Labour’s “horrible but necessary” week

There was a point yesterday when Labour people reached a state approaching despair. Whether Keir Starmer loyalists or otherwise, they seemed to be ending a week of Labour convulsions weakened, divided and with no answer to their predicament on whether or not to change leader. “I really don’t know how we come together and stagger on after this,” one government loyalist mused. Most of the people I spoke to said they were sad, exhausted, lost. Labour seemed to be bound for stasis, and more convulsions in the coming weeks, with no resolution in sight.

Then came the news that seems to have changed everything. Andy Burnham has found a seat to stand in, with caveats attached, and Labour could soon have a contest that a majority in the party wants, with its most popular politician able to be on the ballot paper. My phone flooded with messages of relief and excitement, including from Wes Streeting supporters who worried a contest without Burnham would look illegitimate. “It has been a horrible but necessary week,” one Labour frontbencher concluded. The deadlock may soon be over.

Makerfield won’t be an easy fight, of course, as Ben Walker sets out here. But in choosing a seat where Labour is currently being decimated by Reform, Burnham is setting the stage for a “proof of concept” by-election. As one supporter puts it: “He’s walked into the fire of Labour’s culture collapse and said, ‘I am the person to do this.’” He will pitch himself as the outsider and the change candidate, giving voters a sense of what he could offer as Labour leader. If he can defeat Reform here, he will show his party and the country that Labour can win again with him as leader. As I outlined in this week’s New Statesman column, he thinks that the stakes of a leadership contest after such a victory are much lower.

Now many of my Labour contacts from across the party say they are focused on getting Burnham over the line. Even Streeting fans tell me they will throw everything at it. They can hardly bear thinking about what happens if he loses, or what that would mean for Labour’s future.

But in No 10, the sitting prime minister is watching all this unfold and feeling his power slipping away. He and his allies are furious with Josh Simons for stepping down for Burnham, and remain of the view that a change of leader would be chaotic and deeply irresponsible just as the country plunges into an economic shock from the war in Iran. He isn’t politically strong enough to block Burnham’s return, but he certainly isn’t happy about it.

As Starmer transforms into a lame duck, I have to say his closest allies are being rather silent on what should, or will, happen next. Many of them have already had conversations with him in recent weeks about setting out a timetable, or signalling with a rhetorical nod that he will leave in a year or two if things don’t improve, or about how otherwise to leave “with dignity”. He has defied all of them, digging in to suggest only a week ago that he would stay on for 10 years. Friends have said recently that they can’t reach him, that he isn’t willing to hear these arguments. When will political reality dawn? Even when it does, what can he do? He faces a very protracted build-up to a leadership challenge. And if Burnham loses this by-election, he could yet remain as prime minister and we could end up back where Labour was yesterday afternoon: sad, exhausted, lost, with no way out of its stasis and no answer on its leadership question.

This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here

[Further reading: Can Andy Burnham win in Makerfield?]