Keep Starm And Carry On: PM Fights For His Political Life As Rivals Plan Leadership Bids

Could he be just days away from a leadership challenge?

Next Thursday’s elections have not even happened yet, but Labour’s post-mortem is already well underway.

The party is forecast to lose nearly 2,000 councillors across England as voters deliver a damning verdict on Keir Starmer’s time in No.10 so far.

Labour will also suffer humiliating defeat in Scotland and Wales to further compound the prime minister’s misery.

It is therefore unsurprising that the thoughts of Labour MPs are already consumed by what will come next.

The leadership ambitions of Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham are undeniable as they ready themselves to grab the ball should it, as Boris Johnson once memorably said, come loose at the back of the scrum.

But the PM’s remaining supporters insist that with the economic fallout of the war in Iran about to engulf the UK, now is not the time to be changing leader.

Rugby MP John Slinger, the loyalist’s loyalist, told HuffPost UK: “We should stick with Keir.

“Not as a way to block Angela Rayner or others, or as the least bad option amid a range of far worse alternatives, but because he is the right leader for this time.”

Starmer himself pleaded his case at last Monday’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).

The target of his speech was officially the Tories, who that evening were trying to persuade the Commons to launch a Privileges Committee probe into whether the PM had misled parliament over the Peter Mandelson scandal.

“We are the first government for generations to take key parts of the public realm back into public ownership,” Starmer told the assembled MPs and peers.

“They don’t like that, but we’re doing it. The first government for generations to give rights and power to workers, to renters, to the less fortunate.

“The first government for generations prepared to stand........

© HuffPost