Last week could have been worse for Sir Keir Starmer, but only because he remains Prime Minister – for the time being. After the tawdry relationship between Lord Mandelson and the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein surged back into the headlines, Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, was forced to resign as a burnt offering. For a while it seemed as if Starmer’s tenure as leader of the Labour party had hours rather than days, weeks or months, left to run.
Labour MPs are understandably desperate. But they are losing touch with reality
Survival is a basic human instinct. Although the Prime Minister navigated the perils of the week, then distracted himself by heading to the Munich Security Conference to find people who still treat him with respect, his position remains under extreme threat. A poor result for Labour in the Gorton and Denton by-election on 26 February would rekindle the flames of revolt; even more depends on its performance on 7 May, when elections will be held for the Scottish parliament, the Senedd, and six directly elected mayors and more than 4,000 seats in over a hundred English local authorities. If Labour receives an electoral mauling, many believe Starmer’s time will finally be up.
The Prime Minister’s mounting woes mean that speculation long ago turned to who might replace him if he is forced out of office – no small procedural hurdle under Labour’s rules – or simply cannot face going on. The parliamentary Labour party, which knows the runners and riders best, is rife with speculation, but some of the most likely candidates have their own problems.
Two years ago, a three-way fight for the leadership between Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting would have been a respectable forecast. Not now: Reeves’s reputation is a burned-out shell and stalked by rumours of her own dismissal; Rayner had to resign from cabinet last September for failing to pay the correct stamp duty on a property and remains the subject of investigation by HMRC; while Streeting has been irradiated by the fall-out from the Mandelson saga, and seems unable to conceal his ambition even enough to satisfy his fellow politicians.
Labour MPs have been forced to recalculate their preferences. But, perhaps as a demonstration of how isolated they have become from the quotidian concerns of the electorate, they are now desperately trying to come up with some clearly implausible names, perhaps believing that anyone would represent an improvement on the current incumbent.
The Telegraph reports that some Labour rebels are coalescing around the Defence Secretary, John Healey, as a possible ‘unity candidate’ who might attract support from the left and right of the party. That is insanity. Healey is a decent man and his ministerial tenure has not been as disastrous as some colleagues; he enjoys a solid reputation with fellow defence ministers abroad and is manifestly a serious man.
But Prime Minister Healey? Setting aside the fact that he has just turned 66 and bears a passing but awkward resemblance to Count Orlok in the original Nosferatu of 1922, he is a workaday, uninspiring communicator untouched by golden oratory or great vision. He has held the defence brief for six years, long enough that no one can remember his opinions on other major policy areas like the economy, education, immigration or health. He did not appear at all in polling on potential leaders last summer, while a similar exercise at the end of 2024 gave him name recognition of 7 per cent. Bluntly, most voters don’t know John Healey exists.
There has been an equally fantastical flare of publicity around one of Healey’s juniors, minister for the armed forces, Al Carns. One Conservative MP, presumably indulging in mild satire, said Carns would be ‘an absolute nightmare to face’. More significantly, for most voters he would be an absolute nightmare to pick out of a line-up. He only became an MP at the last general election, after a distinguished career in the Royal Marines, and was appointed a defence minister five days later. So he has never been a backbencher, free to explore the full range of policy areas and stake out some positions.
Labour MPs are understandably desperate. Starmer has some of the worst popularity ratings since records began, and some polling suggests Labour could emerge from a future general election in fourth place with 16 per cent of the vote. But they are losing touch with reality, trying to magnify small virtues and abilities of leadership candidates whose names would never even be considered in normal circumstances.
To go to the electorate led by John Healey, or Al Carns, or (and these names have genuinely been raised) Dan Jarvis or Peter Kyle or Heidi Alexander, would demonstrate Labour’s cupboards are completely bare.
Political parties do not always put forward their brightest, best or most suitable: think of Michael Foot, Theresa May, Liz Truss, Clement Davies or Tim Farron. But Labour MPs now look like they have turned away from the concerns of the electorate. If 400 Labour MPs cannot produce a single credible leader with ability and a public profile, the party is in serious trouble.
