In the corner of one of Westminster’s endless Christmas receptions, a Conservative veteran of the Brexit years admits they are somewhat baffled by the frenzied leadership speculation among the new Labour ranks.
It was easy to forget, they said, given how many Tory leaders the party cycled through – but prime ministers were not that easy to dislodge.
Theresa May’s predicament is a useful point of comparison. She lost a majority, lost multiple Commons votes on her flagship policy, lost dozens of ministers and cabinet ministers, had members of her own party selling “chuck Chequers” badges at her party conference, and narrowly survived a confidence vote before she was finally ousted. Yes, the Labour leader is polling at historic lows – but things can get a lot worse.
But can anything stop the Westminster leadership rumour mill once it gets going? Keir Starmer even joked about it at the liaison committee on Monday. “It seems to be pretty rife,” he said.
Like May, Starmer does not intend to go quietly. The message from the prime minister’s allies doing the somewhat cack-handed briefing about a supposed coup plot by Wes Streeting was not primarily aimed at the health secretary himself, but to remind would-be challengers that Starmer would stay and fight.
“This is not like Hartlepool,” one cabinet minister says, referring to the byelection loss that almost resulted in Starmer quitting as Labour leader. “He was on the brink then because he was finding the job of being opposition leader very hard, but this is different, he wants to stay as prime minister.”
Everyone in Westminster has their different theory about how things went so bad so quickly: Starmer’s aloofness towards his MPs, the early harshness of the whipping system, unforced errors such as the winter fuel allowance cut or wardrobes furnished by Waheed Alli.
Some blame the assisted dying vote as the first moment MPs got a taste for rebelling against the prime minister and organising their own internal whipping systems.
No 10 has tried various tactics to counter the leadership speculation – and the one that is working better than the macho briefing war is the quiet but dogged work of the new political secretary, Amy Richards, to get Starmer to spend much more time with his own MPs.
But once the warm wine starts flowing at the regional Christmas receptions, MPs and advisers can talk of little else but wargaming the leadership battles to come.
For Labour, this is a particularly diverting topic of conversation, because no one knows exactly how a leadership challenge could come about. When the Conservatives were in power, it was all talk of letters to the 1922 Committee.
This time there is no clear sense of how Streeting or Andy Burnham – or anyone else – might seize power. And because of how widely this is being discussed, it is not surprising that various theories make it into the newspaper pages.
The mayor of Greater Manchester and the health secretary protest in public about the attention, issuing angry posts on social media or tortured metaphors about pantomime baddies in interviews.
But they are not novices. Burnham knows the headlines that will follow when he says: “If the call came, I’m not going to just turn away from it.” Streeting knows his comments about how the government is acting like a “maintenance team” will be interpreted as a critique of Starmer’s style.
Neither man has a clear route to doing anything about their current frustrations. Nor does Angela Rayner, waiting for judgment day from HMRC before she can start to truly plot her route back.
And so it goes on, with MPs discussing how Streeting and Rayner might reach a deal, never quite clear in whose favour. They talk about who will be the kingmakers in any coronation – Ed Miliband? Lucy Powell? Louise Haigh and the Tribune group?
They talk about how Streeting might face a runoff against Shabana Mahmood and be thus able to present himself as the plucky leftwinger. They muse on how Burnham might return to Westminster, if Andrew Gwynne is really serious about staying the full parliament – or if the recently ousted ex-minister Jim McMahon might fancy a job swap for mayor of Greater Manchester.
They ponder whether internal Labour and union elections – especially the next general secretary of Unison – might shift the balance of the NEC and give Burnham an opening – or whether Morgan McSweeney could engineer an all-female shortlist to block him.
It is all diverting gossip. Some of it is at least in touching distance of reality, but any really serious leadership contender will need to articulate exactly how they plan to do things differently, when so much of what has hamstrung Starmer – a rocky economy, international turmoil and a febrile party – will remain the same.
