Labour face Tories' fate if leadership contest becomes more about ambition than national interest
An already sceptical public will take a dim view of Labour if leadership struggle brings out the worst in the contenders
The plots behind Theresa May’s back during her time as Prime Minister. The Covid parties, lies and mass resignations that eventually ousted Boris Johnson. The debacle of Liz Truss’s brief, calamitous tenure. The Conservatives’ reputation as the party of stable, competent government took such a battering that the reasonably decent Rishi Sunak was never going to be able to turn things around.
The Tories seemed to stumble from one crisis to another in the post-Brexit years and, difficult global conditions aside, this started to fuel public suspicion that part of the problem was that ministers were more interested in their careers than the national interest.
There were notable exceptions. Jeremy Hunt very much stepped into the breach when he became Chancellor after Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-budget. Sunak showed a similarly creditable sense of public duty in taking over as Prime Minister when it must have seemed like a lost cause.
As Labour rebels prepare to oust Keir Starmer, the party should remember what happened to the Tories. There are clearly hopes that MPs will unite behind Andy Burnham – if he can win the Makerfield by-election. However, given Reform UK won all 11 wards in that constituency in the recent council elections, that is by no means certain.
Even if Burnham does become an MP, the chance of a shot at the top job might turn the heads of ministers. There will be few who have not dreamed of becoming Prime Minister for a significant part of their lives.
With Labour already below 20 per cent in UK polls and vying with the Tories and the Greens for third place, if the public starts to suspect ministers are putting their own ambitions ahead of the needs of the country, the party will face an even greater existential threat.
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Instead, all concerned – and particularly Starmer – need to act, and be seen to act, in the national interest. The party’s decision not to block Burnham from standing in the by-election, as it did ahead of the one in Gorton and Denton, is an encouraging sign.
But the best thing Starmer could do would be to accept his time is up and step aside gracefully. The last thing Labour or the country needs is a contested leadership struggle which, as we have come to know, can be all the more vicious precisely because it is between people who are supposed to be allies.
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