Tom Watson, who as a junior minister spearheaded the last attempted coup against a Labour prime minister in 2006, has urged current Labour MPs to stop plotting to remove Keir Starmer. Writing in a Substack post, Watson said such a move would go down extremely badly with voters and create a 'Westminster psychodrama'.
Watson's warning came as Steve Reed, the housing and communities secretary and a key Starmer loyalist, said Labour would risk 'annihilation' if it tried to change leaders. Reed told Times Radio that most Labour MPs were not signed up to the idea of a challenge.
With results expected to be grim for Labour in Thursday's elections, senior party figures have told the Guardian that activists were being told the prime minister was the problem. However, expectations of an immediate challenge are low, with potential contenders including Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting locked in what one cabinet minister called a 'Mexican standoff'.
Watson, who served as deputy leader under Jeremy Corbyn and is now a peer, advised against repeating the 2006 tactics. He wrote: 'The solution cannot simply be a different name on the door. The party has to listen harder, think deeper and recover its political purpose.'
Supporters of Burnham are thought to be waiting for local election results before potentially intervening. Some in Labour believe someone will act, with one senior party source saying: 'Plenty of MPs now think they might as well just roll the dice and that anything would be better than where we are now.'
