Friday briefing: Is there any way Keir Starmer can keep hold of his job?

Good morning. The mutiny has begun. Yesterday afternoon, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, resigned from government, declaring he no longer has faith in the leadership of Keir Starmer. His announcement – widely believed to be a precursor to making a run at Downing Street – followed days of intense speculation around the prime minister’s position after last week’s disastrous local elections. Hours later, Labour backbencher Josh Simons dramatically announced his resignation from his Manchester constituency, with the expressed desire of Andy Burnham taking up his seat in a byelection, returning to parliament and contending for No 10. Burnham confirmed he will seek to run in the byelection but, like Streeting, stopped short of openly gunning for the top job. Despite the pressure on him to resign, Starmer insists he is (for now) not going anywhere – and exactly how many Labour MPs really want him to go is unclear. The prime minister has an automatic right to contest any leadership contest under party rules, and appears intent on exercising it. For today’s First Edition, I spoke with Alexandra Topping, Guardian political correspondent, about Starmer’s chances of remaining in No 10, and our economics editor, Heather Stewart, about whether – despite the headwinds – his government’s economic programme might be showing early signs of success. But first, the headlines. Five big stories UK news | Almost every critic of Keir Starmer has accused the prime minister of not being sufficiently “bold” in his policy choices. But what would his possible replacements actually do differently? Politics | Nigel Farage bought a £1.4m property in cash shortly after receiving a £5m personal gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne. US news | China’s president, Xi Jinping, has warned of “clashes and even conflicts” with the US over Taiwan after meeting Donald Trump in Beijing. Social media | Google has denied breaching the Online Safety Act by promoting a “nihilistic” suicide forum associated with 164 deaths in the UK where it is supposed to be banned. Ukraine | Russian missiles and drones pounded Ukraine for a second day, almost continuously, with Kyiv bearing the brunt of the assault. In depth: ​‘Big ideological moves aren’t really the Keir Starmer way’ Wes Streeting has stepped down but doesn’t appear to have enough support to launch the leadership contest yet. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters Thursday should have been a good day for the government. Two separate announcements showed the economy grew more than expected, and that waiting lists fell in the NHS. Instead, the civil war brewing inside the Labour party boiled over. Wes Streeting, from the Blairite side of the party, finally publicly confronted the prime minister over his future by resigning from the government. He stopped short of announcing his own campaign to replace Starmer, instead calling for a leadership contest with “the best possible field of candidates”. So far, no contest has formally started. Few Labour MPs, at least publicly, still appear to support Starmer’s leadership, but there is no consensus on who should replace him. In the vacuum, chaos reigns: clusters of journalists stake out Downing Street demanding to know what is going on, and when. Away from the eyes of the public, their phones buzz with speculation from sources and politicians about who could follow Streeting. Some commentators interpret the health secretary’s resignation as a strategy to get Starmer to step down, compounded by his apparent lack of the 20% of Labour MPs needed to support his candidacy in any leadership election. But Starmer, less than two years into the job, is defiant. His approach, essentially “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough” tactic, is to dig in – and there are some figures to back it up. Survation polling for LabourList shows that Starmer would easily win a head-to-head election contest against Streeting. He would lose narrowly to Angela Rayner (who on Thursday was cleared by HMRC following an investigation into her tax affairs), but the prime minister would beat many other candidates, according to the numbers. The only candidate who would present a major challenge? A returning Andy Burnham. Furthermore, despite everything, Ipsos figures indicate that the country would still prefer to be led by Starmer than the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage. So could the prime minister cling on? The economic case Many Starmer supporters argue that his government has delivered far more than it is given credit for. On Thursday, figures from the ONS showed that the UK economy unexpectedly grew 0.3% in March – beyond what economists expected – despite the shock of the US-Israeli war against Iran. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was quick to say that a challenge to Starmer’s leadership would put that progress at risk. “The GDP figures were fairly strong, although they are far from a boom. But they support the argument that Rachel Reeves makes on the economy that things were heading in the right direction before the war in Iran,” says Heather Stewart. “The chancellor also took action in the budget to cut inflation, which meant markets were predicting interest rate cuts at the start of the year. That’s helpful for people with mortgages, businesses wanting to borrow, credit card bills. There was a feeling that we were turning a corner.” But all of that momentum has been lost with the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, which sent UK energy prices surging once again despite the Starmer government doing all it can to stay out of the conflict. Raising the minimum wage, scrapping the two child benefit policy, improving the performance of the NHS, strengthening workers’ rights, and successively managing to hold off the worst instincts of the US president, Donald Trump, are other achievements, say supporters. But for many MPs and members of the public, this has not been enough. Quiet success on immigration There has been progress on issues important to the public that the government appears less keen to shout about, says Alexandra Topping. Annual net migration is expected to be close to zero this year – down from around a million in the wake of the pandemic. The number of small boat crossings in the English channel has fallen modestly, and there has been a drop in the backlog in processing asylum seeker claims. But this rarely features in government rhetoric. “Regardless of whether you think it should or shouldn’t be, immigration is a significant concern to the electorate. Voters care about it but we aren’t hearing much boasting at all about this,” says Alexandra. “It’s interesting that Nigel Farage isn’t talking about it now because the numbers are falling. But it’s something that the Labour party itself feels deeply uncomfortable with – and that hampers people at the top of the party from talking about it. “The government really lacks confidence to be able to trumpet the stuff that it has done.” Starmer holds on If, somehow, Starmer manages to weather the storm, he will need to make a fresh pitch to the country to win back support. At the start of the week, the prime minister said that it was no longer a time for incrementalism – a major push on closer relations with the EU has been rumoured, which could see a deal that creates a new customs union with the bloc and a removal of trade barriers. But Alexandra thinks this could further inflame divisions within the Labour party. “It’s hard to see what Starmer could actually do that would satisfy the party. Remain MPs would want to see him make promises to go back into the customs union or the single market. That would cause absolute havoc with the ‘red wall’ MPs looking over their shoulders at Reform.” Other potential leadership candidates are likely to pitch a bold vision if there is a contest. But Alexandra says we should not hold our breath. “Ultimately, big ideological moves aren’t really the way Starmer works,” she says. “Unless he’s going to have a personality transplant and completely change the way he does things, I don’t think we are going to get them.”