Anand Menon: Kings College Professor of European Politics on the growing number of Labour MPs calling for Keir Starmer's resignation
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What is the current situation with Labour MPs and Keir Starmer?
It looks like Sakia Starmer survived for now. The Catherine West Challenge turned into a call for a northerly transition of sorts. But the numbers keep rising this morning. We're up to 62 now and some ministerial aides have gone as well. And Arne Menon is the Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at King's College in London and is with us. Morning to you. Morning. How are you doing? Very well indeed. What do you make of the 62 and counting? Do they get to the magic 80 something and then anything happens or not?
I mean, the problem is no one knows and it's painstakingly slow and it's very deliberate.
Why are Labour MPs hesitant to challenge Keir Starmer's leadership?
And the country, meanwhile, is watching this psychodrama without knowing who our prime minister is going to be in a few weeks' time. So it's just deeply destructive and smacks of, I think, mainly a lack of decisiveness amongst Keir Starmer's putative successors, none of whom have been willing to stand up and say, I'm going to throw my hat in the ring.
Was his mayor Culper any good in your view?
No, because it wasn't that much of a mea culpa. It was a diagnosis of the problems that he knew the country faced when he came to power in 2024. And I think what people expected from him today was some sense of urgency and some indication of what was going to be done about them. And we got none of that. So I think, in a sense, it was a bit of a damp squib. And I think the number 10 will look back at a weekend building up this speech as some turning point in the Starmer Premiership as a bit of a mistake.
Okay. So if Andy Burnham... was in power or in Parliament as an MP, would it be different? I just find it hard to believe there's 402 of them and they can't find a single challenger.
Well, I mean, that is the case, that there are 402 of them and they can't find a challenger that they can agree on. If Andy Burnham was in Parliament, it would be different, yes, because he is the one politician... who has decent approval ratings. I mean, we live in an age where basically our politicians compete not as to who is the most popular, but who's the least unpopular. And he is the least unpopular at the moment. So yes, it would make a difference. But what's weird is now you have a bunch of MPs in parliament desperately trying to stall this process, not because they want Keir Starmer to stay, but they want to find enough time somehow to let Andy Burnham run in a by-election, win the by-election, come back into Parliament and then stand as leader.
So it's a slightly surreal situation.
If you took a great British pound and placed it on whether Starmer would lead the Labour government into the 2029 general election, that pound would go which way? You'd lose it.
I'm pretty sure you'd lose it. I think even before the local elections last week, there was a consensus amongst Labour MPs that Keir Starmer shouldn't lead them into the next election. I think now there's a building consensus that he needs to go as soon as possible because I think their experience on the doorstep, plus Starmer's popularity ratings, and Starmer is now I think pretty much the most unpopular prime minister we've ever had, have convinced them that actually they need to have a change at the top. Now it's worth saying, you know, Starmer's unpopularity ratings are strange in the sense that Whatever you say about him, he's not sort of egregiously bad in the way that some of our previous prime ministers have been.
I think Keir Starmer is paying the price for 20 years of sluggish economic growth in this country and the British people are just getting fed up.
Just give me 30 seconds on reform. Are they the real deal or are they just behind this Farage bloke who makes a lot of noise and people are aggrieved at the moment about it?
Well, I mean, I turn that around. Nigel Farage is the real deal in the sense that he's a very good communicator. People like him. People think he's authentic. Without him, I wonder where reform would be. The big challenge for them is to hold together what is now a slightly bigger electoral coalition and to turn themselves into a professional political party.
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