Labour leadership contenders are offering colleagues jobs in a future Government – in return for their backing in a contest against Sir Keir Starmer, a senior MP said today.
The claim by former Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who sits as an independent after resigning from Sir Keir’s party last year, has helped to fan increasingly febrile speculation at Westminster about an imminent challenge to the PM.
Ms Duffield wrote on X: ‘Very senior Labour MPs, some v recently ousted, are offering positions to other Labour MPs who’ll back them’.
She also claimed that potential candidates whose seats were vulnerable at the next election were house-hunting in safer constituencies ‘they’ve never even set foot in before’.
The Canterbury MP did not name the alleged plotters. However, her comments come in the wake of Angela Rayner forced resignation from the Government two months ago over her stamp duty bill, while Lucy Powell – now Deputy Labour leader – was sacked from the Cabinet by Sir Keir in his autumn reshuffle.
Both have been named as potential candidates for the PM’s job alongside Health Secretary Wes Streeting, now seen as the current favourite to succeed Sir Keir in the wake of last week’s botched briefing that he was already preparing a challenge.
And amid mounting turmoil within Labour, Left-wing MP Clive Lewis has openly called for Sir Keir to be replaced by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, declaring the PM’s position as ‘not tenable’.
He told C4 News that ‘Labour grandees….need now to really, seriously think how do we get Andy Burnham back into this parliamentary Labour party and let him step up and become the next PM’.
Today, former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett warned Sir Keir that he needs ‘to get a grip’ within three months or he could face ‘serious consequences’.
Angela Rayner, is said to be mounting a comeback as she recovers from her resignation as Deputy Prime Minister for underpaying stamp duty
Health Secretary Wes Streeting is now seen as the current favourite to succeed Sir Keir in the wake of last week’s botched briefing that he was already preparing a challenge
He also urged the PM to move chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who was widely blamed for last week’s botched briefing against Mr Streeting, to a new job and bring in someone better suit to overseeing Sir Keir’s office.
Speaking in the wake of the briefing row and Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s humiliating U-turn over income tax rises last week, Lord Blunkett said: ‘If you don’t display in the next three months that you have got a grip, that you understand how people feel and that you are reacting to the things that matter to them and that you are managing and you are competent then of course people will react – that’s a democracy.’
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘If that doesn’t happen in three months, then something quite serious will erupt, I think, from both the parliamentary party and beyond.
‘In the past, people have said ‘Who is in the public eye? Who is getting the attention’ and sometimes they have said that if that isn’t the person it should be – and it should be Keir Starmer and his Cabinet – then they have to go.’
The Labour peer said the PM needed someone more experienced to run his operation such as Tony Blair’s former Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell – now Sir Keir’s National Security Adviser. He added: ‘For goodness’ sake, get a grip.
This can’t carry on. It has implications obviously much wider than just the popularity of this Government.’ Labour MPs are saying the removal of Mr McSweeney has now become necessary if Sir Keir is to head off a direct leadership challenge.
Lord Blunkett said: ‘I’m not suggesting that…Morgan McSweeney should simply be ousted. I am saying: find something that he’s really good at and allow someone to come in who has the kind of skills that Jonathan Powell displayed for Tony Blair as chief of staff and is incidentally displaying in helping on the international front where the PM is doing extremely well on defence and security, on trade.’
Tonight, Labour MPs privately reckoned that Mr Streeting’s best chance of moving to the top job would be shortly after this month’s Budget as Ms Rayner was still ‘licking her wounds’ over her exit from the Government.
However, Mr Streeting has denied plotting against Sir Keir.
