There has been a joke going around Labour MPs over the past week about three envelopes in Soviet Russia. “Whenever you run into trouble, open them in order,” the instructions go. Envelope one says: “Blame your predecessor.” So he does – and it works. The party officials are satisfied. A year later, problems arise again. He opens envelope two. It says: “Restructure the organisation.”
He does a big reshuffle, changes some titles, and again buys himself some time. Finally, another crisis comes. He opens envelope three. It says: “Prepare three envelopes.”
The problem for Keir Starmer is that the MPs sharing the joke believe he has already opened his first two. It is becoming increasingly hard to find anybody in the Labour party who will argue that things are going anything other than disastrously for the government.
They fear that attempts to deal with the multiple difficulties faced by the prime minister over the past year – many of them self-inflicted errors such as the winter fuel duty decision, the freebies row and the handling of welfare cuts – have instead unleashed more chaos.
The most recent example of this is the sacking of Peter Mandelson. When ministers warned that his scandal-ridden history indicated he was more of a risk than an asset – even when the security services allegedly shared concerns – Starmer went ahead and appointed him.
Then, even though Mandelson had warned publicly that more “embarrassing” emails from him to convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were about to be published, Starmer defended him at prime minister’s questions.
With his political judgment repeatedly questioned, Labour people turn to his “vision” for Britain. The problem is they can’t identify what the prime minister really believes in. Allies say he doesn’t like the “V word” and has made no secret of being a distinctly non-ideological politician.
Instead, he believes the government should demonstrate change by making a material difference to people’s lives, through schools, the NHS, the immigration system and the economy, even if that is in relatively slow, incremental steps.
“It’s hopeless,” one minister said. “Too many people feel the country is in decline and the only route back is big, radical solutions. We’re doing lots of good stuff but it barely gets noticed. It just doesn’t hit the mark.”
The question being asked in the tea rooms and bars and corridors of Westminster is whether Starmer is up to the task of finding the solutions the country needs. And, increasingly, the conclusion reached among MPs is: “No.”
There are, of course, those in government and close to Starmer who urge calm. One veteran party figure said: “I don’t know what they’re all panicking about. Keir is sitting on a massive majority and it’s more than three years until the next election. They’ve got time to turn things around.”
But the doubt has set in. Not just that Starmer has shown a lack of political judgment, ideological vision, or – especially when compared with the charisma of Nigel Farage – personality. But that he never had it in the first place.
No governing party as far back as the 1980s has seen its polling fall so far in its first year in power. And with the rise of Reform UK, Labour MPs worry that time is running out.
The question of ‘how’
It is not unusual or surprising for MPs to grumble about their party leaders – nor to discuss how they might theoretically get rid of them and replace them with somebody else.
But this time it appears to be more than just idle gossip. The Guardian has spoken to MPs, ministers – including at cabinet level – and party officials who claim that below-the-radar operations to oust the prime minister are already in place.
“The conversation has moved on from ‘if’. Now it’s about ‘who’ and ‘how’,” one MP involved in plotting said. The summer recess, when the government vacated the public arena and allowed Reform UK to shape the narrative, crystallised the need for a change.
“Before then, there were quite a lot of people saying we’ve got to make it work. We came back after the summer, the mood had significantly hardened,” one MP said.
“People in their constituencies have been getting terrible feedback. Farage has been everywhere. The mood was: this has been a fucking disaster. We’ve been given nothing to do. The government just cleared the pitch.”
Others have been reflecting on the timing, with the general view that next May’s local elections – with Wales and dozens of councils in the north of England at risk of falling to Reform, and Scotland staying in the hands of the SNP – are a moment of particular peril for Starmer.
But some don’t believe Starmer can survive even that long. After Downing Street’s leaden-footed response to the Mandelson row, furious MPs turned their ire on Morgan McSweeney, the No 10 chief of staff. But for most he is just a lightning rod for all their anger and disappointment.
“I’m not even sure Starmer can survive until May,” one Blair-era cabinet minister said. “The mood is dire. The message from pretty much across the board was that one more major issue like Rayner/Peter and the dam would burst. But this is the Labour party so we shall see.”
Labour is not known for regicide. Unlike the Conservatives, there is no 1922 Committee to write to, nor a device that prompts a confidence vote. The Labour party, ironically, acts more like a gentleman’s club. If a vote of confidence is called and carried, a leader might be expected to do the honourable thing and resign. But Jeremy Corbyn did not resign when 80% of his MPs did not back him.
Over the summer recess, some ambitious MPs from the new intake met up away from Westminster to discuss the dire state of the polls. Many of them have long careers close to or within Labour, and know well the particular difficulties of the party’s leadership system when it comes to the prospect of removing an unpopular leader.
