Labour risks losing even more votes if infighting continues

It was probably too much to hope that Sir Keir Starmer’s rivals could remember the adage about not interrupting an enemy when they are destroying themselves and, indeed, after the King’s Speech on Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch gleefully, and superfluously, told the PM the bleeding obvious that he has not had a very good week.

But nobody was listening, not to her, nor to the poor King, as moments before the Monarch had made his ceremonial procession across town, news had leaked that Wes Streeting was preparing a leadership challenge.

Eyes were not on Charles III but darting around the Lords for signs of whispering, if not backstabbing.

By Thursday morning, it was being reported that Angela Rayner was also considering challenging her old boss, Andy Burnham was lining up a Manchester seat to get back into Parliament and Al Carns (I had to double check the spelling as I have literally never written or heard that name before today) had thrown his hat into the ring.

And I want it all to stop. This is the Gavin and Stacey characters all announcing they are driving back to Wales when an argument breaks out at the Christmas special. It’s an overreaction and not what anybody really wants. Instead of any excitement about a potential leadership contest, I just feel an exhaustion and willingness for it all to be over for a bit - not the intensity and rage to drag out over summer.

Labour did not perform well in the local elections, but this is standard form for the party of the central government mid-way through their term.

The traditional playbook is for a government to get its unpopular policies out of the way early doors, take the hit at the local elections, and then regain support with some more appeasing measures closer to the time of the general election.

There is nothing to say that this won’t happen before 2029, even if Labour has made a mess of the Mandelson affair and U-turned on many policies up until now.

Local elections are marked by low turnouts and are often forgotten not long after in the grand scheme of things.

But while voters have called for some level of change at the ballot box, last week’s vote was not to say that there needed to be a new prime minister.

While Streeting, Rayner, Burnham and, errm, Carns (which three times autocorrected while typing, just then, to “carbs”) all seem to think a new leader is needed, I would argue that it is this kind of infighting that is going to be more offputting to voters.

Labour was intensely critical of the previous Conservative government for having a merry-go-round of leaders; Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak all filling No 10 in one election cycle. But now it risks falling into the same trap - alienating voters by showing Labour, too, will not provide stable leadership.

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William Mata is a writer and SEO editor for LBC.

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