Defiant Sir Keir Starmer today pledged ‘I’m not going to walk away’ after Andy Burnham finally admitted openly on Question Time that he has Labour leadership ambitions.
The Prime Minister turned to his go-to list of crises – the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East – as he urged the Manchester Mayor not to trigger a contest. After the obligatory description of Burnham as ‘talented’, the Prime Minister, speaking to LBC in Swindon, got straight to it:
I’ve said over and over again I’m not going to walk away. We won an election victory in 2024 with a five-year mandate. We’re only two years into that and so I’m not going to walk away from that… we should be getting on with the job that we were elected to do in 2024, which is taking the decisions that are priority decisions for our country, not plunging into an internal fight in the Labour party, which will distract us from the job that we are elected to do.
At the very least, Sir Keir acknowledged the reality of a chaotic road ahead for his party. He also declared his next course of action: to stay on and fight. Compare that with the Labour ministers who appear to take the public for fools when they insist, on television and radio, that there is no battle for the leadership, and that everyone should get behind Sir Keir while campaigning for Burnham in Makerfield. David Lammy attempted just that on this morning’s round. He claimed there is no formal leadership contest against the Prime Minister and said he was looking forward to heading north to campaign for Burnham.
These ministers are ignoring the reality before them in order to hedge for what comes next. For many, including the Justice Secretary, the ideal scenario would have been Burnham keeping his mouth shut and the Prime Minister carrying on, perhaps in improved form, after the local elections bloodbath. Instead, there is now a real possibility of a changeover in Downing Street, and they cannot be seen to insult the potential new king if they wish to stay in his good graces – and around the Cabinet table.
Frankly, this game of playing both sides, repeated almost daily by whichever poor soul has drawn the morning-round short straw, is unsustainable. If – but far more likely when – a contest is eventually triggered, they will have to pick a side. They will also have to offer the public a better explanation of what the hell is going on in the government and the Labour party than the ridiculous and false impression they are attempting to give now. At least, to the Prime Minister’s credit, he acknowledged that head on today.
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