In the aftermath of Thursday’s shellacking, a steady stream of Labour MPs have been coming out and calling on Keir Starmer to quit. Their tone has varied: some are much more coded than others. On Cofffee House, we have a rolling list that now stands at more than 30.
A key tell is those arguing for ‘an orderly transition’ – the subtext for which is ‘enough time until Andy Burnham can get into parliament’. The Mayor of Great Manchester would need months, not weeks, to fight and win a by-election that would allow him to return to parliament and thus claim the leadership. The precarious route by which that would happen has been enough to sew doubts in the minds of much of the Parliamentary Labour party (PLP). It is that doubt which has stopped any big beasts from calling on Starmer to quit.
West has clearly reached breaking point and decided to take matters in her own hands
But now all that has changed. In the absence of a big beast, a minnow has filled the void. Former minister Catherine West has this afternoon announced that she is prepared to challenge Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership. West, sacked from the Foreign Office at the last reshuffle, says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge the Prime Minister by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a contest herself.
West has told the BBC her preferred option would be for the cabinet to ‘reorganise themselves’ and put forward their ‘best communicator’ to replace Starmer, avoiding a leadership election. However, if she does not hear from a leadership hopeful by Monday she will ask Labour MPs to back her to trigger a contest.
For a leadership election to be set in motion, 20 per cent of Labour MPs – 81 people – would have to back a single challenger. Can West do that? The initial reaction to her move is one of surprise. Elected in 2015, West is a reasonably liked but not particularly high-profile figure in the PLP. But having been sacked from a job she loved last September, she clearly thinks she has little to lose. A number of ex-ministers sacked in that reshuffle were seething at their dismissal and may well be prepared to join West in bringing down Starmer following this week’s results. One Labour MP has already predicted to the BBC that West will hit the threshold, saying ‘I am reasonably confident she will be able to get to 81.’
One plugged-in Labour source calls West’s move ‘bizarre’ given ‘how sensible and normal she is’. They posit that the local election results in West’s patch of Hornsey and Friern Barnet have affected her decision – but, they suggest, ‘she will not get more than 20 backers’. A Labour spad suggests that far from being a ‘stalking horse’, West’s bold move resembles an untethered one.
One new MP suggests that West’s move has not gone down well with those around Andy Burnham, who needs time to get himself into parliament. They claim that the ‘Burnham crowd [is] trying desperately to shut it down’ but that ‘West will get the numbers.’
Until now, the question of succession has helped keep Keir Starmer in place. ‘No one wants to make the first move’, one Labour official told me last week. With Burnham’s route uncertain, Angela Rayner’s tax affairs status unknown and Wes Streeting under something of a cloud thanks to the Mandelson scandal, it is not obvious to all in the PLP who would benefit from the PM setting out a timetable for departure.
But, privately, some on the Labour backbenches have been seething at the inaction of their senior colleagues. Now West has clearly reached breaking point and decided to take matters in her own hands. Privately, many of her colleagues agree a change of leader is necessary. But how many are prepared to support her publicly?
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