On Friday, as the dust settled on Andy Burnham’s thumping victory in the Makerfield byelection, Keir Starmer was in defiant mood. “I have said repeatedly, I am not going to walk away,” the prime minister said, adding: “Let’s pull together as a party and a movement.”
Just 48 hours later, one of his most loyal ministers was on the BBC sending a very different message. “I don’t want to come on here and be delusional that there is no process, there are no forces at work which are challenging the prime minister as leader – that is clearly the case,” said the business secretary, Peter Kyle.
What changed in that intervening period will be picked over for months, if not years.
By Sunday afternoon, Starmer’s allies were coming to terms with the fact that despite weeks of denials, the prime minister was about to announce his resignation, and the country was heading towards its seventh prime minister in 10 years.
‘I must serve the people’
Throughout the Makerfield campaign, Starmer insisted he would resist any attempt by the Greater Manchester mayor to unseat him. “I’m not going to walk away,” Starmer said on 18 May. “I feel very strongly I must serve the people who voted me into office.”
Allies said Starmer had defied his critics before and would do so again. But privately, they admitted much would depend on the size of Burnham’s majority.
“I suspect Keir’s resistance will fade quickly if Andy wins so big that it looks like he could save dozens of colleagues’ jobs at a general election,” said one No 10 source a day before the byelection.
When Burnham secured his majority of nearly 10,000 – comfortably more, overall, than the combined vote of Reform UK and Restore Britain, even some close to the prime minister thought he might announce his departure that day.
Instead, Starmer repeated his determination to remain in office, before heading to the prime minister’s official country retreat Chequers to spend the weekend with his wife, Victoria.
On Friday, Starmer appeared to signal different things to different people about his intentions. One source told the BBC he had spent the day talking to cabinet ministers not about whether he could stay in office, but what arguments he would make in a leadership contest.
To Kyle however, the prime minister seemed more circumspect. “He was very mindful of the interests of the country,” the business secretary told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday.
“In that conversation he repeatedly said to me and asked my advice on what I believe the country wanted at this moment in different circumstances.”
Some ministers who had previously been loyal to Starmer warned him on Friday they would not remain so for long, with an intervention expected at cabinet on Tuesday if he did not set out a timetable for departure.
And by Saturday, Starmer was so certain he would be leaving office that he began drafting his resignation statement, with the help of his inner circle.
‘No one wants rolling resignations’
Part of the prime minister’s frustration has been that he believes Burnham can be beaten in a contest. Starmer’s allies watched the outgoing Greater Manchester mayor during his Question Time appearance during the campaign and thought he seemed untested and light on detail.
But over the weekend, it became increasingly clear to Starmer that the contest had been all but decided before it had begun.
With Burnham resting at home with his family, his allies were telling Starmer’s aides that the 200 MP supporters they had signed up had climbed to 300 – nearly the entire parliamentary Labour party.
And while seven cabinet ministers – Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper, John Healey, Shabana Mahmood, Heidi Alexander, Douglas Alexander and Jonathan Reynolds – had all privately told the prime minister to set a date for his departure, there was a risk of public resignations in the coming days.
One cabinet minister, who had been ready to resign, said on Sunday afternoon: “There was a view that resignations would be required if Keir’s public view – that he’d fight any challenge – remained his private view. But in the last 12 to 14 hours, a shift appears to have taken place in his mind. No one wants rolling resignations.”
Even as this was all playing out, almost nobody in government seemed certain of the prime minister’s intentions. His conversations were kept within a very tight group of confidants, Victoria central among them.
One senior government aide said on Sunday: “It’s remarkable how little anyone does know for certain, as it is all seeming very tight around the prime minister. But the expectation is that things are moving in one direction only, and that’s an orderly timetable.”
By Sunday night it was still unclear exactly what timetable would be set out, or whether his succession would be decided by a coronation or contest. One thing was clear, however: even Starmer’s closest allies had stopped talking about the importance of not walking away.
