Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell has warned Keir Starmer’s leadership rivals against a ‘bloody’ attempt to topple the Prime Minister after May’s local elections.
In a significant intervention, Ms Powell said Labour members would take ‘a very dim view’ of a leadership challenge as the PM deals with ongoing global turmoil.
Ms Powell admitted Labour is facing ‘difficult’ elections next month for the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Senedd and English councils.
But she claimed Sir Keir was getting credit among voters for his handling of the Iran war, with the Government focused on tackling the worsening cost of living crisis.
‘Some kind of messy, bloody internal contest is not going to help us address those issues,’ she told the Financial Times.
Asked whether Labour members wanted a leadership contest, she added: ‘I think the membership would take a very dim view of that.’
However, new polling revealed there is a wish among the wider public for Sir Keir to leave Downing Street.
A JL Partners survey showed 64 per cent of people want the PM to go, compared to just 18 per cent who want him to stay.
The poll also found, among those who voted Labour at the 2024 general election, 46 per cent said they want Sir Keir to go now versus 37 per cent who want him to stay.
James Johnson, the co-founder of JL Partners, said: ‘The usual loyalty we see in British politics has become unbuckled as far as Labour is concerned.
‘And that places the Prime Minister in a very perilous position indeed.’
Ms Powell, the long-serving MP for Manchester Central, is a close ally of Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham.
Sir Keir blocked Mr Burnham from standing as Labour’s candidate at the Gorton and Denton by-election in February.
It came amid fears among Sir Keir’s allies that Mr Burnham was eyeing a return to the House of Commons so he could then mount a leadership challenge against the PM.
Without being an MP, Mr Burnham would be unable to replace Sir Keir should the PM be toppled after May’s elections.
But Ms Powell, who was elected as deputy leader by Labour members in October, insisted she was not issuing a warning against a leadership contest for anyone else’s benefit.
‘I’ve got my own job and my own mandate,’ she told the newspaper. ‘I’m not saying this because I want to suck up to anyone.
‘I’m saying it because it’s the right thing for the party and country.’
Ms Powell also issued a veiled rebuke of Sir Keir’s time as PM, complaining that Labour had failed to persuade voters this is ‘a Labour government, doing Labour things’.
‘I think we’ve been too shy about some of the radical things we have been doing,’ she said.
‘People want us to sharpen up, get more political, tell the story much more strongly and take the fight to our political opponents.’
