Labour backbenchers are actively plotting to remove Sir Keir Starmer from Downing Street in the immediate aftermath of the local elections on 7 May, with multiple MPs telling The Telegraph that the Prime Minister’s position has become untenable and that a swift leadership transition is now the party’s only viable path forward.
The mood within the parliamentary Labour Party has shifted sharply from despondency to outright anger over the past week, driven by the continuing fallout from the Mandelson security vetting scandal and the subsequent revelation that Downing Street had sought to secure a diplomatic posting for Lord Doyle — the Prime Minister’s former director of communications — while keeping the Foreign Secretary deliberately uninformed.
“I think people will now start going over the top on May 8 after the local elections,” one backbencher told The Telegraph. Another senior MP was equally blunt: “It’s over. It’s just a question of when and what the process is. The Prime Minister’s shown that he’s not up to the job.”
The party faces a grim electoral reckoning at the polls, where it is braced to lose hundreds of council seats across England and, for the first time in its history, control of the Welsh Senedd. Several MPs said the only reason Starmer remained in post was the proximity of the elections themselves. Once those results are in, they expect the dam to break.
There is broad consensus among those plotting that any succession process must be rapid. “We can’t be having months and months of speculation and leadership contests,” one senior MP said. “If there’s going to be a change, the Labour Party needs to work out how that would happen quickly.” The fear within the party is that if Starmer survives to the King’s Speech on 13 May, institutional inertia will set in and the moment to act will pass. Downing Street is understood to have already shelved a planned reshuffle, with the Prime Minister considered too politically weakened to impose major changes on his Cabinet.
The question of who succeeds him is already generating significant internal debate. Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, is widely viewed as a credible candidate but is currently unable to stand as he holds no Westminster seat. The Telegraph understands that discussions have taken place about identifying an MP willing to step down and trigger a by-election to fast-track Burnham’s return to Parliament. His previous attempt to re-enter the Commons was blocked by Starmer and allies on Labour’s National Executive Committee, with the party subsequently losing the Gorton and Denton seat to the Green Party. One minister said: “If Andy was in Parliament I would be very supportive of him.”
Angela Rayner, the former deputy Prime Minister who resigned in September after it emerged she had failed to pay the correct amount of stamp duty on a property in Hove, is understood to be working to resolve that matter before any contest is formally triggered.
Several MPs are pushing for the leadership field to extend beyond the current Cabinet, arguing that its members have not distinguished themselves. Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley and Middleton South, said he wanted the contest to be “long enough so that people outside the Cabinet have a chance to put a campaign together,” specifically warning against what he called a “Cabinet stitch-up” between Ed Miliband and Wes Streeting. He nominated defence minister and former Royal Marine Al Carns as a potential outside candidate worth watching.
The flashpoint that crystallised the party’s collapse in confidence was not the original Mandelson vetting failure but the subsequent disclosure that No 10 had asked Sir Olly Robbins to find Lord Doyle a senior diplomatic post while instructing him to hide the approach from then-Foreign Secretary David Lammy. “The moment that MPs lost hope was the Doyle moment,” one senior government source said. “What is this cast list and clique? That was a real deflatory moment.” Lord Doyle has said he did not request or desire such a posting.
