MPs wary of move against Starmer while war is raging

A week after Labour’s election victory in July 2024, officials at Labour HQ held their first crisis meeting about the May 2026 local elections.The party had just secured a 174-seat majority and already strategists were predicting it would be very tough, though none were assuming the prime minister’s own position would be vulnerable.Now, according to multiple officials, it will be nothing short of a “bloodbath” – though it is an open question whether the parliamentary Labour Party will use it to depose Keir Starmer.One Starmer ally said it would be impossible to spin the results. “There’s no point us doing expectation management, as the results are going to be terrible anyway,” they said.“Afterwards, we need to remind everybody that this is classic midterm stuff, but worse, because the public hates the system more than ever and they see us as part of that. We need to spend every day of the next three years showing them we’re on their side.”Starmer will launch Labour’s local election campaign on Monday with a warning against risking the progress Labour is making with a vote for Reform or the Greens.That could also be a warning he hopes his MPs will heed. In the immediate aftermath of the results, there is a three-pronged strategy – to attempt to minimise the salience of the results as a judgment on the government, to remind MPs of the perilous international situation, and to distract immediately with a new king’s speech and potentially a cabinet reshuffle.One thing Starmer has control over is the timing of the king’s speech – set for 13 May, just after the local elections. Officials are expecting Parliament to be prorogued some time in late April, ahead of election day.That timing is convenient – it gives MPs less physical time together in the building to organise any coups while anger is hottest in the post-election fallout.“It would be much harder for somebody to challenge Keir and argue we need to take the government in a different direction when the king is about to come to Parliament and announce our plans for the next year,” one senior government source said.Downing Street also hopes it will be clear of the next tranche of files relating to Peter Mandelson, which it hopes will be ready to release shortly after Easter. The documents are understood to now be with the intelligence and security select committee, which will examine anything that may need to be redacted.Two senior government sources said there was also advance planning in place for a cabinet reshuffle – though one said Starmer had yet to take the final decision on whether that would go ahead.The reshuffle is not expected to result in a return to the cabinet for Angela Rayner, a key leadership rival, nor for Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary turned key soft-left critic.Rayner is not thought to be coveting any immediate return. “What has she got to gain? She’s better off on the outside. At least she can say and do what she wants,” one ally said.Any reshuffle is therefore likely to focus more on senior cabinet ministers thought to be unhappy in their existing departments, and on promotions in the junior ministerial ranks for new MPs.It would also probably involve a shake-up of the whips’ office – dubbed the Wags’ office by MPs because so many of its members are related to current or former advisers or ministers. It has been clear for some months that MPs distrust their whips and that more experienced hands are needed there.Even if the most apocalyptic scenario happens in the May elections, the US-Israeli war with Iran has given many MPs pause for thought. “I think everyone can see that a challenge right in the middle of a huge international crisis would look foolish,” one pessimistic minister said.“That doesn’t mean the fundamentals – that we are heading towards fourth in the polls and have the most unpopular prime minister on record – have gone away.”“Can you imagine what it would look like having a leadership contest in the middle of a global crisis?” another MP said. “Totally self-indulgent. The electorate would be right to punish us after that.”But others said they had genuinely changed their view on whether Starmer should survive long term. “I think so far Keir is showing some obvious good judgment, both on our non-involvement in the war [and] resisting an urge to rush to judgment over whether we need to intervene to stop an energy bills crisis and keeping the language open-ended,” one senior MP said.Both Wes Streeting and Rayner have told allies in recent days that they understood MPs thought the prime minister should be able to focus on the Middle East crisis – and the economic fallout at home – and that it would be unwise to oust Starmer during it.“Both of them are self-interested enough to know that it would be fatal for them to do that,” one Starmer ally said.After May, No 10 hopes that the king’s speech will move the narrative on to how much time Labour has in power to make real change.Insiders say the speech will focus on measures being taken to tackle the cost of living, but also, crucially, on public service reform. The next sessions will include Send reform as well as a major drive on the digitisation of public services. Investments promised in the spending review will begin to happen.Public services, several insiders said, are the barometer for people to measure how the state is functioning, where they can make simple comparisons with previous experiences – booking appointments, receiving government documents – and see whether things are improving.“There are three years left of this government,” one senior strategist sad. “After May, we will spend a lot of time reminding people that much of what we have set in motion will start to bear fruit.”