Labour MPs increasingly believe that Sir Keir Starmer could quit as Prime Minister in the New Year before facing a leadership challenge, The Mail on Sunday has been told.
At the start of a crunch week for the PM, with one of the most anticipated Budgets of modern times taking place against the backdrop of plots against his premiership, MPs say they are suspicious about what they call Sir Keir’s ‘new zen-like mood’.
Despite Labour languishing at 18 percent in the polls – level-pegging with the Greens – and Cabinet colleagues openly jostling for his job, one backbencher who met him recently said: ‘He was very chilled.
‘Not like someone who had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Or expects to have them for that much longer.’
And a minister highlighted the letter that Sir Keir wrote to his son to mark International Men’s Day last week, saying: ‘I thought that was an odd thing for him to do. He’s not keen on talking about his family like that.
‘I thought there was something valedictory about it.’
May’s local elections – in which Labour is expected to do badly – are being eyed as the most likely time for a contest if Sir Keir is still in post.Â
The PM responded to reports that former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham are planning bids by telling reporters at the G20 in Johannesburg this weekend that he wants to be in No 10 until 2034.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday at the G20 Leaders’ Summit at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa
A new poll from former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft shows that just nine percent of voters think that Sir Keir will be Prime Minister after the next election, compared with 30 per cent for Nigel Farage
Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney has told MPs ‘the situation can be turned around’ and briefed journalists that Sir Keir would fight any challenge – a briefing some MPs believe was intended to encourage the Prime Minister to fight rather than ‘quit at the first sign of gunsmoke’.Â
It comes as exclusive polling data from former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, published in tomorrow’s Mail on Sunday, finds that just nine percent of voters think that Sir Keir will be Prime Minister after the next election, compared with 30 per cent for Nigel Farage.
A whopping 69 percent think that Sir Keir’s party is divided.
Voters also feel deeply pessimistic about Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ statement on Wednesday, with 68 percent thinking that they will be worse off personally after the Budget and 63 percent that the country will be poorer.Â
Meanwhile, a total of 61 percent are opposed to Ms Reeves’ plan to lift the two-child benefit cap.
The poll also covered the row over the BBC’s apology to Donald Trump after it spliced two parts of a 2021 speech together.
More than a third said that the BBC displayed Left-wing bias, with only 22 percent saying it was impartial.
A separate poll of Labour members by Survation for LabourList today confirmed the PM’s perilous position, finding that Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting would all win any head-to-head leadership contest against him.
