Labour leadership contenders offering jobs in future Government for support in contest against PM
Labor leadership hopefuls have offered their colleagues jobs in the future government in exchange for support in their run against Sir Keir Starmer, a senior MP said today.
The claim by former Labor MP Rosie Duffield, who is running as an independent after resigning from Sir Keir’s party last year, has helped fuel increasingly heated speculation about a looming challenge to the Prime Minister at Westminster.
Ms Duffield wrote about X: ‘Very senior Labor MPs, some recently sacked, are offering positions to other Labor MPs who will support them.’ He also claimed that potential candidates with slim seats at the next election were looking for homes in safer constituencies where they had ‘never set foot before’.
The Canterbury MP did not name the alleged conspirators. But his comments came after Angela Rayner was forced to resign from the Government over the stamp duty bill two months ago; Lucy Powell (now Labor deputy leader) was sacked from the Cabinet by Sir Keir during the autumn reshuffle.
Both have been floated as potential candidates for the Prime Minister’s post, along with Health Minister Wes Streeting; He is now seen as the current favorite following last week’s failed briefing that Sir Keir was already gearing up for a fight.
Amid growing turmoil within the Labor Party, Left-wing MP Clive Lewis publicly called for Sir Keir to be replaced by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, declaring the Prime Minister’s position ‘untenable’.
He told C4 News: ‘Labour elders… now need to think really, seriously about how we bring Andy Burnham back into parliamentary Labor and allow him to be the next Prime Minister.’
Today former Labor Home Secretary David Blunkett warned Sir Keir he must ‘get the situation under control’ within three months or face ‘serious consequences’.
Former Labor MP Rosie Duffield, who is running as an independent after resigning from the Labor Party last year, has helped fuel feverish speculation about a looming challenge to the Prime Minister at Westminster.
He also called on the Prime Minister 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 more suitable to oversee Sir Keir’s office.
Speaking after the briefing row and Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ humiliating U-turn on income tax rises last week, Lord Blunkett said: ‘If you don’t show in the next three months that you’re in control, that you understand how people feel, that you’re responding to the things that matter to them, that you’re leading and competent, then of course people will react; This is a democracy.’
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘If this doesn’t happen within three months then I think something quite serious is going to break out both within the parliamentary party and beyond.
‘In the past people would say, “Who’s in the public eye? Who’s getting the spotlight” and sometimes they’d say that if that’s not who it should be – and that should be Keir Starmer and his Cabinet – then they should go.’
A Labor official said the Prime Minister needed someone more experienced, such as Tony Blair’s former Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell (now Sir Keir’s National Security Adviser), to run his operation. He added: ‘For God’s sake, get a hold of yourself.
This can’t continue like this. ‘Clearly this has much wider implications than the popularity of this Government.’ Labor MPs say it has now become necessary for Mr McSweeney to be sacked to avoid a direct leadership challenge from Sir Keir.
Lord Blunkett said: ‘I am not recommending that Morgan McSweeney be simply dismissed. I say: find something he’s really good at and let someone come in with the kind of skills that Jonathan Powell has demonstrated to Tony Blair as chief of staff, and the kind of skills he has demonstrated in helping the Prime Minister incidentally on the international front, where he has done extremely well on defence, security and trade.’
Tonight, Labor MPs privately calculated that Mr Streeting’s best chance of moving into the top job would be shortly after this month’s Budget, as Ms Rayner was still ‘licking her wounds’ from leaving the Government.
But Mr Streeting denied any conspiracy against Sir Keir.
