Is it now an open secret that Keir Starmer isn't going to make it past May?

Read time: 4 minutes

In brief:

• Growing dissent inside Labour suggests Keir Starmer’s leadership is increasingly viewed as untenable, with public interventions from MPs such as Clive Lewis, and talk of potential successors including Andy Burnham and others from the party’s soft-left.
• Starmer’s historically poor personal polling - the worst for any Prime Minister since modern records began - has convinced many Labour MPs that he is damaging the party’s brand and cannot lead them into the next election.
• Soft-left MPs may already have the numbers to trigger a leadership contest, but could Starmer survive by delivering policy wins?

What’s the story?

The question of a challenge to Keir Starmer’s leadership is becoming one of ‘when’, not ‘if’.

The latest point of tension comes from Clive Lewis, Labour MP for Norwich, who said he would give up his seat for Andy Burnham so the Manchester Mayor could run for the Labour leadership.

The move comes only one week after a briefing from the PM’s own people suggested a threat to his leadership - this time, from Wes Streeting.

Lewis pushing Burnham’s name forward may be a stalking horse - a person used as a cover to conceal real intentions - it would, after all, go against Burnham’s personal brand as ‘King of the North’ to ditch Manchester for a seat in Norwich.

But, the very notion that it’s being spoken about, and so publicly, demonstrates Labour’s dissatisfaction with its leader, and suggests MPs could be shaping up to make a change right at the top of government.

“What is going on when backbench MPs feel emboldened to go on television and openly call for mutiny against their own leader?” Emily Maitlis asks on The News Agents.

“Is it now an open secret that Keir Starmer isn't going to make it past May?”

Why are things looking so catastrophic for Keir Starmer’s premiership?

Labour’s devastating polling numbers are only trumped by Keir Starmer’s dismal personal results - according to YouGov, he has a net favourability rating of -51 - the lowest since records began.

“I think that the general feeling among the Labour MPs is that it's not just about the national poll rating. It's about his poll ratings. They are catastrophically bad. I mean, genuinely catastrophically bad,” Lewis Goodall says.

“He is now the most unpopular Prime Minister on record since modern polling began in 1977.”

This has led Labour MPs to conclude, he adds, that Starmer cannot lead them into the next general election, and not only is he “reviled”, he’s causing irreparable damage to the Labour brand overall.

Bad polling didn’t always mean a Prime Minister’s fate was sealed, there was a time, as recently as David Cameron’s time in No.10, when governments could be performing poorly in the polls for long periods and, whilst facing some nervousnessness from its MPs, not suffer a sense of “existential angst,” Lewis says.

But the “skittishness” from today’s MPs is problematic - and can be put down to, in part, the times we are living in, he adds.

“I think we have so many more polls than we used to. We have Twitter in a way that we never used to.”

The finality that comes with poll slumps in today’s politics can also be linked to the young, fresh intake of Labour MPs who entered the Commons when Labour won the general election in 2024, many of whom Lewis says are “firmly on the so-called soft left of the Labour Party.”

“They don't like the welfare changes. They probably aren't going to like the immigration changes. They don't like the direction of the economy under Reeves.

“That is why, when we're hearing about all these potential successors, whether it's Burnham or Raynor or even, dare I say, Lucy Powell - who I think is perhaps a bit underpriced as a potential future leader of the Labour Party - they are all from that wing of the party.

“It's not just what you have to do to become Labour leader, I think it is where the median Labour backbench MP now is.”

How close are MPs to ousting Starmer?

Preparations to replace Keir Starmer may already be underway, according to The Times, which reports that the Tribune group - a group of Labour MPs representing the party’s soft-left faction - have the 80 MPs required to trigger a leadership contest against Starmer. Who that candidate is, is yet to be decided.

This should be taken with a pinch of salt, Jon says, as it’s possible the story was spinned up by someone within the group to “create a crisis.”

“Maybe there are enough MPs ready to go who are prepared to pull the trigger on Starmer's leadership,” he adds.

The only thing that could save Starmer from being ousted as early as after the May elections, would be delivering on policies that are visible to the public, Emily says, whether that’s on immigration, or on the economy.

On the upside, the party had a successful run last week after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood unveiled new immigration plans, which were largely well received - will delivering those plans be the thing that saves Starmer?

“I can see a world in which Keir Starmer doesn't then get any of the credit for that. It becomes the home secretary's triumph, and she is then emboldened, and she looks like leadership material, and he looks like the guy who just let her get on with it,” Emily says.

Rachel Reeves’ long-awaited budget, in which people are bracing for tax rises, is unlikely to provide him with the much-needed lift - as Jon points out, with no one likely to call her tough decisions ‘fantastic’.

“There's going to be quite a lot of pain to go around,” Jon predicts.

Listen to the latest episode of The News Agents.