Archie Bland

If the question is whether Keir Starmer will face a challenge after those local elections.

I do think that remains a real possibility.

You know, there are some arguments and and you can see a very strong case.

And we hear this from Labour MPs that even though they think that his position is probably ultimately terminal, they would prefer to do it later in the year.

partly because that would mean that Andy Burnham might be an MP again.

And he is seen by a lot of people as the one who could lead them to a better position.

But what I think you can't really legislate for at this point is just what the mood is going to be on the Friday morning after those local elections.

If it is starting to become clear that Labour has taken a real drubbing across England and in Scotland and in Wales, then you're going to start to hear some voices who's

Frankly, emotional position might get a little bit ahead of their analysis of where they want ideally to be.

Starmer is sort of helped by the fact that there isn't an outstanding candidate to replace him in parliament right now, that Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood all have their own problems.

But it's also possible that MPs will conclude anything has got to be a bit better than this.

Yeah.

And meanwhile, you have the endlessly vexed relationship with Donald Trump, although I don't know that that necessarily rebounds badly on Keir Starmer as far as the public are concerned.

But just the general fact that Labour's polls are not going in a good direction and that seems very difficult to change.

There is beginning to be a situation where there is a kind of a deadline on changing things so that whoever is in charge has the

the time and the space to try to put together a policy programme that will have shown evidence of success before the next election and give Labour a fighting chance of doing as well as they possibly can.

And I think you would find very, very few Labour MPs who would say privately that they expected Keir Starmer to be the Prime Minister by the next election.

But it really is all to play for exactly when that happens.

And as I say, I think it's probably a question

of whether they're able to bite their lips after the local elections and indeed whether any of this Mandelson stuff and whether the evidence that we hear from Philip Barton and Morgan McSweeney next week makes that position look unsustainable because that is the wild cardinal of this.