The clock is ticking on Sir Keir Starmer’s time as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. When the briefing went out that he would fight a leadership challenge, this turbocharged the likelihood of one taking place.
It triggers memories of then-prime minister Sir John Major’s decision 30 years ago to take on his internal critics in a leadership contest, telling them it was time to “put up or shut up”. With the briefing insisting Sir Keir would fight a contest, Labour MPs are now confronted with a series of stark questions that demand urgent answers: Do they want Sir Keir to lead them into the next general election?
Is there an alternative leader who could save the party from a disaster in May’s Scottish, Welsh and local elections? Is there someone who can do a better job at igniting growth and getting a grip on Britain’s crisis-ridden public services?
Those who have pointed the finger at Wes Streeting as a potential plotter have transformed the Health Secretary into a Michael Portillo figure, an alternative PM ready to attempt to lead the party and the country out of its present morass.
In the end, Mr Portillo did not stand in the 1995 contest and instead ran in 2001 and lost to Iain Duncan Smith. He has become something of a national treasure through his subsequent career as a presenter of railway documentaries, but Mr Streeting will want a much more exciting future than that.
He has denied he is looking to challenge Sir Keir, displaying his Blairite gift for a zeitgeisty soundbite by saying the briefing against him has been “the worst attack on a faithful since Joe Marler was banished in The Traitors final”.
The 42-year-old will want to avoid looking either devious or hubristic in the coming weeks and months, but anyone in his position would also wish to avoid the fate of so many talented politicos who fluffed their chance to lead Britain when the opportunity emerged.
Those on the Labour Left who are appalled by the concept of Prime Minister Streeting will want to have a candidate and a campaign team ready – that means getting the union support and the money in place.
Once the Left and the Right have their forces lined up, they will look across at Sir Keir and ask: “What are you waiting for?”
The case against a leadership contest is clear. It would make it even harder for ordinary Labour MPs to argue on the doorstep that they are not “just as bad as the Tories”. The Conservative brand has been horrendously scarred by the leadership changes and brazen plotting which defined their last years in power.
Reform UK will point at Labour and say Sir Keir’s party is just as riven with divisions, that it has also pushed the UK into an economic mess, presided over a fiasco in the prisons and completely failed to stop the small boats in the Channel.
But anguished Labour MPs who fear losing their seats and their livelihoods will mull the argument for putting their party under new leadership.
Wes Streeting has stamped on suggestions he could be plotting (Image: Getty)
Michael Portillo was once seen as the champion of a modernised Tory party (Image: Getty)
Yes, Sir Keir won a monumental majority on less than 34% of the vote, which points to either magnificent luck or a rare dash of strategic genius. But he has allowed Nigel Farage’s party to win a double-digit lead in the polls and permitted Zack Polanski’s Greens to emerge as an energetic and populist challenge from the Left.
Sir Keir’s team has managed to alienate pensioners, farmers and employers, last year’s Budget failed to restore stability to the public finances and they now look on the verge of breaking a flagship manifesto tax pledge.
Unemployment is climbing and the economy is flatlining, and they were forced to retreat on welfare reform despite widespread alarm at the health and economic consequences of mushrooming benefits dependency.
Now that Sir Keir’s friends have put a potential leadership election firmly on the horizon, MPs who had not considered moving against the PM will ask: “Can Labour do better than this? Can the country do better than this?”
Sir John Major clung on until 1997 and led his party not just to defeat but into a wilderness where they were lost for more than a decade. Now Labour supporters will start looking for someone to lead them away from such a frightening fate.
