After the May Elections Meltdown, Will Keir Starmer Finally Be Replaced?

A grizzly Monday for the mother of parliaments, still suffering the mother of all hangovers following last week’s local elections blitz. And the headaches bang hardest for Labour MPs, with the party of government scrambling to find a fix for that post-bash existential dread.

It has left 400ish Labour MPs necking the political ibuprofen while whispering a fairly rhetorical “What happened?” into their pillows. A few have named the name “Keir Starmer” but, so far, just one has threatened his leadership, with Labour MP Catherine West laying down the gauntlet this weekend. 

“If the cabinet do not get their act together,” she told Sky on Saturday, setting a Monday morning deadline before she launches her own leadership bid, “I will email every single one of my colleagues.”

It’ll take the signatures of 80 MPs to get her challenge going. If West gets that (and it seems she may be close), it’ll be all go for the leadership, with the real contenders finally making a break for it. But will that spell a new dawn for Labour? Or simply a fresh sleepwalker, continuing the trudge to electoral irrelevance?

You may not know much about Catherine West, but it’s not her first time at the PM-slaying rodeo. Back in December 2021, the former Jeremy Corbyn frontbencher asked then-prime minister Boris Johnson whether he’d been partying in Downing Street during lockdown. He said no. A little over a month later, she brought the receipts that suggested he’d lied. And we all know the unravelling that followed.

West is not about to send her own prime minister, and so also her party, the way she sent Johnson. But she’s shown a ruthlessness about Starmer that thousands of now jobless local Labour councillors, and a handful of experienced MPs, will be applauding. 

The problem, though, is this. The Labour backbenches are stacked with deeply unflavoured MPs. Political chicken breasts, unsalted, unspiced, slow-baked dry in the dim glow of Keir Starmer’s halogen intellect – they know come next election, without him it’s the foxes for them. But does their lack of political experience mean they haven’t quite realised it’s foxes for the Labour party with him, too?

How did we get here? Well, we don’t talk nearly enough about how our democracy was absolutely gangstered by the Labour Together crowd at the last general election (and even one of them has now turned on Starmer). The degree to which cronies and consultants now occupy our parliament is unprecedented. We are overstocked with MPs who have zero connection to power through the constituencies they were parachuted into. Instead, they depend for their survival on the Starmer throne. Sure, they’re now discovering it’s a pile of nothing-burgers with a gold sheet thrown over. But each will also be calculating: what am I without it?   

Amongst those chickens, a cat has now been chucked. But we can use other animal metaphors too. “A stalking horse,” is one. That’s the idea that West is a proxy for a bigger beast (she denies it), dipping her toe in the blood before they do. But which?

Angela Rayner? Apparently she’s checking in with HMRC between doing charity Tough Mudders and writing two-page ultimatums in social media posts. 

Wes Streeting? Ever scanning for a safe opportunity, he’s fluctuating between hazard and opportunity, and praying everyone forgets his friendship with the scandalous Peter Mandelson. 

Ed Miliband? Literally the only person alleged to have been remotely upfront about the defenestration that needs to occur, he appears to have the backing of the Labour left. Unfortunately, he once ate a bacon sandwich. And there will be doubts about his ability to win back post-industrial voters.

That leaves King of the North, Andy Burnham. He’ll need a constituency, and the story is that quite a few MPs are willing to give him theirs. But isn’t that exactly the same problem? The path to prime minister for him is one that winds, and at its end hardly bears a convincing democratic mandate. The risk for MPs is that, sooner rather than later, he’ll need a general election to convincingly govern. One that, given the thrashing the electorate handed Labour last week, many are unlikely to survive.

We’ll now see a week or more of the media tracing the steps to a new Labour coronation. The risk is that it will be just as irrelevant as dead-man-walking Starmer’s own pitiable invitation to mum and dad Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman to join him in No 10 Dignitas Street this weekend. Whoever that was for, it wasn’t us. 

This morning, Starmer will be giving a speech for his life. West has now moved her deadline to Tuesday, to give MPs time to weigh up how convincing they find it. Making predictions in British politics is a mug’s game, but I doubt Starmer has undergone a political-personality transplant this weekend (and the briefings appear to confirm it). Which means, the offer will be a somewhat tweaked more-of-the-same. 

If that’s the case, the decision for MPs will be a clear one. What’s safer: a new yawn or a fresh start?