After immersing yourself in mainstream British media over recent days, you would be sure that the biggest question facing the nation was whether Andy, Angela or Wes had the numbers to be the next prime minister. But you would emerge from your reading without the slightest idea of how any of them would lift the country out of its political peat bog.
There is an overwhelming sense of inevitability about a leadership spill that tears down Keir Starmer as prime minister after less than two years in the post, and despite his success in leading Labour to power at the 2024 election after 14 years in opposition. When political insiders meet for drinks in Soho, the verdict is that he is a dead man walking.
A looming deadline is sending Labour backbenchers into a panic. Britain votes on Thursday to choose hundreds of local councils as well as parliaments in Scotland and Wales. Starmer is not on the ballot papers, but the outcome is being framed as a referendum on Labour. And all the polls say Labour will be trounced.
There is no verdict, however, on what a new leader should do to fix all the problems being sheeted home to the old one. There is, instead, the desperate hope that a new face can fix everything.
Australians will recognise this torment from countless leadership spills over the past two decades. And it really is a torment – for the voting public. Every phase follows the same formula, whether it is in Canberra or Westminster. There are the public calls for unity and the private mutterings about the need for change. There are the anonymous attacks on the leader, and the unverifiable claims about who has the momentum to claim the top job.
The transparent ploys try to create a sense of certainty about each contender. For some of the agitators, the new leader has to be Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester and a popular champion of the left. For others, it is Angela Rayner, the down-to-earth former deputy prime minister, also of the left. Then there is Wes Streeting, the health minister, a young and energetic choice from the centre right of the party.
Just last weekend, the British public was told that Streeting had secured the numbers to launch a challenge. The London Telegraph said he had recruited 81 Labour MPs, enough to force a leadership vote, and was ready to move this Friday. But the public was also told that Burnham had a “credible plan” to return to parliament within weeks and seek the leadership. The Guardian said he had identified several seats where sitting MPs would step aside for him. (The MPs were too shy to volunteer in public.)
In the fine print, however, the drama became murkier. The Streeting camp said he might wait for someone else to show their hand, which means his 81 recruits might never reveal themselves. And the Burnham camp acknowledged that their plan might take time.
“There are very strong possibilities of this happening within weeks but certainly months and over the summer,” said one anonymous Burnham ally. In manoeuvres such as these, the agitators want to sound certain of swift victory, while giving themselves wriggle room just in case.
Each challenger has baggage. Rayner stepped down as deputy leader and a cabinet minister last year because she did not pay all the tax owed on a property; the investigation into this elementary error continues. Streeting is maligned for being previously close to Peter Mandelson, the disgraced Labour insider. Burnham is not even in parliament: he was in the House of Commons from 2001 to 2017 and, at his peak in national government, served as health minister for 11 months.
In covering each camp, the British media often dances around an awkward fact. None of the contenders has long experience in national leadership. Rayner was a cabinet minister for 14 months before she resigned. Streeting has just made it to 22 months in cabinet. Burnham runs a large council. There is no evidence any of them would be better than Starmer – who also had little experience in government when he won power.
The riposte to this is that Starmer simply has to go. So, the spill fever is a leap into the unknown – for Labour, the government and the country.
I write this as a former political correspondent who covered leadership spills in Australia over two decades. I see the same machinations in London that I witnessed in Canberra. I have seen the clouds of doom over a leader who has slumped in the polls: Julia Gillard in 2013, Tony Abbott in 2015, Malcolm Turnbull in 2018. But the sense of panic here is stronger.
Labour has 403 seats in parliament, and many of its MPs are new and naïve. It is not hard for journalists to find a jumpy backbencher who talks down the leader or promotes the latest saviour. The public agonising from within the governing party is remarkable, and it has been dominating the media for more than a year. Burnham’s cheer squad has been pushing his case for at least nine months.
Starmer won a big mandate at the last election but has proven incapable of getting a consensus within his own party for tough decisions, such as welfare reform. In theory, he stands for good policy in the centre of the spectrum. In practice, he lacks the political skill to get things done by banging heads together.
Political leadership can be like sitting down at a long table to eat a meal when your rivals are beside you, eyeing the same food. You need to put your elbows out and claim your space. Anthony Albanese did this by expanding the centre at the last election, shoving aside the Greens to his left and the Liberals to his right. Starmer, in contrast, is being squeezed. To his left, the Greens are growing. To his right, Nigel Farage and Reform UK are on the rise. And they are both eating his lunch.
Britain has daunting challenges. Its budget deficit last year was £153 billion, or roughly $290 billion. This was 5.2 per cent of economic output. In Australia, the deficit the same year was 1 per cent of GDP. There is only modest attention on this reality when there is so much coverage of Andy, Angela and Wes.
Like Australia, the UK needs to make hard decisions about taxes and spending. But it needs to make them even more urgently because financial markets are nervous about its borrowing. Unfortunately, its governing party, and the parliament as a whole, do not seem to be up to the task, so the country could drift towards the 2029 general election.
In the meantime, there may well be a leadership spill. And the country will discover what it already knew from the five prime ministers under the previous Conservative government. New faces are not enough to fix old problems.
David Crowe is Europe correspondent.
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.
