minds ahead of elections in Cardiff and Edinburgh in May. In Holyrood, the Scottish National Party and Reform UK are currently ahead of Labour. In England, swathes of council seats could fall to opposition parties.

“The biggest howl of rage is coming from Scottish Labour MPs and some in Wales too. They are really upset that we are wasting a once in a generation opportunity to win back Scotland,” the MP added. “They’re the ones pushing for Keir to be ousted after the budget and not wait until May,” another Labour MP said.

The plotters appear now to be coalescing around moving against Starmer after May rather than after the budget, a point acknowledged by one of his Cabinet colleagues.

“If we lose to the nationalists in England, Wales and Scotland, then yeah, I think there’s a big problem,” the Cabinet minister said.

But others downplayed the threat to the premier. Another member of the Cabinet spoke of being “scarred” by Corbyn’s hard-left leadership, which in 2019 saw the party’s worst election defeat in 84 years.

“Most of the runners and riders of the next leadership race are people who worked very hard to build a project that got us into a place where we could win an election. Not all of us, backed Keir to be the leader, but just getting here and not fucking it up is as much our project as is his,” another Cabinet minister said.

“There are lots of people in the Cabinet who’d run if there were a vacancy and are laying the groundwork for that, but really, there isn’t anyone who’s trying to overthrow him,” they added.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander, and Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones are expected to be among the next leadership candidates.

To challenge Starmer, a contender would need the backing of 80 MPs – and even then the ultimate decision would rest with a vote of the party membership. Some in the party now think it more likely Starmer would be urged to step aside in a Cabinet coup.

A senior Labour source, who sits on the party’s ruling National Executive Committee said they recognised MPs “are unsettled, and it is febrile,” but they added: “That’s probably fairly normal with a parliamentary group of the size we’ve got, and the context we’re in ahead of the Budget. But that moving into more of a direct challenge to Keir is a thing I just cannot see.

“Definitely, people are manoeuvring. But I think what people underestimate is the sheer mechanics of any challenge. Someone needs to get 80 MPs backing them to trigger a contest,” the source added.

The rules for removing a Labour prime minister

There are two principal ways to remove a Labour prime minister. The most straightforward of these would be for Sir Keir Starmer to step down, possibly urged by his Cabinet.

After that, Labour MPs could apply. The ballot requires a candidate to be backed by 80 MPs.

Eligible members of the party and affiliates vote for the leader using a preferential voting system, placing candidates in order. Then, the party redistributes votes by ranking until a candidate receives over 50 per cent of the vote.

A more chaotic option would be Labour MPs turning on Starmer. The party leader cannot be subjected to a formal vote of confidence by Labour MPs. However, MPs are able to launch a leadership challenge every year ahead of the autumn party conference.

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. 

If Starmer were to refuse to step aside in the face of a challenge from MPs, he would automatically be on the ballot paper as the sitting Labour leader and current prime minister. Any Labour MP who breaks the 80+ nomination threshold would also make it into the contest. 

Subsequently, the same voting system is used until a candidate gains over half the ranked votes, becoming Labour leader and PM.

If a vacancy opens, there are plenty of other MPs outside of the Cabinet who could put themselves forward, including Deputy Leader Lucy Powell, former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh and even former Deputy Leader Angela Rayner.

This week, Haigh and Vicky Foxcroft, a former whip who resigned to vote against welfare cuts, took over the board of the revived Tribune group to give an organising voice to their “soft left” wing of the party.

The group, which had laid dormant until recently, is being revitalised to heap pressure on Reeves to end the two-child benefit limit in the upcoming Budget. In the future, it could act as an organising faction for a left-wing successor to Starmer.

On Monday night, Labour’s new deputy leader, Powell, sat alongside Starmer at the private meeting of Labour MPs. He praised her, with sources saying he is being welcoming in private too. That didn’t stop her from going public on Thursday to warn him not to break the party’s manifesto on income tax.

There is a danger that the upheaval in changing leader could have no effect on Labour’s polling. Leaked internal Labour polling shows the only candidate who could shift the dial in any meaningful way with voters would be Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who currently doesn’t even sit in Parliament.

The same polling also shows there is a significant risk in changing leaders at all: the public could compare Labour to the Tories, whose ability to cycle through leaders made them a laughing stock.

“Colleagues should look very, very closely about what happens to parties, governments and indeed the country if you have this revolving door of leaders. It’s incredibly destabilizing, and it only ends in one place. It will obviously feed into the next general election, also our ability to govern over the next three years and make the difference to people’s lives that we were elected to do,” an MP loyal to Starmer said.

There is also the possibility Labour’s grassroots could rally around Starmer if he dug in.

“When we tried to axe Jeremy [Corbyn] it went so badly that I think it was the thing that kept him in post for the remainder of his time,” a Cabinet minister said. “The public was sympathetic to him because he was the victim, and the members rallied around him not because they particularly liked him, but because he was their leader. They thought ‘you don’t attack our leader, because if you attack our leader, you’re attacking us’.”

A third Cabinet minister dismissed the strength of any plot to replace Starmer. “There are sections of the PLP who think they are stronger and have deeper support than they actually do – people like the Tribune group. What they don’t realise is that there is no alternative like there was under Corbyn.

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“There are lots of disappointed people who are not going to be promoted and who thought they’d come in to change the world and who aren’t team players,” the senior minister added.

For now at least, Starmer appears safe in post, despite the chuntering of backbenchers. One minister was optimistic about his future, saying: “Keir is like the opposite of Boris Johnson. Boris was popular with the public but not in Parliament. Keir is doing a good job with outreach, and he can definitely turn this around.”

Like an early episode of The Traitors, Starmer can find safety in numbers and the sheer technical difficulty in removing him.

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