Keir Starmer always thinks two or three moves ahead of the rest, even though on many occasions they have been erratic or contradictory plays. The British Prime Minister, aware that the internal rebellion against him is going to growing up In the coming hours and days, all of which have been held this week, he already has a speech and a battery of measures prepared for next Wednesday. The King’s Speech, the text with which the monarch announces the Government’s legislative agenda to Parliament at the opening of the session, will be loaded with messages and winks to the left-wing and pro-European electorate.
“I am going to clearly establish the convictions and principles that have always driven me,” he announced on Saturday morning in London, after meeting with members of the Labor Party. “We have made unnecessary mistakes,” Starmer explained, and promised to be more honest with voters to explain the economic difficulties facing his Government. But, once again, he refused to throw in the towel, as many of his deputies demand. “I am not going to give up now and allow the country to descend into chaos,” he insisted.
Along with that speech, Stamer has announced that he is incorporating two prestigious figures in Labor to his team, as special advisors: former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to advise him on strategy in the face of global financial turbulence, and Harriet Harman, who was Brown’s number two in the party. Its task will be to help the Government in policies to protect women and girls.
It is about buying time at all costs, and conveying the impression that no one is interested in a fratricidal battle for the leadership of the party taking place at this time.
Either me or chaos, the prime minister was saying. And for now, Starmer’s many internal rivals do not want to hear about chaos, but about a controlled blast. . “Unless Keir Starmer is capable of producing tangible change, he will not be able to be the candidate in the next elections,” said MP Sarah Owen, who joined the dozen voices in the parliamentary group who have openly called on the leader to prepare a transition and handover calendar. Nobody believes that Starmer is the candidate for future elections that should be held in 2029.
“I think the best thing the prime minister can do is address tomorrow [por el viernes] to the nation and establish a roadmap for its withdrawal. “That way we can have an orderly transition, which ensures that all the talented people within the Labor Party can take a step forward if that is what they wish,” demanded Jonathan Brash when he saw how all the Labor councilors in his constituency, Hartlepool, including his wife, Pamela Hargreaves, lost their position, which passed to the far-right Reform UK party of Nigel Farage.
So far, only one Labor MP, Catherine West, has gone on the offensive. She was already part of the team of the previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and then Starmer counted on her. West has announced that on Monday without fail, if no member of the Government launches a formal challenge for the leadership, she will activate the mechanism. But taking into account that she neither considers herself as a candidate nor could it be difficult to obtain the necessary support of 81 deputies, her maneuver is more a reflection of the mood in the parliamentary group than a real threat.
The rivals, waiting
The main candidates who could dethrone Starmer have remained silent in the hours after the electoral debacle. Nobody wants to rush. Firstly, because none of them want to end up being the spark that unleashes an internal knife fight like the ones that the Conservative Party carried out a few years ago, which disgusted the British public. But above all, because none of them have an easy path to try to challenge the current leadership of the party and the country.
But he is not a member of the House of Commons, an essential condition to be able to participate in the race for the succession. , has numerous supports among Labor members, unionists and voters. When he announced his intention to contest the vacant seat in the Gordon and Denton constituency, within the Greater Manchester region, last January,
Even if some MP allied to the mayor resigned his seat to allow him to try again, his election would not be certain (given the way in which Reform UK and the Greens have taken constituencies from Labor until now safe) and much less if Starmer did not again maneuver to block him. Most of the members of the National Executive Committee were appointed by him, and could short-circuit Burnham again.
All this, despite its immense popularity. “If at the next election Labor wanted to rally voters across a broad spectrum to help stop Reform UK, Burnham would be the most attractive choice for Labor MPs.” [que deben votar al nuevo líder]”, explains Ben Roof, political analyst senior from the sociological and demographic company Ipsos.
The latest figures managed by this consultancy indicate an approval and knowledge of 17% of voters towards the mayor of Manchester, compared to what would be his most immediate rival, the former deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, with an approval of 5%. Rayner does not stop plotting these days against Starmer, and promoting herself among the moderate left wing of the party. But it’s not over yet, and many of those who supported her recently have now turned their sights on Burnham. Rayner’s advantage, however, is that he still retains his Westminster seat.
Finally, the third in the running would be Wes Streeting, the Minister of Health, a beloved and respected figure on the far right wing of Labour, which still sighs with nostalgia when thinking about the glorious decade of Tony Blair. But his suspects have deducted points from him. And there is increasing certainty among the party’s deputies that the loss of votes has come from the abandonment of the left-wing electorate, seduced by a new party such as the Greens led by the charismatic Zack Polanski.
“Both Reform UK and the Greens have caused considerable damage to the Labor Party in these elections. Half of the councilors it lost were taken by Farage’s party, but practically the other half were taken by Polanski’s party,” says John Curtice, political scientist, researcher at the National Center for Social Research and the electoral analyst most sought after by the British media. “But Labor has suffered more in those constituencies in which the Greens have been stronger, which leads us to think that it is the flow of votes that is diverted towards that formation that ends up dividing the left and causing Reform to take victory,” he points out.
With all these premises, Starmer has managed to gain time to try, for the umpteenth time, to reinforce its precarious situation. But everything indicates that it hangs by a thread that only its internal rivals hold, and that they are willing to let go when it suits them.
