Lame Ducks and Stalking Horses: Ted Heath's Downfall Looms Over Starmer

Over the past few months, Westminster has been gripped by an all too familiar kind of speculation. It concerns the election that will decide this country’s next Prime Minister. An election that most voters will not participate in, a potential Labour leadership contest. Murmurings within the Parliamentary Labour Party suggest that should the party perform poorly in May’s local and regional elections, pressure on Keir Starmer will intensify. Anonymous briefings have become a low hum in the political background. The phrase “lame duck” is no longer confined to hostile columnists.

British politics has never been short of internal treachery. In fact, post-war Prime Ministers have been more vulnerable to their colleagues than to the electorate. Perhaps fittingly, the tale of treachery for Starmer is not one of the more memorable ones. It is a story of how one of Britain’s most forgettable Prime Ministers was unceremoniously toppled. The 1975 Conservative leadership contest, the moment when Margaret Thatcher toppled Ted Heath offers a striking parallel. It is not a story of intricate conspiracy. It is a story of impatience. And impatience can be fatal.

By 1975, Heath was widely regarded within his own party as yesterday’s man. He had lost two general elections in 1974 and presided over economic turbulence and industrial strife. Yet Heath himself refused to accept that his authority had evaporated. The Conservative ‘big beasts’, senior figures such as Willie Whitelaw and Geoffrey Howe, were reluctant to challenge him directly. They preferred the idea of a dignified transition. No one wanted blood on their hands.

Into this vacuum stepped Thatcher.

When she announced her challenge, most observers dismissed her as a stalking horse, a candidate whose role was merely to wound Heath, expose his vulnerability and then withdraw to allow a more established figure to take the crown. Few believed she could win. Fewer still believed she intended to.

But they misunderstood the mood of the parliamentary party. Conservative backbenchers were not merely dissatisfied; they were impatient. They wanted action, not choreography. Thatcher’s campaign cleverly channelled that frustration. She encouraged wavering MPs to lend her their vote simply to “give Heath a kick up the bum”. The result was astonishing. In the first ballot, Thatcher defeated Heath outright, 130 votes to 119, a shock that left the party establishment reeling. By the time the Big Beasts entered the race in the second round, momentum had shifted decisively. The stalking horse had bolted.

The lesson of 1975 is stark: when a leader is perceived as a lame duck, impatience can override hierarchy and ideology. And momentum, once generated, is extraordinarily difficult to halt.

To the naked eye Keir Starmer is not in a comparable position. Unlike Heath he commands a substantial Commons majority. Unlike the Conservative Party, there is no immediate procedural mechanism to force a Labour leader from power. Yet the rhetoric matches that of fifty years ago. Starmer is yesterday’s man, and the Parliamentary Party is growing impatient. A growing number of Labour backbenchers, particularly those in marginal seats, are restless. Discontent has been bubbling away for some time, searching for something to coalesce around. 

The question is, around who?

On Labour’s right, Wes Streeting is widely seen as the most ambitious figure on manoeuvres. With no obvious rival commanding the party’s centrist flank, Streeting could theoretically unite that faction in the event of a contest. Yet there is a structural problem. The ultimate electorate in any leadership race, the Labour membership, leans decisively to the left. A simple right versus left contest would place Streeting at a natural disadvantage. He therefore appears to be treading carefully, reportedly exploring the possibility of alliances in order to avoid a simple left vs right race. 

On the soft left, Andy Burnham has positioned himself as a potential alternative voice. But Burnham faces a glaring obstacle: he is not an MP. Under Labour rules, only sitting MPs can mount a formal leadership challenge, and any challenger must secure nominations from 20 per cent of the parliamentary party. Burnham’s recent attempt to re-enter Parliament at the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election was blocked by the party machine. Burnham can shout as loud as he likes from the sidelines, but he still remains a prisoner of geography.

The other names on the left that the media continue to produce are Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband. Both command respect and support among the membership. Both could plausibly secure the necessary nominations. Yet neither appears eager to pull the trigger. Miliband has experienced the bruising reality of leadership before and has repeatedly ruled himself out. Rayner has endured relentless media scrutiny. Ambition is not the same as appetite.

And so, Labour’s senior figures appear to be doing precisely what the Conservative grandees did in 1975: waiting. Waiting for the moment to be right. Waiting for someone else to move first. Waiting for the leader to recognise the writing on the wall.

History suggests that waiting can be dangerous.

The power of the stalking horse lies not in stature but in timing. Thatcher did not win because she was the obvious heir. She won because she moved when others hesitated. Her campaign was less about ideology than about momentum. Once Heath was wounded in the first ballot, his authority collapsed and moved irretrievably to her.

There are, of course, important differences. Labour’s leadership rules are somewhat different to those of the Conservatives in 1975. There would be no dramatic second round scramble in quite the same way. A leadership election would be prolonged, and member driven. That complexity could either dampen rebellion or accelerate it, depending on how events unfold.

But the psychological dynamics are similar. Once a leader is labelled a lame duck, the perception can become self-fulfilling. Backbenchers begin to calculate survival rather than loyalty. Ideology is relegated behind popularity. Journalists amplify every dissenting whisper. Potential successors circle, even if they do not strike.

The central question is whether a relatively minor figure, someone not considered one of the party’s ‘big beasts’, could harness that impatience. Could a modern-day stalking horse emerge from Labour’s wings? It would require support from only 20 per cent of MPs to trigger a contest. In an atmosphere of frustration, that threshold is not insurmountable.

The 1975 Conservative leadership election teaches two enduring lessons. First, that a stalking horse can defeat a lame duck. And second, that momentum in leadership contests is everything. Once it begins, it is almost impossible to reverse.

Starmer’s allies will argue that speculation is overblown, that plotting is endemic to the Labour Party and rarely translates into action. They may be right. But Heath too believed his position secure, long after it wasn’t.

The longer Labour’s big beasts wait, the longer frustration on the backbench grows. And the longer backbench frustration grows, the more likely it is that a stalking horse can mobilise support. There is nothing more potent in politics than impatience. In 1975 it toppled a former Prime Minister and handed the Conservative leadership to a rather minor cabinet minister. If Labour’s big beasts continue to sit on their hands, they may well see a stalking horse emerge from the trees. Stalking horses can defeat lame ducks, and stalking horses, with momentum, can defeat big beasts too.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Open Media Ltd

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