Could Rayner head a Momentum-style, grassroots-led rebellion against Starmer?

In the aftermath of Labour’s landslide at last year’s general election, the joy and optimism among the party’s band of 412 MPs was infectious. The newbie Labour MPs I met for the first time seemed an impressive bunch. With Keir Starmer enjoying a majority of 174, they had every reason to think his hopes for “a decade of renewal” could be realised.

Only 10 months later, the mood inside the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) is transformed. Some of the excited MPs I met last summer are now gloomy and pessimistic. They have small majorities, and think the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK means they are likely to lose their seats after only one five-year term.

Some of the brightest stars have been fast-tracked into government posts to ensure their loyalty. But there are not enough jobs to go round, and backbenchers spooked by Reform’s advance in this month’s local elections in England have started to air in public their private doubts about Starmer’s strategy – or apparent lack of one.

They have openly challenged the prime minister over two controversial decisions which cost Labour dearly on 1 May – means-testing the pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, and £5bn of cuts to disability and sickness benefits. A third wound was added on Monday when Starmer was accused of aping Enoch Powell by warning the UK risks becoming “an island of strangers” as he unveiled a white paper on immigration.

As one Labour insider told me: “MPs who previously accepted Keir had a difficult hand to play and gave him the benefit of the doubt are now saying: ‘We didn’t sign up for this.’ They feel they have nothing to lose by speaking out.”

The gear change was illustrated when the 45-strong red wall group, representing seats in the North and Midlands, issued a strongly worded statement urging the government to “act now before it’s too late”, and warning that losing the red wall again would mean “a future of opposition and an existential crisis”.

A separate letter, signed by more than 100 Labour backbenchers, was sent to the party’s whips this week, urging a change of course over the welfare cuts – on paper, enough to defeat the government in next month’s vote on the measure. Some Labour figures think it would have been lost if it had been held immediately after the council elections.

Ministers might have to offer some concessions to persuade enough rebels to abstain rather than vote against so the government survives the revolt. Starmer has a huge party management problem on his hands. He faces a difficult appearance before the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday (though loyalists usually stage-manage a show of support on such occasions). When Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, addressed the PLP after the elections, the mood was described as “mutinous”.

Several Labour factions have emerged surprisingly soon after the party’s general election triumph – a symptom of what some MPs regard as “a vacuum” at the top and the absence of a coherent government narrative. Ominously for Starmer and his whips, the backbench groups are talking about working together.

Starmer’s critics stretch way beyond the usual suspects in the Socialist Campaign Group allied to Jeremy Corbyn, now an independent MP. Three of the group’s 26 MPs remain suspended from the PLP.

Other backbench groups have joined the red wallers in flexing their muscles. The 90-plus Labour Growth Group is instinctively loyal and wants the government to go “further and faster” – to use Starmer’s own mantra – to secure economic growth. But it, too, is now getting impatient, accusing the government of “behaving like caretakers of decline”.

Blue Labour, which enjoyed some influence during Ed Miliband’s time as party leader, seems to be back in fashion with Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s influential chief of staff. Although not a significant PLP faction, Maurice Glasman, the Labour peer who founded it, is good at grabbing headlines. Its social conservatism and desire to replace “Treasury orthodoxy” and globalisation with pro-worker policies and more welfare cuts created common ground with Donald Trump’s Maga movement.

But critics say its influence is overblown. The soft left, once seen as Starmer’s natural home and probably the largest faction in the PLP, is also on manoeuvres. This month, Louise Haigh made her first intervention since resigning as transport secretary last November, calling for an “economic reset”.

Some soft-left MPs hope Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, will champion such a rethink. They note that she has not yet defended Starmer’s language on immigration and that, when Starmer accused Liz Saville-Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader, of talking “rubbish” at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Rayner looked unimpressed and didn’t join Rachel Reeves in laughing.

Rayner makes no secret of her desire to succeed Starmer one day, but that doesn’t mean she is plotting against him now – and MPs say she doesn’t have an organised tribe among them. Rayner and Starmer are chalk and cheese and are never going to be soulmates. But relations between them have improved since the nadir of Starmer’s 2021 shadow cabinet reshuffle, when he tried to demote her and ended up handing her more titles. It later emerged she was ready to mount a coup against Starmer.

Could Rayner head a Momentum-style, grassroots-led rebellion against Starmer? Easier said than done. Labour MPs don’t do regicide like the Tories, and Starmer allies have a firm grip on the Labour machine. They will not repeat the Corbynistas’ mistake by letting it slip so a rival tribe can take over.

Rayner’s loyalty to Starmer could soon be tested. Some cabinet ministers, facing a big squeeze to their departmental budgets ahead of next month’s government-wide spending review, hope the deputy prime minister will stand up for them as well as her own housing ministry by opposing what they view as Austerity 2.0.

Reeves is not for turning; her allies insist that changing her fiscal rules would mean a rise in government borrowing costs, wiping out any extra money for public services. The backbench revolt over disability cuts will make it harder for the Treasury to achieve the further welfare savings it wants in the autumn Budget, making tax rises even more likely.

Whenever Labour MPs gossip about the succession – in other words, every day of the week – they usually foresee a battle between Rayner and Wes Streeting, the health secretary. Shares in Reeves were sold after her mistakes as chancellor.

“It’s Ange’s to lose,” one MP said. But others doubt her credentials for the top job. The energetic Streeting is seen as Team Starmer’s favoured successor, but there are doubts that, with a Blairite label, he could win the ballot of Labour members that elects the leader.

Starmer’s successor might be someone else due to an underpriced factor: the presence of Reform and pro-Palestinian independents means Streeting and Rayner could be among the cabinet ministers who lose their seats at the next election.

The prime minister’s allies acknowledge there is now an open debate about Labour’s direction, but insist the rebellious mood “could be much worse” given the multiple problems facing the government. They insist that Starmer’s strong performance on the world stage has reduced the pressure on him from his party. Yet impatient Labour MPs want him to show the same grip on domestic matters and, rightly, judge there are few votes in foreign affairs.

It is dawning on Labour MPs that Starmer, under McSweeney’s influence, intends to turn the next election into a presidential contest between himself and Farage. Although Labour is losing more votes to the Liberal Democrats and Green Party combined than to Reform, McSweeney is said to believe left-of-centre voters and even some Conservatives hate Farage so much they can be squeezed into backing Labour as the less bad of two options.

Starmer nodded to this approach in the Commons when he said the Tories are becoming a “dead party walking” and sliding into “brain-dead oblivion”. It might suit Labour to knock the Tories out of the race so it has a straight fight with Farage. It's a strategy many inside Labour regard as cynical and coercive, fearing Starmer will continue his shift to the right to fight on Farage’s turf rather than standing up for Labour values.

Neal Lawson, director of the progressive think tank Compass, told me: “Labour’s strategy is to say ‘We need to be like Reform, but don’t vote for Reform’. A national populist agenda is being legitimised and embedded. We are creating the monster and saying don’t vote for the monster but for the monster’s creator.”

Some Labour backbenchers worry that voters will opt for Reform rather than Reform-lite. But others grudgingly accept that such a strategy might just save enough of their seats for Labour to win a second term.