Keir Starmer never had the warm and enthusiastic support of his own MPs. Their ingratitude to the leader who won them their seats has been a feature of this government from the start.
But now something more dangerous to the prime minister is developing. I have been surprised over the summer by the voices saying privately that they think he has to go if Labour is to have a chance of re-election. “He hasn’t got what it takes to be a successful prime minister.” Labour is “toast” with him in No 10. The staff changes in Downing Street are just “deck-chair shuffling”.
Yesterday’s opinion poll from BMG putting Reform on 35 per cent – a new record, 15 points ahead of Labour – will not have improved government morale as MPs prepare to return to Westminster on Monday.
One reason the coverage of Angela Rayner’s purchase of a flat has been so extensive is that it is relevant to the question: is the deputy prime minister ready to step up to the top job if Starmer is forced out?
As soon as some MPs felt that Rayner was being damaged by the reporting, speculation about Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, was immediately revived. I had thought it unlikely that he might try to re-enter the House of Commons via a by-election, such as in the Gorton seat of Andrew Gwynne, currently suspended by the Labour Party for offensive WhatsApp messages.
But Burnham has done nothing to cool the ardour of Labour members for him as the greener-grass candidate. A Survation poll of members for Labour List in June had him as easily the most popular choice when they were asked: “If Keir Starmer does not lead the Labour Party into the next general election, who do you think should be leader?”
And Rayner has taken the threat so seriously – she was in second place in the poll; the rest were nowhere – that she is proposing to change the law to prevent elected mayors from being MPs at the same time. This would close off the Boris Johnson route back to parliament, when he was MP for Uxbridge while serving his final year as London mayor.
It would mean Burnham would have to quit early as mayor or wait until the end of his term in May 2028, which may be leaving it a bit late.
There are other reasons, though, for thinking that pining for Burnham is not a plan – apart from it not being guaranteed that Labour would win a by-election even in its safest seat in the current climate.
Changing prime minister is not the answer. Rayner has many qualities. She understands politics at the instinctive level that Starmer does not. Labour members like her because she seems more left-wing than he is. But the wider electorate don’t think much of her. Unpopular as Starmer might be, opinion polls do not suggest that she would improve Labour’s chances at the next election.
These kinds of polls come with more than the usual caveats, but YouGov in June found that voters were evenly divided between her and Nigel Farage as to who would make a better prime minister, whereas Starmer led Farage by 15 points.
In any case, changing prime ministers is not a cost-free option: it would remind voters of the years of Tory instability.
What matters is getting the policy right, and I still think Starmer can do that. He has shown he can learn. He is not a natural at politics and never will be, but he works hard, and he is prepared to do what it takes. If he or those around him can stop the boats, Labour has a chance. If not, not. It is stopping the boats, not obtaining a “better” prime minister that matters.
Which is why Starmer’s personnel choices are important. This need not be shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic; it could be putting the right person in the wheelhouse who can change the ship’s course.
Hence the speculation about Louise Casey being drafted in as a civil service disrupter-in-chief to deliver Starmer’s promises. The straight-talking peer is a friend of the prime minister’s and trades on her reputation as someone who cut through bureaucratic inertia to deal with the rough sleeping problem in the Blair years – and who spoke the truth about grooming gangs in her inquiries into them.
She may be counterproductive. I understand that when Starmer brought her in to address a political cabinet meeting this year, she told ministers that they should all sack their top civil servants. When news of this plan reached the mandarin class, within a few minutes of the end of the meeting, it did not go down well. All the same, her defenders say that her mindset is needed to “shake things up”.
What is certainly true is that Starmer needs someone who can make things happen. He has made progress on the small boats, getting the French to accept a pilot scheme to return some migrants, but he needs to do more, and quickly.
What Labour needs is a solution to the problem that the voters care about, not a change of prime minister.
