It’s spin-the-wheel and try to become the next Labour leader season. Pre-Christmas fears of impending election failure leave Labour MPs looking to the May 2026 local elections in dread.
That has amplified mutterings that Keir Starmer may not be in Downing Street long enough to do his next TikTok switching on the tree lights. The first problem is the stubbornly negative ratings for Starmer, despite sterling efforts to “re-introduce” the Prime Minister to the public since Labour’s party conference on more personal terms. Try as Starmer might to put across a human face behind the earnest lawyer-turned-politician, the public has not found a connection. Nor has the Government’s wider offer excited or convinced either.
Either voters see it as unconnected to their lives or shrug that this lot are as chaotic as the Conservatives they replaced. According to a large Ipos poll, 71 per cent of those sampled said the country was not on the right track. And a nearly third blamed this government, rather than the last one.
Hardly surprising then, that the ministerial corps de ballet fancy their chances of nabbing a starring role. A trio of these hopefuls are spending December sharpening their profiles and modus operandi for replacing Starmer. There are others, too.
Andy Burnham is the most assiduous applicant. As the mayor of Greater Manchester, he is the figure voters most identify as having a fighting chance to emerge as the largest party at the next election. In essence, that means beating back the Reform UK surge.
This burning ambition has one major hurdle to clear however – how to “identify” a seat which he could take if a sitting MP moves aside. In effect this would mean someone who supported him stepping down. Burnham’s friend Andrew Gwynne, who has been absent from the Commons due to health issues, looks like the most likely route.
I am less convinced that the Mancunian challenge could be prevented by technical means (the Labour National Executive Committee blocking a candidacy) if things continue to heat up. Running scared of a leading Labour figure would be a poor look for Starmer and produce more agitation from those who dislike the controlling No 10 culture.
The question for Burnham is how his position on the sidelines or his stock in trade of defining the “North” against London would work in the glare of a nationwide party contest. After all, the Government has just endured a traumatic Budget, after the near-collapse of its welfare reforms and benefits spending plans under backbench pressure. The message from the gilt markets remains that any more free-spending candidate to the left of Starmer and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, would cause turmoil in the markets.
David Blunkett, the heavyweight former cabinet minister who remains Burnham’s friendly patrician supporter, has been on the airwaves coquettishly reminding his protégé that “timing is everything”.
Burnham’s beliefs have always been a mystery. Nowadays he is unclear on the trade-offs or how having him at the helm would take the fight to Reform more effectively than soggy Starmerism.
He also has to get past Wes Streeting, the job applicant with the Tiny Tim cheeky charm and a major Cabinet seat at Health as his launchpad. This choice would be a decisive dividing line. Would Labour do better to turn to someone outside the tent, or someone within it? Streeting, to cite a US friend who has been in the rough and tumble of Washington for decades, fulfils the criteria of being “one hundred pounds of pure political horseflesh”.
That is a sly talent. He showed it last week when warning that the “practical and technocratic” approach to governing is at the heart of Labour’s problems – as well as a tendency to “list a whole load of stuff we’ve done” while failing to convince.
The genius of this “we” version of self-criticism is that it is a harpoon directed at the leadership style. It’s the same way that talking about the need to change communications is often the sign of an incoming managerial putsch against the CEO. But Streeting also suffers from the accusation that he is a “wonderful me” player and a brilliant and often funny speaker, but one whose background in the machinery of Blairite Labour irks others.
That gives a lot of sway to Angela Rayner, the “princess across the water”. She may be playing the shrewdest hand of all. She has somehow guilted the PM into promising an early return to the front bench after the backfiring of her complex homes and taxes arrangements.
For now, she has kept criticism squarely on the controversial plan by David Lammy to overhaul trial by jury. Given that many senior lawyers in the Keir establishment don’t like this rushed overhaul either, Rayner is carefully deploying her critique in a way that amps up her seriousness.
Similarly, declaring her watchfulness on the erosion of promised employment rights to appease business also looks like she is keeping her powder dry. Rayner can either join Streeting, with whom she has a sparring relationship, or with Burnham to define a future role for herself. In short, Ange has options. And the party still hankers for a Rayner resurrection.
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That leaves Shabana Mahmood, who has reminded us (via an interview with Tony Blair no less) that she is a serious person with deep values, as well as a hawk on immigration. To complete the hopefuls we have Al Carns, the buccaneering ex-Marine on the back benches, who fulfils Labour’s need to try out a wild-card military man when in trouble. (Remember Dan Jarvis’s brief tenure in this role in 2015).
There’s vanishingly little sign however that Carns, while personally impressive, has the chops to be more than a passing fancy at this point in his career. Yet the interest in anything that feels different to the present plight is unmistakable.
That is why the countdown to a new year, with an early “mid-term” election test looming, is so risky for Keir. In this Twelve Days of Labour Christmas, the partridge is probably thinking of having a go at his job too.
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