Keir to stay... but what’s next?

Back from the brink, Keir Starmer clings on as Prime Minister. It was a tumultuous week when it became common knowledge that Starmer and his then chief of staff Morgan McSweeney were aware of ‘The Prince of Darkness’ Peter Mandelson's ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein – this after his conviction, and after reports emerged alleging that Mandelson leaked sensitive information to the convicted paedophile, all of which Mandelson vehemently denies. 

After the resignation of McSweeney, along with the shock resignation of Tim Allen, Number 10’s Director of Comms, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sawar sensing the national mood called on the PM to resign. Despite this pressure, the cabinet rallied around him and he still governs… for now. Starmer’s job is far from secure. Whether it is the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election, the May elections, or the number of backbench rebellions brewing over issues such as leasehold reform, it remains a matter of when, not if, for Starmer’s fate to be sealed. 

Now without McSweeney’s strategic impetus and Labour backbenchers still restless for a change in governing direction, the soft-left MPs who were sidelined during his election campaign and his first years in office now hold significant power. The Tribune Group, a soft-left Labour faction, has more than the 80 MPs required to mount a leadership challenge. To survive, Starmer may now look to them as well as Mainstream, a coalition that describes itself as “radical realists” within the soft-left. His Number 10 reset now presents an opportunity to reshape his government's ideological agenda. 

Three scenarios seem plausible: Starmer could limp on to the election where defeat seems likely, he could reinvent his government (likely moving towards the soft-left of his party), or he could resign/be ousted in a leadership challenge. But where would these scenarios leave Labour, and the country, until the next election?

The first scenario requires no dramatic decisions: Starmer stays the course, living on borrowed time. There is precedent. Her authority shot after a disastrous snap election, Theresa May survived two years of political paralysis before she resigned. On the surface cabinet loyalty holds: every senior minister publicly rallied behind Starmer when the crisis broke, presenting a united front that papers over the fractures beneath. Without a candidate capable of unifying the party, Starmer would stagger on. With expectations for the May elections being so low already, anything but a total wipeout would be billed as a win. 

Just a third of Labour members wanted Starmer to resign at the height of the Mandelson scandal. Perhaps a “back me or sack me” moment – as John Major deployed in 1995 – might favour Starmer whilst Labour’s big beasts of Streeting, Rayner, and Burnham still face obstacles to a leadership campaign. This late-stage Toryism would likely end as it did for Sunak, a disunited party unable to change leader drifting towards a defeat that becomes increasingly inevitable.

The second scenario is more active, more unstable: Starmer attempts a deal – Cabinet positions and policy shifts for soft-left backing. A senior soft-left figure, perhaps Ed Miliband, may be elevated to Chancellor, allowing for the tax-and-spend that Labour backbenchers have been clamouring for. Having already forced U-turns on the two-child cap and PIP cuts, the left of the Parliamentary Labour Party may call for accelerated nationalisation of utilities and a form of wealth tax to suppress Zac Polanski's insurgent Greens. 

A clean left pivot might at least be coherent, but this government’s track record suggests it would be implemented with the same indecision that has defined its first years. The two-child cap was kept long enough to anger the left, then scrapped expensively, alarming those in the party to his right. Winter fuel payment cuts infuriated the country; the subsequent partial reversal has meant that “the net saving from the whole exercise is likely to be minuscule” thanks to the increased uptake of pension credit. In the process, the episode demonstrated to the bond markets that the government lacked the authority to follow through on fiscal consolidation even when it wanted to. Such a coalition might keep Starmer in office, but whether it delivers the change required to keep Labour in power beyond 2029 is another question.

Finally, and perhaps most likely, Starmer’s brand is deemed too toxic for Labour to contemplate keeping him. With the party polling at around 20% nationally and Starmer’s personal ratings among the lowest of any sitting PM in recent memory, whether he resigns or faces a formal challenge matters less than what comes next. Any new leader walks into a dire inheritance. They still face major fiscal decisions along with the task of managing Donald Trump’s White House and the UK’s defence and security relationship with the EU. They will have to unite a party that is split on how Labour should be using its time in power. All this without any electoral mandate as PM.

What unites all three scenarios is not the fate of Keir Starmer but the absence of an answer to a simple question: what is Labour’s governing purpose? The crisis belongs to Starmer for now, but the question it exposes, of what centre-left politics is for in an age of populist insurgency, will outlast him regardless of which scenario unfolds.

Image: Flickr/ No 10 Downing Street (Simon Dawson)

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