Set out timetable for your departure, MPs urge Prime Minister after rival’s by-election win
Daily Telegraph 19/06/26
Cabinet ministers have told Sir Keir Starmer he must stand aside for Andy Burnham.
The Manchester mayor’s decisive by-election win in Makerfield, where he secured more than half of the vote, has led to a fresh rebellion among Sir Keir’s top team.
In his victory speech, Mr Burnham all but called for the Prime Minister to go, declaring it was Labour’s “last chance to change”.
He said: “We are going to take that opportunity, and we are going to lay out a new path for Britain.”
Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, is understood to have spoken to Sir Keir on Friday afternoon and told him he must now set out a timeline for his departure ahead of a “transfer of power” to Mr Burnham without a leadership contest.
Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, have previously told Sir Keir to consider standing down.
Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, said on Friday she hoped Mr Burnham would serve in Labour’s “top team, at the top table” and would put the party in a “really strong position”.
Baroness Harman, recently appointed as an adviser to Sir Keir, said Mr Burnham would eventually become prime minister.
She told Sky News: “Well, I hate to quote Boris Johnson, but do you remember when he said when he realised that he had to leave government? He said about his ministers and his MPs, ‘the herd is moving’.
“Well, I have to say that it’s not only that the herd is moving – they are stampeding.”
On Friday, Sir Keir was publicly defiant, declaring he would not “walk away” and warning of the dangers of a leadership challenge. Lady Starmer, his wife, is among the confidantes urging him to fight on.
However, Sir Keir is understood to be spending the weekend at Chequers with his family to consider his political future and is said to recognise the growing pressure from the back benches for him to go.
Mr Burnham is expected to present Sir Keir with an ultimatum when he arrives in Westminster next week, and threaten to trigger a wave of ministerial resignations if the Prime Minister does not agree to step aside.
He is also putting together a list of up to 200 Labour MPs – nearly half of the Parliamentary Labour Party – who will publicly call for Sir Keir to resign and agree upon a “transition period”.
Mr Burnham’s allies argue that Sir Keir should step aside by September without a leadership contest, which they say would plunge the party into a damaging period of infighting.
Luke Charters, who resigned as a ministerial aide to back Mr Burnham’s campaign for No 10, called for Sir Keir’s resignation on Friday and asked him to “read the room” among Labour MPs and the public.
Louise Haigh, one of Mr Burnham’s closest allies, told the BBC that Sir Keir should “agree a managed way forward”, adding: “Andy has come back to Westminster to change Labour and to take that right to the top.”
The Telegraph understands that Sir Keir was telling allies on Friday morning that he would not quit, even if Cabinet ministers resigned in an attempt to force him from office.
Instead, he insisted that he would tell Mr Burnham that he must trigger a formal leadership contest and beat him in a vote of members if he wanted to replace him.
If Burnham-supporting ministers resign in an attempt to force Sir Keir to stand down, he has claimed that he will replace them with loyal backbenchers and continue to govern.
One Starmer ally familiar with his plans said many Labour MPs would welcome the opportunity to serve in the place of disloyal ministers who quit their jobs.
The Telegraph understands the Prime Minister has a leadership campaign website prepared should a contest be triggered.
Sir Keir’s closest allies in No 10 want to prevent a “coronation” for Mr Burnham because they believe the Prime Minister could win a leadership contest if one were called.
His friends argue that Mr Burnham will become unpopular with Labour members if he threatens to collapse the Government, which could give the Prime Minister an advantage in a contest.
One senior ally said Sir Keir could even trigger a contest himself if it became impossible to govern under pressure from Mr Burnham’s supporters.
Under the Labour Party’s rulebook, Sir Keir could resign the leadership and challenge Mr Burnham to beat him in an open contest. If Sir Keir were to win the vote, it would be more difficult for him to be challenged in future.
The ally said: “If you come out on the front foot and say, ‘Let’s have a contest, I’m going to put myself forward’, then you are in a stronger position. If ministers say they are going to resign, then he can say: ‘There’s no need to. We are going to have a vote’.”
Polls of Labour members suggest Mr Burnham is much more popular than Sir Keir, but his favourability rating among members of the wider public has waned in the five weeks since he launched his campaign for No 10.
“The members will not want a sitting Labour leader to be challenged,” one ally of the Prime Minister said. “That will dent Andy’s lead quite a bit, so the big question is whether Keir can close the gap.”
Another Labour insider said a leadership race would allow Sir Keir to challenge Mr Burnham on his policy plans.
“Keir, as the underdog, will be able to ask questions of Andy’s positions, knowing all the detail he knows,” said the insider.
“The country needs and is owed the knowledge of what Andy is going to do on all the big issues of the day.”
Mr Burnham has made no secret of his leadership ambitions, and told a victory rally in Makerfield on Friday that he would change the country when he returned to Westminster.
He increased Labour’s majority in Thursday’s by-election, beating Reform UK’s candidate by almost 20 points.
His successor as mayor of Greater Manchester will be chosen in a by-election on July 30, in what could be another battle between Labour and Nigel Farage’s party.
If Mr Burnham wins the Labour leadership, The Telegraph understands that he is likely to appoint Ms Mahmood, who has expressed a desire to stay at the Home Office, to a top role. Mr Miliband has been tipped to become chancellor.
The Makerfield result represented a significant defeat for Reform, which finished 9,000 votes behind Mr Burnham in second place, despite the party’s claims that it was in contention to win the seat.
Mr Farage, the party leader, said he was “disappointed” with the result and a “vote share that nobody could quite see coming”.
“In many ways, [Mr Burnham] is a popular local mayor, just as Boris Johnson was a popular mayor in London just a few years ago,” he said. “But what really happened here was ‘Vote Burnham, get Starmer out’.”
Speaking to Labour staff after the result, Sir Keir said Labour must learn the lessons of the last Conservative government and avoid deposing a leader who had a mandate from the public.
“The one thing we’ve got to avoid doing is plunging our party and our country into chaos by turning on each other and tearing apart our party and our movement,” he said. “That has never worked. That’s what the last government did. We need to learn that lesson.”
Emma Reynolds, the Environment Secretary, suggested disloyal Cabinet ministers should resign, adding: “I think if you are serving in the Cabinet, you should be loyal to the leader of the Labour Party and the Prime Minister.”
The situation has divided opinion among Sir Keir’s supporters, with some now arguing that he should allow Mr Burnham to replace him to end Labour infighting.
Luke Sullivan, Sir Keir’s former political director, told The Telegraph that the “scale of the victory” in Makerfield had “really taken people by surprise” and required the Prime Minister to make concessions to Mr Burnham.
“I think it’s very clear that the groundswell is about an orderly, managed transfer of power, not some horrible Labour Party contest,” he said.
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