Under the party rules, unless there is a vacancy, potential challengers need the support of at least 20% of MPs – meaning there is a threshold of 80 to trigger a contest. Starmer would automatically be on the ballot if he wished.
Alternatively, if Starmer’s personal approval rating doesn’t improve, his praetorian guard – potentially including McSweeney – could advise him it was time to stand down for the sake of the country, although they would also be putting themselves out of a job.
The question of ‘who’
Even for those MPs who feel they have answered the “how” part of the equation, there remains a great deal of uncertainty about the “who”. “If we learnt one thing from the Tories, it should be that you must have a plan before you act. I don’t think there is a perfect candidate in the current cabinet,” said one MP.
With Angela Rayner forced to stand down from government and a future comeback looking uncertain, the bookies’ favourite is, at least for now, firmly out of the picture. As the figure to whom the party would almost certainly have turned, her departure offers Starmer a lifeline.
Other names on the soft left of the party that get thrown into the mix include Ed Miliband, who MPs say has not ruled out a comeback, and Louise Haigh, the sacked transport secretary known to be a formidable organiser.
On the right of the party, some MPs remain loyal to Wes Streeting as a future leader. “He has 10 times the charisma,” one said. “But I don’t know what his path is without some kind of deal with the left to prevent a contest. He could have done with Angela, maybe. But I don’t know what that really looks like now.”
Allies claim that private polling of the membership is more encouraging for Streeting than might be expected. He is understood to have always been McSweeney’s preferred choice as a successor, and the two men are close. But he also almost lost his seat at the general election, over Gaza.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, who is running for the deputy leadership, and Shabana Mahmood, the impressive new home secretary, also have ambitions that could yet be thwarted by a left-leaning membership. Neither has a leadership operation in place, although Phillipson will presumably build one for the deputy race and some MPs are already acting as outriders for Mahmood.
The one name, however, that has attracted more and more warmth over recent months is that of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester. MPs have shared data showing he is the only Labour politician with a net positive rating from the public. A third of the UK sees him favourably which is the political equivalent of a rave review.
Burnham also reaches across the party. The Guardian has spoken to individuals in both the centrist Labour Growth Group of MPs and in the Socialist Campaign Group who have all come to the conclusion that he is the only option.
He has backed Mainstream, a new network set up to change Labour’s direction, and which will inevitably be seen as a vehicle that could be quickly transformed into a leadership operation if needed. When asked by the Guardian last week, Burnham did not rule out the possibility of running in a future leadership contest with the network’s support.
Burnham is not an MP and therefore is not eligible to run but this is not an insurmountable problem. Senior Labour party figures revealed that an existing Manchester MP who is in ill health is ready to stand down, causing a byelection – the party leadership is likely to do everything it can to block it.
One Burnham ally said: “Andy is ready to come back but it needs to be asap. He needs to be in place before the May elections in order to be ready. He also needs to be upfront about why he wants to come back and challenge the leadership to defy the party’s wishes.”
But even among those who think Starmer has to go there is still uncertainty about the wisdom of such a move. “There’s a calculation that needs to be made,” one cabinet minister said. “We might get a boost if we put in place a different leader and they quickly get a grip. But there’s a danger that we’re basically saying to the country that we’re the same as the Tories.”
Could ‘doing better’ save Starmer?
So what can Starmer do about it? His allies say he is deeply frustrated that, having spent the summer thinking about how to improve government delivery and reshape the narrative, his efforts have been so spectacularly undermined by all the “noise and nonsense” of recent days.
“Frankly, it has been derailed by a deputy prime minister who wasn’t able to get her tax affairs in order or her story straight, and the serial lies and deceit of Peter Mandelson,” a source close to Starmer said.
“No one is oblivious to the scale of the challenge or the need to be better, least of all Keir. We know it’s a difficult time and MPs are worried about their own majorities. We’re more aware than anyone that things are very febrile.”
They insisted that Starmer, as a decent, sensible, pragmatic leader was “uniquely well placed” to take on Nigel Farage’s rightwing populists and their exploitation of grievance and narrative of failure.
“We need an antidote to Farage and Trump, not our own version of it. The antidote is delivering change and making lives better. He knows he needs to do that. And he knows we need to do better,” one said.
But even before the May local elections there are dangerous flashpoints for the prime minister. While rising public concern over small boat crossings and the potential for tax rises in the budget were always going to be difficult challenges, with the existing mood of the party, either could now bring him down.
And yet even among the small handful of people who are actively plotting Starmer’s downfall, there is a fear that even a shiny new leader would be overcome by the deep systemic challenges facing the country, and help usher in the age of Farage.
“This government is adrift – bobbing like a tiny cork on waves it does not have the courage to battle,” said one government insider. “But even Thatcher and Blair would be struggling right now. The mix of global issues, economic disaster zone, public services crisis and immigration is a truly horrendous cocktail.”
