***What’s really going on with these No10 briefings that Keir Starmer is prepared to fight a leadership challenge?***
Here’s my best guess after a load of calls…
It seems clear tonight that Downing Street deliberately wanted out there the idea the PM will battle to keep his job
Well-informed pieces from Guardian’s
@PippaCrerar, Times’s
@patrickkmaguire and BBC’s
@ChrisMasonBBC and
@hzeffman dropped this evening carrying No10 figures / Starmer allies making that argument.
Downing Street folks have since told
@Telegraph the same. One said: “Any attempt to bring political instability into a Government with a very stable majority would be economically and politically extremely unwise.”
The clear message tonight: Starmer will face down any challenge.
Some cabinet ministers - Wes Streeting in particular but also Shabana Mahmood - have had fingers of blame pointed at them from Starmer allies. Accused of being on manoeuvres.
An extraordinary night of briefing wars has followed. Streeting’s team on record has denied: “These claims are categorically untrue." Mahmood ally has called them “nonsense”.
The question then becomes… why has No10 picked this moment to elevate the idea his position is under threat?
It feels like an early attempt to smoke out any plotters and get Labour MPs rallying round Starmer before an incredibly tricky Budget (one in which he’s expected to break the manifesto by raising income tax).
Wes Streeting is on the media round tomorrow (as Downing Street figures well know). He’ll be bounced into publicly pledging loyalty to Starmer.
Starmer himself is at PMQs tomorrow. Presumably he will insist he’s not going anywhere, to cheers from Labour MPs (as usually happens for leaders in PMQs).
Perhaps the hope from No10 is to repeat the dynamic from Labour conference, when Andy Burnham publicly floated his ambitions and the party as a whole slapped him down / rallied to Starmer’s side.
This feels like an attempt to repeat, calling the bluff of other leadership pretenders to smooth the post-Budget fallout.
But there is also one resounding takeaway: That No10 even feels it needs to mount this operation shows there is at least some genuine degree of concern about Starmer’s position.
And that is why tonight has been so telling.