Despite what many expected at the start of this week, Sir Keir Starmer remains prime minister of the United Kingdom — for now. The race to replace him has begun, though slowly and awkwardly, in part due to Starmer’s surprising resilience.
For months, there has been a broad consensus that the Labour Party would move to oust Starmer during May. It was anticipated that the party would suffer major losses at local elections, which happened last week, with Labour bleeding seats to Reform U.K. on their Right, as well as to the Greens and Scottish and Welsh nationalists on their Left.
Starmer was already the least popular prime minister since records began. Despite the occasional deceptive headline to the contrary, Labour has failed to make measurable progress on core areas such as immigration, the economy, and healthcare. Starmer’s departure, therefore, seemed a foregone conclusion.
And yet, he’s still here. This is remarkable given the unanimous consensus that Starmer is uniquely bad at political maneuvering. He is a human rights lawyer who lives by strict adherence to procedure. Yet this very trait has enabled him to weather this week’s storm of speculation and criticism.
Starmer has largely refused to bend to informal political pressure and fallen back on the fact that the Labour Party has a formal process for removing a leader, and that process has not been triggered. Multiple MPs have called for his resignation; junior ministers have resigned; cabinet ministers have told him that he needs to go.
As a crunch cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning approached, it felt like a familiar prime ministerial resignation story would play itself out for the fifth time in a decade. But Starmer refused to allow cabinet members to allow discussion of his leadership and simply stuck to his agenda as planned.
On paper, Starmer is totally within his rights to carry on with business as usual. Under Labour Party rules, 20% of sitting MPs (meaning 81 at current numbers) must back a specific MP to challenge Starmer if a leadership contest is to begin. Candidates would then be voted on by party members and affiliates (in short, trade unions).
It is here that Starmer has displayed some political ability and perhaps even courage, grounded in both firm knowledge and political calculus.
First, he knows that, currently, no other MP in the party can get 81 other MPs to back them. This is even the case for Wes Streeting, the now-former health secretary, long touted as a replacement for Starmer who could maintain an election-winning centrist agenda for Labour. Despite intense speculation that he would trigger a contest this week, it now seems that Streeting never had the numbers; if he did, he swiftly lost support by chickening out of challenging Starmer on Monday. Eventually, he resigned as health secretary on Thursday and is regrouping.
Second, Starmer seems to have calculated that, although the public detests him, they will detest chaos and infighting even more, especially having been so wearied by it under the Tories. If someone wants to challenge him, they will have to grasp this nettle.
Yet things are now moving toward the start of a formal contest, albeit slowly, due to the awkward circumstances of each potential contender.
The candidate with the best chance of winning the support of Labour MPs, the wider party, and (if you believe the spin) the country isn’t yet an MP himself: Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester.
Burnham is a throwback to Labour’s traditional northern white working-class heartlands and is widely viewed as Labour’s best hope of electoral revival, despite a mediocre political career. Yesterday, it was announced that a northern Labour MP will stand aside to let Burnham run for his seat. Burnham will first have to be approved by Labour’s National Executive Committee, which voted against him running earlier in the year at Starmer’s behest, though it is now unlikely to block him. After that, Burnham will still have to win a by-election, and this is far from guaranteed. Reform U.K. came a close second in the seat in 2024 and dominated last week’s local elections in the area. What’s more, there will also be a contest to replace Burnham as mayor, which Reform could well win. And even if he wins the by-election, he’d then need to win the Labour leadership. He’s taking multiple huge gambles.
Also in contention for leadership could be Angela Rayner, the former Deputy PM, cut from similar classic Labour cloth. Rayner had to resign in 2025 due to a tax scandal, which she claimed to have been conveniently cleared of this week, although tax experts remain unsure. Ed Miliband, energy secretary and former leader, has good odds of winning if Burnham isn’t able to run, but was rejected as a potential PM at the 2015 general election, so his wider national appeal has arguably already been found lacking.
Burnham, Streeting, and Miliband would all represent Labour’s left flank, Streeting its right. And Starmer himself is automatically entitled to run and defend his position. Could he still come out on top? After his surprising survival this week, don’t put it past him. It has been a week of the unexpected in Westminster, and it seems likely that we will only see more of it in the next few months.
***
Rhys Laverty is the editorial and research director at the Prosperity Institute.
.png)
.png)
