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Keir Starmer has been warned that time is running out to repair his faltering premiership, with Labour MPs beginning to ask whether he could be challenged as prime minister.
After a disastrous week which saw Angela Rayner resign and Peter Mandelson sacked as ambassador to Washington, a number of MPs said a challenge was likely if local and Welsh elections went badly next May. Some said the one thing currently protecting Starmer was the lack of an agreed replacement.
“Personally, I think the clock is ticking,” one MP said. “It sometimes happens to people who are incredibly well meaning, but you can pass that tipping point and can’t recover.”
It came as Lucy Powell, who was sacked from the cabinet in the reshuffle after Rayner’s departure and who is standing to replace her as deputy leader, called for a “change of culture” in a Downing Street she described as overly factional and error-prone.
“We’ve got a bit of a groupthink happening at the top, that culture of not being receptive to interrogation, not being receptive to differing views,” Powell told the Guardian.
The only MPto go public in saying Starmer should go is Clive Lewis, a regular critic of the government from the left of the party.
The Norwich South MP told BBC’s The Week In Westminster programme that Starmer had “lost control within the first year”, adding: “We don’t have the luxury of carrying on this way with someone who I think increasingly, I’m sorry to say, just doesn’t seem up to the job.”
Allies of Starmer are urging a sense of proportion. “No one is oblivious to the scale of the challenge or the need to be better, least of all Keir,” one said. “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.”
It comes ahead of another potentially tricky week for Starmer, which includes the state visit to the UK for Donald Trump, who is both hugely unpredictable and unpopular with Labour MPs. The US president and his wife, Melania, will arrive on Tuesday evening, and be greeted by James Roscoe, Mandelson’s interim replacement as UK ambassador to the US.
With morale described as very low in the parliamentary party, some of the anger has centred around Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, who has been blamed for No 10’s initial defence of Mandelson – something one government source denied – and for being central to a narrow, clique-based ruling faction.
One minister said: “The one person who is the constant through every bad decision since 24 July [last year] is Morgan. Maybe the PM keeps getting rid of the wrong people.”
But other MPs, including some who are normally loyal, are increasingly questioning whether Starmer can lead the party out of its current slump in the polls.
“The problem is Keir,” one normally loyal MP said. “He doesn’t have any judgment, he doesn’t make an effort to speak to MPs, let alone ministers. Unless Keir has a personality transplant and majorly changes things, I don’t know how he is going to improve. For the first time I’ve begun to wonder if he is going to be the leader at the next election.”
Another backbencher said: “So far this has been Keir on his own terms, with us doing everything that he wants, other than welfare reform, and it’s driven our poll ratings absolutely into the toilet.
“He’s replaced everyone, at every level, and everything keeps going the same direction. The only conclusion can be that the PM just has terrible judgment.”
One MP from the usually loyal contingent of 2024 entrants said: “It’s not a happy parliamentary party at the moment. The only person less popular than Keir Starmer in my constituency is Rachel Reeves.”
Several pointed to last week’s reshuffle as another source of discontent, both from the point of view of perceived factionalism, with allies of Starmer and McSweeney seen as being favoured, and because they did not understand the rationale for a mass carousel of ministers to different cabinet jobs.
Jonathan Reynolds has told colleagues he is unhappy to have been moved from business secretary to the backroom role of chief whip, according to MPs. And earlier this week Ed Balls said on his podcast that his wife, Yvette Cooper, had found her move from home secretary to foreign secretary “frustrating”.
“He’s moved all the people who are loyal to him into ministerial or PPS roles, with the end result being that he’s now got no one really left in the backbenches fighting his corner, and put a load of pissed-off ex-ministers there instead,” one minister said
“If we were 20 points ahead in the polls, people would probably suck it up. But if we bomb next May, I can’t really see Keir surviving that without at least a challenge.”
For many MPs, the next key moment will be this month’s Labour conference in Liverpool, where they are hoping for signs of change. “I’ve never known the mood in the parliamentary Labour party to be this bad,” one said. “The normally loyal are furious.”
“We know that things like this knock you off course. It’s bad and we have to get back on track,” a Downing Street source said.
The ally of Starmer said the prime minister was well aware of the task he faced: “He knows we need to do a huge amount of work to rebuild relations with the party, and to do a better job of conveying what he wants to do to the public. We think that conference will help with that.”
Scotland secretary, Douglas Alexander, told BBC Breakfast on Friday morning that he understood why Labour MPs were “despondent”, saying that “nothing justifies” Mandelson’s appointment “in light of what has now emerged”.
He added: “These are not the headlines any of us in government or in parliament would have chosen or wanted. But the fact is when the evidence emerged, action had to be taken and we are looking forward, therefore, to moving on.”
