Sir Keir Starmer is fighting to save his increasingly threatened premiership and has told allies that he would stand against Wes Streeting with the health secretary poised to resign from the cabinet and force a Labour leadership contest.
The Independent first revealed on Monday that health secretary Wes Streeting was expected to launch a leadership bid as his supporters led the way in urging the prime minister to step aside after a bruising set of local election results.
The prime minister said he took responsibility for the results, which saw the Labour Party lose almost 1,500 councillor seats, but insisted he would not walk away.
The elections were widely touted as judgement day for the prime minister, and he was hit by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK snatching councils, some of which had been held by Labour for generations, in northern England, while Zack Polanski’s Green Party lured voters away from him in former urban strongholds, including taking control of some London authorities.
On Monday, Sir Keir gave a make-or-break speech intended to avert any leadership challenge and reassert his authority, but it was followed by dozens of Labour MPs calling for him to stand down or to provide a timetable to ensure an orderly transition of power.
Cabinet ministers have also encouraged Sir Keir to consider his position, opening a window for some rumoured Labour leadership candidates – some of whom are said to have been planning their challenges for months – to finally strike.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has been widely considered the most popular candidate, and allies say he has a credible plan to return as a sitting MP, a prerequisite for the top job.
Sir Keir’s former deputy Angela Rayner is also a frontrunner, as well as Mr Streeting.
The former deputy prime minister announced on Thursday that she has been cleared of deliberate wrongdoing in an investigation over her tax affairs, which could pave the way for her to make a potential leadership bid, while allies of the health secretary claim he is set to resign from the government to trigger a leadership race.
Here, The Independent looks at each of the potential leadership candidates, while readers can also share their thoughts:
Andy Burnham
Popular among Labour MPs, party members and the general public, the mayor of Greater Manchester has been hinting at a leadership bid for months.
Recent YouGov polling puts Mr Burnham, who was MP for Leigh from 2001 to 2017, far ahead of any other Labour figure in popularity polls, with 34 per cent of Britons thinking he’d do a better job than Sir Keir.
Last year, Mr Burnham repeatedly failed to rule out a leadership bid and has been regularly tipped as the leading candidate to take over should Sir Keir’s position as prime minister become untenable.
He was the focus of such rumours at the Labour Party conference last September, when he revealed that dozens of MPs were privately urging him to challenge the prime minister.
He is currently unable to launch an official bid as he is not a sitting MP, and has not made a public statement since Labour’s devastating defeat in the local elections, though he was spotted in London on Tuesday.
Earlier this year, tensions came to a head when Mr Burnham put himself forward to run for Labour in the historically-safe Greater Manchester parliamentary seat of Gorton and Denton, but was blocked by the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC).
Despite the government insisting the move was down to the potential cost of a subseuqeunt mayoral election, critics accused Sir Keir and his allies of preventing the candidacy for factional reasons and out of fear of a leadership challenge.
However, allies say the mayor has a plan to return as an MP, with reports suggesting an announcement could be coming on Thursday.
Questions remain however, over whether he could return to parliament in time for a leadership election, if one of the other front-runners fire the starting gun imminently.
Angela Rayner
Rumours about the Ashton-under-Lyne MP’s ambitions have been circling from the moment she resigned from Sir Keir’s cabinet last September, when it was revealed she had underpaid stamp duty on her Brighton flat, but she has now been cleared of wrongdoing – potentially clearing the way for a run at the party leadership.
Once the prime minister’s number two, Rayner is popular on the soft left of the party and has been named as one of the MPs most likely to stage a coup.
She made an intervention on Sunday, releasing a statement which appeared to show support for Mr Burnham and told the prime minister that blocking the mayor’s bid to stand in Gorton and Denton was a mistake.
In a stark warning to Sir Keir, she added: “Labour exists to make working people better off. That is not happening fast enough, and it needs to change, now.”
In an interview with The Guardian on Thursday, she did not rule out running in any Labour leadership race but said she would not “trigger” a contest.
Wes Streeting
The health secretary is considered to be the most likely candidate to replace Sir Keir from within the sitting cabinet, with reports he is ready to stage a leadership challenge, despite the prime minister stating he retained “full confidence” in the health secretary on Wednesday.
He is understood to have the backing of enough Labour MPs to launch a leadership bid, having recruited more than 81 MPs – the minimum required to trigger a leadership election.
Sir Keir was reportedly alerted to Mr Streeting’s intentions when a Downing Street staff member was accidentally texted details of his bid, including the “five pillars” of his campaign and his “PFG”, meaning plan for government.
In the centre-right of the party, he is a charismatic cabinet minister who is able to connect with the public.
Chatter about a potential leadership bid grew louder towards the end of last year, amid a briefing war targeting the health secretary over his perceived ambitions to succeed Sir Keir.
He has previously voiced his concerns about the direction of the government, and hit out at a “toxic culture” in No 10 when the briefings against him were made public in November.
Earlier this year, as questions around Sir Keir’s future reached fever pitch, the health secretary took the controversial decision to publish communications between himself and Lord Mandelson, which contained severe criticism of the PM’s economic and Middle East policies.
The publication broke collective responsibility and would normally lead to a sacking, but Mr Streeting justified it by saying it was necessary to deal with “smears” that had been made about his relationship with the disgraced former Labour peer.
The main obstacle facing Mr Streeting is the perception among some Labour factions that he is too far to the right of the party, and the general feeling that he does not have enough backing to launch a successful bid.
His public popularity ratings are also low, with only 13 per cent of voters thinking he’d do a better job than Sir Keir.
Ed Miliband
Ed Miliband has emerged as an unexpected contender to be the prime minister, more than 10 years since he led the party to defeat in the 2015 general election.
But in his time away from the leadership, the energy secretary has carved a niche for himself as the party’s top advocate for green energy and net zero.
Surprisingly popular among young people, speculation has been rife that Mr Miliband is preparing an attempt to make a comeback as leader, with suggestions he could be the candidate from the party’s soft left.
The recent Mandelson scandal has seen him grow increasingly critical of the government, telling broadcasters that he had raised concerns about the appointment with David Lammy at the time.
A Miliband supporter told The Independent recently: “He has the energy and enthusiasm. He is loved by younger members of the party. He is a new man from when he was last leader.”
Backers of the energy secretary say he also has the numbers to launch a bid but polling suggests only 13 per cent of voters think he’d do a better job than the current prime minister.
