Keir Starmer is facing a perilous 24 hours as allies of Wes Streeting said he was prepared to bid for the leadership if the prime minister’s premiership falls apart this week.
Starmer was hoping to save his job with a speech that sets out his vision for turning the country around on Monday, after a disastrous set of local election results in which the party lost support to Reform UK and the Greens.
However, his chances of staying in No 10 appeared to be diminishing on Sunday as about 40 Labour MPs called for him to quit or name an exit date.
One ally of Streeting told the Guardian: “Wes isn’t going to challenge Keir but he is preparing in case it all falls apart.”
Streeting is understood to have delivered this same message to No 10 last week but he will not be the first to make a move against the prime minister. The health secretary’s supporters believe he has demonstrated fighting spirit after his local Redbridge council was retained by Labour.
Catherine West, a Labour backbencher, has already said she will challenge the prime minister for the leadership on Monday if he does not set out a timetable to resign. She would need 80 supporters among Labour MPs and allies of Streeting said they had nothing to do with her plan.
However, backers of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, have been trying to persuade West to withdraw her bid as it would not leave him enough time to enter parliament.
West’s move is widely seen as benefiting Streeting, whose allies believe he has enough support to enter a race, and contenders from the soft left in parliament, including Angela Rayner or Ed Miliband.
Supporters of Rayner say she is not set on being the candidate but is also prepared for the possibility of launching a leadership bid.
Some on the left have been urging Ed Miliband to be their candidate as an alternative, believing Rayner does not have enough support in the country and given that the HMRC inquiry into Rayner’s tax affairs is not yet settled.
The cabinet may be decisive in Starmer’s future, with ministers including Shabana Mahmood, Lisa Nandy and Pat McFadden having remained silent about the party’s loss of 1,500 councillors and about 40 councils.
One Labour cabinet source said: “There is a residual loyalty to Keir but they are at end of their tether.” On the idea of a timetable for Starmer to go, as promoted by some Burnham supporters, the source said: “You cannot say you are listening to the message of voters and then park everything for six months or more … That would send us backwards. We don’t have that time to waste.”
However, Starmer was defended by the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, on Sunday, who said Labour MPs would be wrong to remove him, even though voters had given the party a “real kicking” at the ballot box and people felt “bitterly let down”.
Phillipson said Labour had been “too gloomy” and had made a mistake in trying to withdraw the winter fuel allowance.
Many of those calling for Starmer to set out an “orderly” timetable to resign were would-be Burnham supporters, even though an imminent contest would benefit existing MPs.
The latest to call for Starmer to set out a timetable to go was Josh Simons, a former Cabinet Office minister, who said Starmer must arrange a transition to a new leader as he had “lost the country” and was incapable of “rising to this moment”. Writing in the Times, he said: “To avoid leadership chaos, senior figures across factions should come together to decide the best way forward.”
Facing a threat to his premiership, Starmer gave an interview to the Observer saying he wanted to serve for two terms or 10 years. He has also attempted to refresh his government by bringing back the former prime minister Gordon Brown as an adviser on finance, and the former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman as an adviser on women and girls.
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