Labour MPs Believe Keir Starmer Will Not Be Ousted In May

The pre-written obituaries for Keir Starmer’s time in Downing Street are unlikely to be published this year.

Labour MPs from across all wings of the party have told HuffPost UK that the under-fire prime minister will survive what promises to be a catastrophic set of election results on May 7 – and see in 2027 in No.10 as well.

Voters will go to the polls in Scotland, Wales and England in what will be the biggest test of public opinion since the general election in 2024.

Even previously-defiant Labour MPs now accept that they will be catastrophic for the party.

The SNP will comfortably win the Scottish Parliament election, with Labour in a fight with Reform UK to be Holyrood’s official opposition party.

For the first time since devolution was established in 1999, Labour will no longer run the Welsh government. A YouGov poll this week suggested that Plaid Cymru will win, with Labour a distant third behind Reform.

A similar trend will be seen in local councils across England, where Labour could lose up to 2,000 seats as Reform and the Greens enjoy big gains.

And yet, despite all that, the long-expected challenge to Starmer’s leadership is not expected to materialise.

There are three main reasons for this.

The first is the fact that Parliament will be prorogued – effectively shut down – from the end of April until May 13, when the King’s Speech sets out the government’s legislative plans for the year ahead.

This will buy Starmer some time, and mean that much of the post-elections anger and thirst for retribution from the Parliamentary Labour Party will have dissipated by the time MPs meet up again.

“No.10 have pulled off a masterstroke by removing the opportunity for people to properly organise against the prime minister,” one MP told HuffPost UK.

The second reason is that there is a war on, which has undoubtedly cooled many MPs’ desire for a change of prime minister.

Even the PM’s critics acknowledge that he has handled the conflict in Iran well, and – for the moment at least – finds himself on the same side as the public on the extent to which the UK should get involved.

“Why on earth, with everything going on in the world at the moment, would we want to respond by have a leadership contest?” one MP told HuffPost UK.

“This isn’t the time to be getting rid of Starmer, it’s a time to circle the wagons.”

The third, and perhaps the main, reason why the PM’s position is more secure than it has been for months is that none of his main rivals are in a position to mount a challenge.

Even supporters of Angela Rayner agree that her decision to make a speech criticising the government and warning Starmer that he is “running out of time” was a mis-step.

“She’s annoyed lots of MPs,” one backbencher said. “It’s also made a lot of us think about the prospect of Angie being prime minister in the middle of a war, which is giving us pause for thought.”

Andy Burnham remains stymied by the fact that he is not even an MP, while Wes Streeting told The Guardian’s podcast this week that now was not the time to be contemplating a change of personnel in 10 Downing Street.

“We all know that there are lots of people in this country who voted for change, who are still demanding change and are finding us wanting because of some of the mistakes we’ve made and because they’re not yet feeling change in their own lives,” he said.

“We all know this. Keir knows this. But look at the scale of the challenges we inherited when we came in. There was never going to be an overnight transformation.

“We are beginning to see this country moving in the right direction. He’s only been prime minister for 20 months. Give the guy and the government a chance.”

Another senior Labour figure said there was a more practical reason why Starmer is safe, at least for now.

“The right of the party know none of their candidates can win, and the soft left are already getting everything they want, so why bother changing leader?,” he said

Ed Miliband’s decision to let the New Statesman follow him around for four months for an in-depth article on what makes him tick has not gone unnoticed among his MP colleagues.

Many of them are now convinced it is a case of when, rather than if, he decides to make a bid for Starmer’s job.

But few expect that to be this year – and even if he did, he would face significant opposition from within the PLP.

“The feeling I get from speaking to colleagues is that the prime minister is safer now than he has been for a long time,” said an MP, “He’s steadied the ship in the last few weeks, and is handling the war in the Middle East well.”

Keir Starmer has made a virtue of his ability to prove people wrong, be it by winning the Labour leadership in the first place, surviving the disastrous Hartlepool by-election loss in 2021, or by delivering a landslide general election victory in 2024.

Most MPs believed last Christmas would be his last one as prime minister.

Remarkably, the smart money is now on Starmer still being in charge when the decorations are taken down again next year.