Sir Keir Starmer faces a crucial 24 hours to save his premiership as Labour rivals Wes Streeting, Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham eye leadership bids.
The Labour leader will make a speech for his political life on Monday after facing months of increasingly vocal disquiet over his leadership, or perceived lack of, as his party haemorrhages votes to the Greens on the left and Reform UK on the right.
Many critics blame his lack of charisma and unpopularity with voters for Labour’s disastrous performance in last week’s local elections.
The party lost just shy of 1,500 councillors, as well as control of the Welsh Senedd to Plaid Cymru while Nigel Farage’s Reform UK won more than 1,450 seats including control of several councils in former Labour heartlands.
This has contributed to more than 40 of his own MPs asking him to leave. While damaging, it is far short of the 81 figure needed to formally trigger a leadership contest.
Now Angela Rayner has urged Sir Keir Starmer to ‘meet the moment and set out the change our country needs’ as she issueda call for Andy Burnham’s return.
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Both Ms Rayner and Greater Manchester Mayor Mr Burnham are seen as potential leadership contenders.
Ms Rayner, the former deputy Labour leader, called for a shift to the left in a lengthy statement which set out her vision for the party.
‘What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change. This may be our last chance,’ she said.
The Mandelson scandal showed a ‘toxic culture of cronyism’, Labour is ‘in danger of becoming a party of the well-off, not working people’ and ‘it is time to acknowledge that blocking Andy Burnham was a mistake’, she said.
One potential lifesaver for Sir Keir is that Burnham isn’t a sitting MP so someone would have to resign. Clive Lewis, MP for Norwich, is rumoured to be happy to stand aside.
He posted on X: ‘Burnham’s possible return matters not because of what it says about Labour’s leadership, but because of what it reveals about the British state: what it can still do, what it has forgotten how to do, and what kind of country it must become if it is serious about resilience.’
While Ms Rayner stopped short of calling for Sir Keir to go, dozens of MPs from across the party – not just the Prime Minister’s usual critics on the left – have demanded change.
Wes Streeting has reportedly told Sir Keir Starmer that he is ready to replace him as Prime Minister.
The Health Secretary and his team are said to be on manoeuvres and ready to launch a leadership bid should Starmer fall on his sword in the coming days.
But Streeting is understood to have insisted he is not planning a direct leadership challenge.
Instead, he said he is preparing a ‘case’ to become the next Labour leader should Starmer be ousted by others, the Daily Telegraph reported.
One ally of Streeting told the paper: ‘Wes has made it clear to No10 that he won’t challenge Keir, but he is preparing a case if it all falls apart.
‘Like most of the party, he thinks Keir is owed the chance to set out how he’s going to turn things around this week. He’s not plotting.’
A key tenet of Streeting’s campaign is set to centre on the claim that he is the only candidate capable of beating Farage’s insurgent party.
As proof, his campaign will reportedly point to Labour seeing off Reform UK to retain control of Redbridge council in east London last week.
It sits within Streeting’s constituency and successfully saw off a challenge from the right-wing party while countless other Labour-run councils faced annihilation at the hands of the anti-immigration party’s populist messaging.
The Streeting ally said: ‘This week has shown he can win. The results in Redbridge show that Wes can beat challengers on both the Left and Right.
‘If there’s a contest, the next leader of the Labour Party has to be someone who can keep Farage out of No 10.’
Streeting’s team reportedly believe that former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, another mooted contender to replace Starmer, cannot make the same claim.
This is because Reform UK now controls Tameside council in Greater Manchester, which includes part of her constituency, undermining any claim that she can defeat Farage in their eyes.
Should it be launched, his campaign is expected to also cite NHS data, set to be released on Thursday, which is expected to show the health service has met or is close to meeting the target of seeing 65 per cent of patients for non-urgent treatment within 18 weeks.
Like Streeting, Rayner is not thought to be planning a direct challenge to Starmer, but is making preparations should his premiership end.
This hasn’t stopped little-known backbencher Catherine West from proclaiming that she would launch a leadership challenge unless the Cabinet removes Starmer.
She told Metro what she needs to hear in his address to stop her pulling the trigger – and revealed that no Cabinet contenders have messaged her in support of her intervention.
The Hornsey and Friern Barnet MP said: ‘We are heading towards electoral disaster in two years time.
‘We have to turn the Labour Party into a fighting machine for the next general election, so we can get a second term.
‘We need a better communicator. I would have expected the Cabinet to have met over the weekend to ask the Prime Minister to step aside.’
So far, Starmer has remained steadfast in his determination to continue as PM, insisting he won’t ‘walk away and plunge the country into chaos’.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is seen as the party’s other left wing candidate with enough backing to replace Starmer.
The former party leader, who was trounced by David Cameron’s Conservatives in 2015, is thought to be trying to act as a ‘kingmaker’ and convince Starmer to set out a timetable for his departure.
It has been suggested that this would coincide with a return to Parliament by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham through a by-election.
Many see Burnham’s affable and straight-talking politics as the party’s best chance of effectively countering the popularity of Farage and Zack Polanski’s Greens.
Polanski’s Greens captured the Greater Manchester seat from Labour in a hotly-fought contest that many believed Burnham would have won had he been permitted to run.
As questions continue to hover over the viability of his premiership, Starmer’s rivals from across the party’s factions are said to be waiting with baited breath on the fallout from his ‘reset’ speech tomorrow.
Sources insisted the PM will use it to outline his plan to restore trust in the Government, ahead of the King’s Speech on Wednesday.
It is expected to address Labour’s drubbing in the local elections, pledge new opportunities for young people, and explain plans for a closer relationship with the EU.
A Labour source told the Telegraph: ‘The soft Left are now panicked that there will be a contest before they’re able to get Burnham back in.
‘Meanwhile, Angela is unpopular and her own council has just fallen to Reform. The British public think she is a tax dodger.
‘We may end up with Ed as the compromise candidate of the Left if it falls apart before Burnham can come back.’
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