Starmer vows to stay put despite backbenchers calling for him to leave

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Catherine West, a Labour MP, has withdrawn her leadership challenge against Keir Starmer.

So what? Starmer’s days as prime minister are still numbered. West is likely to have backed off under pressure from the soft left, whose preferred candidate is not yet ready. Until then the prime minister has a seismic mission to

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  convince backbenchers he can deliver a meaningful reset;

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  regain votes lost to parties on both the left and the right; and

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  do these things while continuing to fulfil the duties of prime minister.

Wishful thinking. Keir Starmer told The Observer at the weekend that he wanted a decade as prime minister. This is no longer up to him, even after a speech in London this morning in which he promised a “complete break” from the overwhelmingly underwhelming record of his first two years in power.

Anyone but Labour. This record was punished in last week’s local and parliamentary elections, in which Labour suffered historic losses. It gave up power to Plaid Cymru in Wales, failed to regain Scotland from the SNP, and lost thousands of seats in England to Reform and the Greens.

The four horsemen. In the wake of this defeat, West threatened to run against Starmer as a stalking horse to flush out would-be successors. The most prominent of these are Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham.

A problem of timing. West’s bid failed because two of these candidates are not ready, while the third does not want to be seen as overzealous.

Rayner. The former deputy prime minister is still waiting for the result of an HMRC investigation into her tax affairs and has backed down from an immediate bid by calling for Burnham to return to parliament.

Burnham. The mayor of Greater Manchester cannot run unless he is an MP. This would require an ally to step aside and trigger a by-election, then for Burnham to be approved as a candidate by the National Executive Committee. Starmer said today that Burnham’s future was up to the NEC. Given this body is full of supporters of the prime minister, this is as good as saying: “Back off.”

Streeting. The current health secretary has reportedly told Starmer that he is ready to be the next prime minister. His case will have been helped by Labour’s hold of Redbridge council, which includes his constituency, but he doesn’t want to be the person to trigger a leadership contest.

Back to the future. This leaves Starmer in situ for now, unless another challenger comes to the fore. This could be Ed Miliband, the energy secretary and former party leader, who is popular on the soft left. But the optics would be tricky given that Miliband suffered Labour’s worst election defeat in 32 years in 2015.

I’m not leaving. Starmer was bullish in an interview with The Observer this weekend, defying calls to set out a timeline for his departure and telling Rachel Sylvester that he saw his government as a 10-year project. His critics seized on that as typically tin-eared. Still, he plans to seek closer alignment with Europe, which has gone from being the issue-that-shall-not-be-named to a potential vote winner.

And vote loser. Although embracing the EU could conceivably win back some Labour voters who have jumped ship to the Greens or the Lib Dems, it may not do much to regain those who plumped for Reform in historic Labour heartlands in England and Wales.

Happy days… Labour, then, is in a bind externally and internally. Any move towards one wing of the electorate risks alienating the other. Meanwhile, very few MPs are happy with the current prime minister, but no one seems prepared or able to take the steps needed to see him gone.

Photograph by Andy Hall for The Observer

This article has been amended since publication