One of Keir Starmer’s cabinet ministers realized it a few weeks ago: their civil servants were barely making plans for them beyond May. There are six weeks left until crucial English local elections, Scottish Parliament elections and Welsh Senedd elections. There are only a few weeks left until purdah. “After that, there’s a void,” their team realized. It seemed to them: civil servants, like the rest of the country, do not know what will happen at the top of the Labor Party in May. They do not know whether their secretaries of state will be shuffled by the Prime Minister in an attempt to refresh his ailing premiership, or by a new leader seeking to move in a new direction.
The meteor of the May elections is rushing towards the party. After its crushing defeat in the Gorton and Denton by-elections, in which Labor finished behind the Greens and Reform, the party is braced for heavy losses. Labor figures are discussing in a ring what could happen in May and whether Starmer can survive.
Loyalists of the prime minister are getting ready for a fight. Cabinet ministers are mounting a more “full-throated” defense of Starmer than ever before, pushing for one-on-one meetings with MPs to make their case, urging them to remember that sitting governments often do poorly in mid-term elections. A cabinet minister is modeled after Barack Obama, who performed poorly in the 2010 midterm elections but passed the Affordable Care Act that same year to win a second term. “The important thing is not to lose our temper”, they say. “You use a moment like the losses in May to recalibrate a little bit, sharpen the message and get on with the mission, not falling into chaos.”
The “Praetorian Guard” is assembling for action. Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, asked her colleagues at a cabinet meeting a few months ago to create a protective Roman shield around their leader. These Starmer loyalists in the cabinet argue that it is important to put Labour’s performance in context. “It’s not just the legacy of Brexit, Covid and 14 years of Tory rule,” argues a senior Starmer ally, “the country has barely begun to recover from 2008.” The change people need to see is happening slowly, they believe. Starmer may have promised “change”, but he also talked about it as a two-term project, “a decade of national renewal” – work that takes time to get right.
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These loyalists have adopted a metaphor first used by an ex Young statesman political editor, Stephen Bush: The Prime Minister is suffering from being a “fifth plumber”. If you’ve hired five plumbers in a row to try to fix a leak, and the fifth one is struggling or slow to do so, they become the focus not only of your justified anger toward them, but of that which is rightfully owed to the previous four plumbers. But change is happening, the prime minister’s supporters say, and if Starmer can get through May, people will start to feel the difference. “This is already the most radical government in decades,” argued one cabinet minister, pointing to employment rights and tenants’ rights acts due to come into force later in the year.
The Hillsborough law, which is supposed to prevent cover-ups by public bodies, will represent a more radical change than many have appreciated: “A fundamental reconnection of the state’s accountability to the people,” as Richard Hermer, the attorney general, described it to colleagues a few months ago. Starmer promised to introduce the law as one of his first acts as Prime Minister, in speeches at two Labor Party conferences in Liverpool, in 2022 and 2024, alongside the victims of Hillsborough. Almost two years into the government, delays and a roadblock to intelligence services are threatening its speedy introduction, dashing the hopes of victims’ families and survivors. The Hillsborough law is the example that Starmer’s allies hold up as proof of the change they are bringing about, but it is also emblematic of the frustration in his prime ministership: promises thwarted by a lack of planning, by the endless process, by internal disputes that the prime minister is often reluctant to judge.
Some loyalists say even privately that the prime minister’s lack of curiosity about domestic politics is striking. But they also say he is at his best on the international stage, and the conflict in the Middle East has shown him at his best. Addressing Labor MPs on Monday after the Gorton and Denton by-elections, Starmer “seemed almost relieved to be able to talk about Iran”, a government insider recalled. “I think he was thinking, ‘This will save me the premiership.'” Of course, the Prime Minister’s supporters argue that there is no one better than him to handle this delicate geopolitical moment and that a change of leader in a time of war would be irresponsible. Even government figures who criticize Starmer and talk gleefully about their plans to resign say, in the same vein, that he is acquitting himself well on Iran.
For Starmer’s supporters, the stakes are simply too high, and the politics too serious, to go down in a Labor leadership contest. They argue that an introspective, bad few months of mid-term mudslinging would be a disaster and make Labor a laughing stock. One loyalist suggests that if the polls are still not back a year before the general election, Starmer would probably stand down and someone else could lead the party into the election.
