Delaying Starmer’s departure will fail

The PM risks sliding into irrelevance as potential successors battle for his crown Daily Telegraph 11/05/26 Sometimes in Westminster, politicians latch on to a buzzword that spreads like a particularly nasty virus from every mouth. Today that word is timetable.

One after the other, Labour MPs are calling on the Prime Minister to set a timetable for his departure. The reason is obvious: they want him gone, but not until Andy Burnham has returned to Parliament to be crowned as Sir Keir Starmer’s successor. The alternative of having a leadership contest immediately would mean having to choose between Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner, neither of whom they much fancy. So the phrase “resign now” is very much out of fashion. The problem is that if Sir Keir granted their request, announcing what would probably be a summer leadership contest and a change of leader around September, he would be not so much a lame duck as a dead duck. There would quickly be a new buzzword in Westminster, and it would be paralysis. Civil servants would down tools, refusing to put in the hard yards of policy implementation for a man who was on his way out, and whose successor might choose to do the opposite. Whipping MPs to vote for government bills would be impossible, as rebels would have nothing to lose from defying Sir Keir and potentially much to gain if they distanced themselves from the failed Starmer project. Cabinet ministers would be more preoccupied with what Andy, Ange or Wes thinks than what the Prime Minister thinks as they carried out a rolling beauty contest for top jobs in the next administration. The markets, already jittery, could be reduced to a months-long state of panic because of the uncertainty and the potential for a business-hostile Rayner or Burnham premiership. The cost of borrowing might well go up as a result, dragging the public finances down into an even deeper hole. The Prime Minister would also have to do fresh battle with his backbenchers over controversial bills carried over from the last session into the King’s Speech on Wednesday, and consider major strategic decisions. On the economy, Sir Keir and his Chancellor would have to decide whether to pursue higher borrowing, higher taxes or spending cuts as they prepare for the next Budget in the autumn. He would also have to decide on another attempt at cutting welfare payments, having been forced to water down previous plans by his own MPs. Sir Keir wants to pursue closer union with the EU, including adopting single market rules in some areas such as food standards. But the EU would want to extract a heavy price, and his own MPs would pressure him to go further. He would need to decide whether to carry out the NHS reforms proposed by Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, including the abolition of NHS England, and whether to press ahead with the Crewe-to-Manchester section of HS2. On crime, Sir Keir would need to decide whether to drop plans for abolishing jury trials for some offences, and whether to merge some police forces, as Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, has proposed. He would have to decide whether to press ahead with votes for 16-year-olds – a policy which appears to be benefiting Reform UK and the Greens – and what more to do about legal and illegal migration. There are still many questions to answer about defence spending, including which military capabilities to prioritise in the Defence Investment Plan. Cuts to other departments may be needed to fund increased defence spending. He would also come under renewed pressure amid the current energy crisis to water down or to postpone net zero goals, and to allow more oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, especially if oil supplies from the Gulf continue to be disrupted. And Sir Keir would have global summits to attend, including the G7 in France next month and the Nato summit in Turkey in July where he would be a total irrelevance. We have, of course, had prime ministers who have set out timetables for their departure in the past, including Baroness May and Sir Tony Blair. But there is a crucial difference: in each case, the person succeeding them was already in government, or at least an MP, which is not the situation with Mr Burnham. Lady May achieved nothing after she was forced to promise a leadership election, as MPs and the EU waited for the arrival of Boris Johnson to Get Brexit Done. Sir Tony’s handover to Gordon Brown (now, somewhat improbably, an adviser to Sir Keir) was relatively seamless because Mr Brown was the chancellor and was not only in the loop, but in the room, when major decisions were being taken. So there are only two realistic options for Sir Keir, neither of which involves timetabling his departure. He can either cling on for grim death, hoping Mr Burnham fails to secure a seat in Parliament via a by-election (and that none of his colleagues move against him before then), or he can announce his resignation now, allowing for a swift leadership contest that will bring certainty. Neither is a good choice, but this is the reality he currently faces. There is, of course, another option: call an early general election and ask the public to give him a new mandate. Curiously enough, none of his MPs are urging him to do that.