How much longer can Starmer cling onto the crown while Burnham eyes the throne?

Macbeth had a point. “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly…”

If you are going to topple a prime minister, then it is usually for the best to perform the operation ruthlessly and at speed. My first ringside seat at a leadership crisis was for the most dramatic of them all: the fall of the Iron Lady in 1990. This was mesmerising, and it was quick. Just 14 days passed between Michael Heseltine challenging Margaret Thatcher for the leadership of the Conservative party and her tear-stained departure from Number 10, where she was replaced by John Major. He oversaw an upturn in Tory fortunes. A party that had looked doomed to defeat went on to win the subsequent general election with a popular vote that has never since been surpassed.

By contrast, Labour’s convulsions about whether and how to navigate to a post-Starmer world will be extremely protracted and highly perilous. “It is an absolute nightmare,” groans one level-headed, middle-of-the road MP. “We’re going to end up looking like the Tories.” She means not the Tories who reinvigorated themselves by defenestrating Mrs T. She means the more recent Conservatives who got through three prime ministers in two months in 2022, the carousel of chaos that Sir Keir was supposed to halt.

One danger is that the conflict in the Middle East delivers an economic shock and a new anti-Labour legend is born that the party wrecked people’s standard of living because its members were too busy feuding with each other to govern. The events of the past few days have resembled not Macbeth but the The Comedy of Errors. One blunder was made by Sir Keir’s team when they sent him out to make a “fightback” speech that was devoid of any inspirational content. When you’re widely accused of being a visionless vacuum, the charge levelled by Wes Streeting in his stinging letter resigning from the cabinet, don’t make a tepid speech that reinforces your critics’ complaint. Voters need hope, the prime minister declared, but he failed to supply any to his MPs. For a lot of those who were wobbling on the fence “that terrible speech killed him off”, in the words of someone who used to be one of his senior aides.

The next miscalculation was made by Mr Streeting who wrongly assumed that Sir Keir would fold under the weight of the demands to quit. The prime minister instead barricaded himself behind the party rule book, his people goaded his rival to put up or shut up, and the would-be challenger failed to produce the 81 supporters in parliament required to trigger a contest. One MP close to events says Mr Streeting’s “strategic failure” was to conflate the number of Labour MPs calling for Sir Keir to go with the number willing to back the former health secretary’s challenge. That he wants the job was formally confirmed by his declaration yesterday that he will run in any race.

And so all eyes now turn northwards to Andy Burnham, the messiah of Manchester. Fighting a byelection is a high-risk, high-reward gamble. If it comes off, his march on the leadership may start to look irresistible. If he loses his shirt, it will be the most colossal miscalculation of all. I don’t downplay his talents. After Cambridge, he spent his early adulthood as a parliamentary researcher and a special adviser, shinned up the greasy pole to cabinet level and was then twice turned down when he applied to lead the party. It is quite the feat to have that background and reinvent yourself as the anti-establishment man of the people and the champion of localism who can fix Westminster. When the government is so horribly unpopular, it is another achievement to be the only Labour politician with positive poll ratings. That may not last if he does get back to Westminster. The national stage is a bit more demanding than sorting out a city’s buses.

His people say that Makerfield, the constituency that he hopes will send him back to the Commons, is ideal for the mayor of Greater Manchester. On the face of it, this makes no sense. At the 2024 election, when Labour was rather more popular than it is today, the party’s majority in the seat was just 5,399. At the recent local elections, Reform hammered Labour in the patch. The Farage mob say that they will “throw everything” at the battle. This, claim Team Andy, is the point. His siren song to Labour people is that he has the persuasive personality and the left-tilting policy range that can neutralise the threat from the Greens and see off the menace posed by Nigel Farage.

“If anyone can do it, he can do it,” argues one of Mr Burnham’s confidants. “He’s the person who eats Reform for breakfast.” They are selling this as a “proof-of-concept” byelection, which will validate his claim to be the man who can save Labour at its darkest hour. If he can win what one MP correctly calls “a bloody difficult seat”, it will unquestionably enhance his appeal to his party.

“I think Andy is on his way,” says one cabinet member who has fought fiercely to keep Sir Keir at Number 10. “If he wins this byelection, he will be unstoppable.” A different cabinet minister, who is by no means a fan of the mayor of Greater Manchester, says: “There’s now a credible pathway to a Burnham coronation. It is quite extraordinary. He’s always complained that the Labour establishment is against him and we’re about to hand him the prime ministership on a plate.”

The byelection, likely to be in the second half of June, is shaping up to be the most consequential in our modern political history. It is also going to be a rather surreal affair, given that Mr Burnham will be running on the unofficial slogan: Vote Labour. Get Starmer Out.

If the King in the North succeeds in marching south, Labour will move towards the leadership contest that many of the party seem to desire with the currently most popular candidate on the ballot paper. Even Mr Streeting and his supporters claim to want this, on the grounds that a contest that excluded the Manchester One would look illegitimate.

Listening to Labour people, I hear many of them say that Sir Keir is circling the plughole and the ideal outcome will be to have a new leader in place in time for the party conference in September. Maybe just another four months of toil and trouble to go then – all going to plan. If it be done, it will be done agonisingly slowly.

Photograph by Lesly Hamilton/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images