But many of Starmer’s critics are dismayed by this analysis. “It’s a misdiagnosis,” says one. “If you think our problem is that Keir can’t win the next election, then maybe that’s fine. But if you think our problem is that we’re not governing well, which we’re not, and we’re missing our chance, then we need to act fast.”
Will someone act soon? When Anas Sarwar called on Starmer to resign a few weeks ago, at least one cabinet minister took a moment with their team to discuss whether this could or should be the moment they challenged for the leadership, before ultimately (and swiftly) posting a message of support, as did the entire cabinet. Labor looked over the cliff and decided not to jump.
What held them back was an unwillingness to plunge into a leadership race without a plan. “We intended to use these weeks before May to decide what to do. More than a month, we are no longer ahead,” says an insider. “The camps are more divided than ever,” notes one minister.
Angela Rayner is a figure MPs can rally around, following her rally speech on March 17, but some of those who should naturally fall into her camp have their doubts. “My heart says Angela but my head isn’t sure,” says a senior Labor MP. Some of Rayner’s paid speaking engagements in recent weeks – including with City investors about her instincts on fiscal policy – have also raised eyebrows. Meanwhile, Wes Streeting’s supporters are privately voicing concerns: that he won’t win if he stands and then finds himself in a worse position – without a cabinet job and unable to influence anything. At least one ally has warned him to rein in his position.
There is no shortage of Labor politicians now “on the move”, of course. “It’s like that Tory leadership race where they had 15 contenders,” observes an unhinged Labor aide. “They think a race is coming, so they think they might as well start positioning themselves.”
But if no one fires the starting gun, the race everyone is preparing for will never happen. “I don’t think Wes would ever mount a challenge against Keir,” says a friend. An ally of Rayner says the same about her: “She’s not going to be a pushover or a pushover. If people were to ask her, she’d have to decide whether to do it.” She is confident her tax issues will be resolved by May, but will weigh her options if a vacancy arises. She is not set on returning to the cabinet either: “It will depend on the role she is offered and the direction of travel,” says an ally. It’s as Streeting’s Morgan McSweeney put it months ago: everyone is “planning, not plotting,” with no one showing a willingness to use the knife.
Leadership hopefuls and worried MPs are concluding they can’t rely on the cabinet to do anything after a poor result in May. Praetorian guards often turned to their emperor, but Starmer’s seemed more loyal. “He has the majority of the cabinet behind him,” confirms a member of the guard, listing Starmer’s cabinet loyalists. “I tell everyone I meet in the PLP that the government is not going to save you,” says another insider. Starmer’s critics have begun to aim their anger at cabinet ministers, who they say are “more concerned with their ministerial cars and office suits” than doing “what needs to be done” to remove a failed prime minister.
If the majority of the cabinet is gathered around Starmer, and no one is willing to initiate a contest, the leadership hopefuls are indulging in speculation about how else a contest might arise. “Does anyone get a letter together – a PLP letter to start a challenge, or get a stalking horse together?” asks a senior figure. “Are there any strangers?”
“The PLP will decide. They may decide they’re not ready,” notes a Rayner ally.
Starmer is determined to fight any challenge against him and his political team is organized and ready, fresh from navigating the Anas Sarwar moment. He will go into the May election underlining what is at stake, arguing that Nigel Farage and Reform UK pose a threat to British values. Starmer’s allies argue that the situation at home and abroad is too serious to remove a prime minister now. For his many critics, it is too serious not to do.
Labor has not yet launched its local campaign, but there is little divergence in expectations among party figures about how the party will perform. What is less clear is what psychological impact heavy losses to Reform and the Greens in England, Scotland and Wales will have on the party. Some senior figures confidently say that a poor result is “priced”. Others are less certain. “I know I’m determined to have a Reforms council in my arrangement after May,” says one minister. “I know what I think about it. But I don’t know how I’m going to feel about it.”
Even Keir Starmer cannot predict what will follow the election. He doesn’t know – and neither does Streeting, or Rayner – how the Labor Party will feel about the results in May when they come. His decision not to appoint a permanent chief of staff or communications director to Downing Street until after the election says it all. Starmer doesn’t know if he’ll have a job to guarantee them after May because he doesn’t know if he’ll still be in the job himself.
(Further reading: John Healey: Labor needs ‘broader group’ in government)
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