Sir Keir Starmer was welcomed to the Labour Party conference on Saturday night with the news that arch leadership rival Andy Burnham leads him by a whopping 50 points in the polls.
The Prime Minister grinned broadly as he arrived in Liverpool hand-in-hand with wife Victoria.
But he will address demoralised party delegates against the backdrop of the most savage collapse in popular support in modern political history, with the polls pointing to a victory for Reform UK and Nigel Farage if a general election was held now.
The Opinium survey gave Mr Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, a net positive approval rating of plus 10 but with Sir Keir himself on minus 40.
The Prime Minister sought to fend off the increasingly blatant ambitions of Mr Burnham – who is not yet even an MP – by issuing an eve-of-conference warning to his party that this was not the time for infighting as Labour faced ‘a battle for the soul of this country’ with Mr Farage.
But Labour MPs backing Mr Burnham were quick to dismiss the ‘rhetoric’, with one senior backbencher saying: ‘If it’s a fight for the soul of the nation we’re in, then Andy Burnham is what Labour needs – not Keir Starmer.’
The MP added: ‘Andy is way more able to take on Nigel Farage than Starmer is. He’s much more charismatic and he’s the northern mayor of a northern town.
‘And it’s in huge swathes of our so-called northern ‘Red Wall’ where traditional, working-class voters are defecting in droves from Labour to Reform.
The Prime Minister grinned broadly as he arrived in Liverpool for the annual Labour Party conference hand-in-hand with wife Victoria
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham (pictured) claims Labour MPs want him to launch a leadership challenge against Sir Keir
‘Burnham is by no means perfect but if we want someone to appeal to our traditional voters and get them to see Farage for the snake-oil salesman he is, then I think many Labour MPs would rather it was Burnham than Starmer.’
However, allies of Sir Keir insisted privately that the Mayor had ‘missed his chance’ to get back in the Commons and mount a serious challenge to Sir Keir.
The conference opens amid internal party divisions over Sir Keir’s plan for digital ID cards to tackle the small boats crisis.
There are also fears that, despite the Prime Minister’s decision to recognise Palestinian statehood, delegates will mount angry protests at Labour for not doing enough to combat Israel’s alleged ‘genocide’ in Gaza.
Labour is still reeling from the resignation of Deputy Prime Minister and deputy party leader Angela Rayner, the sacking of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the US and the ongoing row over Sir Keir’s Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney’s use of undeclared donations to fund Starmer-backing think tank Labour Together.
In the coming weeks there will also be a fierce battle to replace Ms Rayner as deputy party leader between ex-Commons Leader Lucy Powell, who lost her job in this month’s reshuffle, and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, who kept hers.
While Ms Phillipson is seen as No 10’s preferred candidate, Ms Powell – the favourite to win the contest – is a key ally of both Mr Burnham and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.
One source told this newspaper that Ms Powell had rushed ‘straight to Ed’s house’ to plot her next move after she was sacked from the Cabinet.
Since then, Mr Miliband has bragged about how he has refused Sir Keir’s efforts to move him out of his environment brief.
To the surprise of many Labour MPs, the Energy Secretary – who led Labour to general election defeat in 2015 – is said to harbour ambitions that he could yet have another tilt at the top job.
Separately, reports emerged yesterday that Mayor of London Sir Sadiq Khan was also considering a leadership bid himself.
But in bad news for Mr Burnham’s own ambitions, the Opinium poll reveals that – despite his lead over the Prime Minister – he trails Mr Farage on who would make the best Prime Minister.
The Greater Manchester Mayor was on 24 per cent compared with 31 per cent for the Reform UK leader.
Arriving in Liverpool, Sir Keir said the party’s conference would be a ‘big opportunity to make our case to the country, and make it absolutely clear that patriotic national renewal is the way forwards – not the toxic divide and decline that we get with Reform’.
During a visit to the offices of the Liverpool Echo newspaper, he said of Reform’s plans to deport migrants: ‘These are people who have been in our country a long time, are contributing to our society, maybe working in, I don’t know, hospitals, schools, running businesses – our neighbours, and Reform says it wants to deport them in certain circumstances.
‘I think it is a real sign of just how divisive they are and that their politics and their policies will tear this country apart.’
Mr Farage said that Sir Keir’s language ‘smacks, frankly, of total desperation’, adding that ‘to call somebody in politics an enemy is language that is bordering on the inciteful’.
On Saturday night, MPs said that although there would be a huge amount riding on how Sir Keir performed in his conference speech this week, Labour’s fate would likely be decided by Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s Budget in November.
On Saturday night, Sir Keir told The Sunday Times he was up for the challenge ahead and declared: ‘I think we can pull this round.’
He also hailed plans by Housing Secretary Steve Reed for a new generation of new towns, which could deliver up to 300,000 additional homes.
Sites include Heyford Park in Oxfordshire, Tempsford in Bedfordshire and South Bank in Leeds.
