‘Things can move quickly’ What Cabinet insiders are saying about Starmer’s future

The party also lost the mayorality in Hackney, east London, to the Greens – with results to be declared later on Friday afternoon expected to see further Green inroads into Labour’s urban heartland in the Capital.

But few people currently expect a direct challenge to his leadership to emerge in the coming days – and there are questions over Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s future as Labour suffered heavy defeats in the North-West of England.

Labour is also expected to lose control of Wales, fall far short of taking over the Scottish Government, as well as face a strong challenge from the Greens in London and other big cities.

Starmer: ‘I’m not going to walk away’

Starmer insisted on Friday morning that he is not planning to quit, saying: “The voters have sent a message about the pace of change, how they want their lives improved. I was elected to meet those challenges but I’m not going to walk away from those challenges.”

He admitted to “unnecessary mistakes” by the Labour Government, and added: “Although we were right to level with the public about the scale and depth of the challenges we face, we didn’t do enough to convince them that things will get better, that things will improve, the hope.”

The Prime Minister is expected to give a speech next week setting out a more positive vision for the future, ahead of the King’s Speech which will announce which laws the Government hopes to pass in the next year.

Despite the scale of the early losses, some in Labour have argued that the results were not quite as bad as feared and pointed to signs that Reform’s support may have peaked.

“The results appear to be panning out very badly but are maybe not as bad as they could be,” one MP said. Another added: “I suspect there will be a lot more chuntering and a bit of stress over the weekend, and it won’t really come to very much.

“It keeps coming back to this: in 2006 there was Gordon Brown was stood in the wings and everyone could see he was capable of being Prime Minister and he was impatiently waiting. There’s quite a few people that are impatient because they would like the idea of being Prime Minister, but none of them is a slam dunk.”

‘People want to smash the system’

Labour insiders argue that of the main leadership favourites, only Wes Streeting would benefit from an immediate contest because Burnham is currently ineligible to be a candidate as he is not an MP, and Angela Rayner is still under investigation over her taxes.

A number of Government aides are understood to have privately resolved that Starmer cannot lead the party into another general election – but that any leadership election should not take place until the party and country’s situation has stabilised, and the competing visions of those vying to replace him have become clearer.

In a sign that some loyalists may now be turning away from the leadership, a minister who has previously been supportive of Starmer said the Prime Minister needs to set a timeline for his departure.

“Keir deserves respect and to be treated decently rather than a coup,” the minister said. “The best thing is to set a timetable that shows him that respect and dignity. Then we get Andy in. Keir won’t take us into the next general election.”

They went on: “We need serious change. Not just a speech about tinkering with the system. But proper change. People outside of ‘comfortable’ areas want to smash the system, that’s why they are looking right and left. They think things are broken.

“If we continue to offer to patch up or worse still ‘manage’ a broken system then voters will continue to leave us. We need to be a proper Labour party. We don’t want policies that ‘treads lightly on people’s lives’, we want politics that is a wrecking ball to a broken system and reshapes it in a way that works for working class communities.”

Chaning leader ‘can make things worse’

A Cabinet minister warned that removing Starmer was more likely to make the government’s situation even worse.

“There’s moves, but I don’t think there’s movement,” they said. “There are individuals who all the way through who have put their own position ahead of that of the party. To use a challenging moment in the party’s electoral life and make it about them and not about the country and the overall party, it’s unforgivable.

“No one in the Cabinet is going to move. I think the party wants us to get our act together, speak with clarity and get on with it.

“I don’t think there’s a majority of the membership who wants to use this moment. The lesson I keep hearing about from members, and I’ve been all over the country, is that the Tories thought that a change of leader would always deliver a better outcome, but things couldn’t get any worse.

“And the lesson is it can get worse. There’s no certainty that comes with any of the candidates who are thrusting at this moment in time

”Things can move quickly’

Another minister said there was little immediate sign of a leadership challenge, but warned: “Things can move quickly.”

None of Burnham, Rayner and Streeting offered any response to the results or Starmer’s future on Friday morning, even as other senior figures pledged loyalty to the current leader.

An MP said they were “not hearing anything from colleagues from the various camps” but added: “At least one camp claims to have the numbers, so the ball is really in their court.”

To launch a formal challenge to Starmer, a candidate would need to win the backing of 80 other Labour MPs, which would trigger a vote in which party members choose between the incumbent leader and the challenger.

Burnham, the favourite to take over as Labour leader, would need to return to Parliament in a by-election in order to be eligible to stand to replace Starmer.

A number of Labour MPs pointed to poor results in the North-West as evidence that the Mayor of Greater Manchester could struggle to win any such by-election, even if a sitting MP were willing to stand down to make way for him.

One said: “Burnham has some difficult-to-explain results. If there’s this amazing ‘Manchesterism’ or whatever, why are the worst results in the country in Greater Manchester? And the kind of policy or strategy he promotes – how does that address the loss of working class votes to Reform?

“There’s also a mechanical problem in where’s the seat that he could now win if you’re going to become an MP? And then all of the stats so far indicate we would also just be giving away the mayoralty of Greater Manchester.”

Defeat in Scotland and Wales also likely

So far, nearly all of those who have openly called for Starmer to quit have come from the staunch left-wing faction which has always opposed the Prime Minister – such as former party chairman Ian Lavery, who told the BBC that “the most effective thing that he could do would be to have an organised withdrawal from his leadership of the Labour party”.

It remains unclear whether expected defeat in Wales and Scotland will boost calls for the leader’s departure. A Scottish Labour source said: “We are looking at another five years in opposition here in Scotland and the party needed a better pledge than just to get the ‘basics right’, very much felt like people don’t know what Scottish Labour stand for and so we need to go back to the founding principles.”

Oxford Economics warned in a note to clients on Friday that the local election results would cause fresh market uncertainty owing the question mark over Starmer’s position.

Alexander Harvey, an economist at the consultancy firm, said: “The key risk is that any instability triggered by these results – such as a leadership challenge – causes markets to lose faith in the Government’s fiscal plans, driving bond yields up further and weakening economic growth dynamics.”