Sir Keir Starmer’s biographer has warned there is a “real chance” Labour will have to change leaders again before the next general election if it ousts him from No 10 now.
Tom Baldwin said he was “astonished” that the party was “behaving like this” after a civil war erupted within Labour following its disastrous local election results last week. The past few days have seen a chorus of calls for the prime minister to resign.
As allies of health secretary Wes Streeting say they expect him to resign on Thursday in order to trigger a leadership challenge, Mr Baldwin called on Labour not to repeat the Conservatives’ “bad habit” of changing prime ministers.
In an interview with The Independent, he said the moves against Sir Keir have made Labour “look like an unserious party” and the UK “look like Italy in the 1980s … undermining our economy and undermining our security at a time of international crisis”.
He warned that a similar strategy backfired for the Tories, as successive Conservative leaders found themselves becoming more and more unpopular with the country. And he cautioned that Labour could find itself having to eject not just Sir Keir, but a second party leader before the next election, if it wants to beat Nigel Farage and Reform UK.
Mr Baldwin said: “There is a real chance now that if we have a leadership election in the Labour Party and a new prime minister, it won’t be the last one we have before the next election. We get into that cycle. Like any bad habit, eventually you have to collectively decide you are going to break it.”
He also said that if there was a leadership contest, it should not be rushed. He described the current moment as a “highly wrought, emotional environment to make decisions”. And he said that if the party did have to have a leadership election, it should take place “not in the midst of a global and economic crisis”, a reference to the current conflict in the Middle East.
In what will be seen as a swipe at Mr Streeting and his allies, several of whom resigned earlier this week as part of a move to force Sir Keir out of office, Mr Baldwin said it was “hard to say” whether those pushing for Sir Keir to step down were “acting in the national interest”.
For now, Sir Keir has managed to cling to power and see off an immediate threat to his leadership, despite the resignation of four ministers and calls by more than 90 MPs for him to go.
But Mr Streeting’s resignation could lead to a full-blown leadership contest, which Sir Keir’s allies have made clear he would fight.
