Mandelson-protégé health secretary Wes Streeting is preparing to announce his bid to oust Keir Starmer. Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) is likely to play a major and potentially decisive role in who gets to stand in the contest to replace Starmer in Number 10.
Starmer is the worst PM in living memory. That’s quite an ‘achievement’ in a decade that has seen Boris Johnson and the dire Liz Truss in the same seat. But the odds are that the NEC – stacked as it is with Starmeroid and Blairite factionalists – will want a continuity candidate to win. That fact alone would have made it unlikely that Andy Burnham would be allowed anywhere near the contest.
Burnham is deeply flawed, but has a personality and some basic principles. Either would be enough to beat any of the Starmer-clones with which his faction crammed the parliamentary party. Either is enough to make him persona non grata for the NEC.
But Streeting’s rationale for announcing his leadership bid quickly will largely be based on making sure Burnham can’t even think about participating. Burnham would need time to find a parliamentary seat he could stand in before he can bid to lead. Even if the NEC allowed him to stand – rather than find a pretext to block him (again) – it’s far from certain any Labour candidate would win a by-election, even if a 2024 winner stepped down to make way for him.
Optics
But a single-candidate contest, or a Starmer v Starmer mini-me election, wouldn’t be great optics for what remains of Labour.
Former deputy PM Angela Rayner conveniently got a free pass on alleged tax-dodging from HMRC, just in time to throw her hat in the ring, though she’s not Blairite enough for most NEC limpets. And the NEC is currently under the control of the hardest-core factionalists, as new NEC members won’t be in place until the party’s annual conference in the autumn.
So, who might stand and what obstacles do they face? Might sheer inertia allow Starmer to cling on as the most hobbled of lame ducks? Ranjan Balakumaran looked at the situation for the Canary:
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