Could there really be a push for new Labour leadership so soon after a crushing general election win? "Inside Labour there might not be a vacancy but there is always a contest," said The New Statesman's political editor George Eaton. And the government's declining approval ratings "means this is even truer than usual".
Starmer's troubles have opened the door for others to begin "positioning for a post-Starmer world", said Eaton. That includes Labour's two most prominent devolved leaders, the mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, and London's mayor, Sadiq Khan, who have made recent interventions that pile more pressure on Starmer.
'Unifying the popular left'
Khan has been a long-time ally of Starmer, but his recent contradictions of the government could lead "some to conclude that his patience with the limits imposed on him by his current role is running out" and that he may be "eyeing up a return to the Commons", said Tom Harris in The Telegraph.
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Burnham, meanwhile, "regularly advertised himself as an alternative" in Starmer's "difficult early years" as Labour leader and is "most clearly" readying himself for the era after Starmer, said Eaton. In a speech to the soft-left group Compass at the weekend, he wasn't explicit as to "whether he hopes to lead this movement" of, as he put it, "unifying the popular left", but "he didn't need to" be.
His address "ultimately resembled a leadership manifesto", and though he didn't name either Starmer or Chancellor Rachel Reeves, he "repeatedly outflanked the government from the left" and called for a reversal of spending cuts and more radical taxes on wealth.
'A Labour government that is abandoning Labour values'
The government's current "defensive posture" against the right-wing "makes total sense" from an electoral standpoint, however, said Peter Franklin on UnHerd. Starmer "doesn't fear the left" because of the "sheer weakness of the left-wing opposition", but he is "adopting a defensive position out of fear of the populist right".
But there is a "danger for Starmer" in being "so explicit about seeing Nigel Farage as his main opponent", said John Rentoul in The Independent. It is fuelling "discontent among Labour MPs and members" and empowering the devolved leaders to publicly rebuke the government. Both Burnham and Khan – who has "struck poses" against Labour leadership in declaring Brexit a "mistake" and "proposing the decriminalisation of cannabis" – are "ready" if mounting pressures result in "destabilising the prime minister".
Burnham is "one of the more popular figures within Labour" currently, and "when he criticises the leadership, then that is publicly raising questions about Starmer", said Andrew Fisher in The i Paper. More concerningly for the prime minister, Burnham's appearance at the Compass event alongside "hard left" Labour figures shows an "emerging dialogue between two wings of the party" that are overcoming a "historic divide" to confront a "Labour government that is abandoning Labour values".
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