𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

These are desperate times for Sir Keir Starmer’s government, which faces annihilation in Thursday’s elections. Some fear the wipeout could finish the Labour Party forever. But first, it will descend into a bloody civil war. The knives are coming off, and it’s going to be brutal.

Yesterday, Starmer made it clear he isn’t going quietly. He told the BBC that he won a landslide in 2024, and should be judged at the next election. But that’s three years away, and the country can’t wait. Nor can Labour. Senior figures are boiling with frustration and thwarted ambition. Health secretary Wes Streeting can’t contain himself any longer. He’s plotting a challenge straight after Thursday’s wipeout. That’s a risky move. He’s on the right of the party, and the left rules these days. He has enough MPs to launch a challenge, but he doesn’t have the unions or party activists.

Streeting has one good reason to act now. His two biggest rivals are grinding their teeth helplessly on the sidelines. One of them is Angela Rayner.

Red Ange is much-loved in the Labour Party. Among the wider electorate, not so much. Many swear that if she ever got the keys to No 10, it would mark the final humiliation of this once great nation.

The former deputy PM didn’t do her cause any favours last week, after reports that she got ‘obliterated’ in a Parliament bar. Apparently, she got so drunk at a late night session she walked into a door. Rayner denies it. The door hasn’t commented.

There’s a hard-core “anyone but Ange” element in the Labour Party. They fear Rayner could wreak havoc in No 10, and not just on the fixtures and fittings. But that’s not the biggest hurdle she faces.

Rayner is spitting blood and feathers over HMRC. She wants it to speed up its investigation into her £40,000 stamp duty swerve, which is proving a little too leisurely for her liking. Until it reports, she isn’t fit to fight.

Rayner assumes she’ll be let off with a slapped wrist, and wants to take her punishment as soon as possible, so she can come out swinging. Her slack attitude to tax may have outraged the country, but the country doesn’t get to vote this time.

But Rayner shouldn’t blame HMRC. She should have paid the stamp duty. That may just have destroyed her shot at the dream job. If Streeting acts fast, her world could be blown apart.

She isn’t the only one chafing at the bit. Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham can’t muscle up either, because he isn’t a PM. His team is desperately trying to find a safe seat for him. But even if a supportive MP steps down, Burnham faces another problem. Is any Labour seat safe these days?

Burnham’s banking on his personal popularity to win a by-election. We’ll see. But this leaves two of the biggest guns in the Labour Party spiked for now.

Personally, I don’t think Streeting has a chance. Too Blairite, too close to Peter Mandelson. Which leads to a frightening thought. If the left can’t block him with Rayner or Burnham, they’ll have to try somebody else. And that only really leaves Ed Miliband. If he’s made PM, the nation would be splitting blood too.