Lisa Nandy said on Tuesday that no one has launched a challenge to Keir Starmer, as Labour faces a fresh round of talk about whether the party’s leader could be forced into a contest. Nandy said the prime minister had made clear to cabinet that there is a process for triggering a leadership challenge, but insisted nobody had used it.
“Nobody has done that yet, despite the absolute feverish speculation,” she said. “Most of it has turned out to be just froth and nonsense. We have got to get on with the job.”
The comments came as the leadership chatter around Labour intensified after a run of public interventions by senior figures and former ministers. Last week, Wes Streeting quit government and used his resignation letter to criticize what he called the incremental approach of Sir Keir Starmer’s administration. On Saturday, he went further, setting out a policy platform that included a call for a “new special relationship” with the EU, a move that could eventually lead Britain back into the trade bloc, and a push to reindustrialise the country to help fund social democratic policies.
Streeting also said Britain should meet the challenge of disinformation on social media with the “21st century’s equivalent of the.” That was one of several signs that the debate inside Labour has widened beyond the question of who might challenge Starmer and into a broader fight over the party’s direction if it were to change course.
Andy Burnham has added to that discussion over recent months by promoting his “Manchesterism” brand of politics as an antidote to Westminster government. He has argued that Westminster no longer works for the majority of the country, backed a more proportional voting system, taxes on wealth and replacing the House of Lords, and said over the weekend that Britain should reindustrialise to create good jobs more widely. He has also previously indicated support for rejoining the EU. Burnham had wanted to be Labour’s candidate for the upcoming Makerfield by-election, which will be held after the local Labour MP, Josh Simons, resigned to allow him a chance to return to Parliament.
Angela Rayner, meanwhile, returned to the scene after leaving government over a scandal about her tax affairs. Her case was resolved without any penalty from HMRC, clearing her for a potential leadership bid, although she has not yet said publicly that she would stand in any Labour contest. Her announcement that she had been cleared appeared timed to coincide with other rivals setting out their stall to replace Starmer. While she was deputy prime minister, Rayner championed a series of reforms to workers’ rights, and most of them have been carried through since her exit. She also called Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plans to tighten eligibility for migrants who have lived in the UK for years to claim permanent settlement “un-British.”
The wider leadership talk has been fuelled by the fallout from local election results, but Nandy’s intervention suggested the temperature has not yet translated into action. For now, the question is not whether Labour has potential contenders. It is whether any of them are ready to turn speculation into a formal challenge, and on Nandy’s account, that moment has not arrived.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said rehashing the Brexit debate showed that Labour “does not have a plan for this country.”
