The hunt for a new Labour leader has already begun

An organisation that once backed the Prime Minister appears to be looking for a replacement 08/12/25 Daily Telegraph link With each passing day, another chip is struck from the edifice of Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party.

The think tank Labour Together, which was a prime mover behind Starmer’s takeover of the party in 2020, has been canvassing its supporters’ views on who might be best placed to lead Labour to victory at the next general election. This, obviously, is hardly the action of an organisation that is loyal to the incumbent Prime Minister. And when even the group behind your leadership campaign is asking who might do a better job, the writing isn’t just on the wall: it’s engraved in granite. Embarrassingly for Number 10, Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief-of-staff, was formerly the director of Labour Together. There is no suggestion that McSweeney had anything to do with the survey. However news of it will be an unwelcome reminder to those around Starmer that the leadership issue, in the minds of the country and the party, has not been settled. Labour Together, a product of the Right-wing of the party, has a realistic, pragmatic approach to elections and to government. It is doing what it sees as common sense, finding out who might succeed Starmer in the New Year in order, presumably, to develop strategies and policies to support that new leader. So common has the presumption about a change of leadership become within Labour that the questions of “who” and “when” are far more commonly asked than “if”. Had this particular survey come from almost anywhere else in the party – from one of the many unhappy affiliated trade unions, for example – it would have provoked far less doom-laden speculation. But Labour Together formed the foundation of Starmer’s leadership campaign. If even it does not believe he can successfully defend a colossal 170-seat majority at the next general election, then where does Starmer’s remaining support come from? What is particular fascinating about the hypothetical choices of leader offered to supporters is that some of the head-to-head contests don’t even involve Starmer, suggesting a scenario in which he chooses to step aside rather than fight any challenge, despite a briefing from Number 10 last month that he would do so. Then again, that’s what all prime ministers must say in response to speculation about a leadership challenge; they can hardly concede that they would resign were a challenge to be mounted. Five cabinet members – Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipson, Shabana Mahmood, Ed Miliband and Darren Jones – are offered in the survey as potential candidates, as are three former Cabinet members: Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner and Lucy Powell. The survey won’t be completed until next week and it’s to be hoped that the results, which could prove fascinating, will be either released or leaked soon afterwards. It’s a perfect – and perfectly awful – end to Starmer’s first full calendar year in office. While it’s tempting to feel sorry for the Prime Minister, this is immediately dispelled by the realisation that virtually every one of his travails has been his own fault. Whether the unnecessary and expensive gifts of clothing and hospitality that he and his cabinet colleagues accepted at the very start of the Government’s term of office, or the numerous and calamitous policy reversals that have peppered every step of the way since then. His own back benchers are not shy about expressing their contempt for a leader who, in between demands that they evangelise for this or that controversial policy just before he announces he’s reversing it, has made little effort to get to know the men and women on whose support he relies for getting legislation through. This is where the Labour Together survey could prove most damaging for Starmer. All eight of the alternative leadership candidates named in it have one key advantage over him: they are all politicians. For better or for ill, they all sought a political career early in life, not as a post-script to a long and successful legal career, as in Starmer’s case. Agree politically with the eight or not, they have lived and breathed Labour politics for many years – in some cases decades – longer than Starmer. And to one extent or another, each of them has proved they have a political instinct, something that Starmer so notably lacks. Doubtless Labour Together does not regret its decision to back their man in 2020, especially given the mess in which Corbyn left the party. That was not the time to sacrifice better on the altar of perfect. But times and circumstances change. Labour is safely in government with a large and stable majority, at least for the next three years. All Labour Together have done is switch its focus, rightly, from the 2024 election victory to the next contest. Keir Starmer is relevant to only one of those events.