If Keir Starmer is toppled as Labour leader, the party must put his successor to the country by holding a general election, according to columnist Sarah Vine. Speaking on the latest Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast, the longstanding Mail writer argued that a new prime minister would need a mandate from voters to govern legitimately.
Mandate and Precedent
While the monarch confers power on a government for a parliamentary term, Vine warned that Starmer's replacement could face a rough ride from the electorate if they fail to call a snap election. She pointed to Boris Johnson's example: Johnson became prime minister in July 2019 but called a December general election after failing to secure parliamentary support for a revised Brexit deal. He won a landslide victory, the Conservatives' first since Margaret Thatcher in 1987.
"Boris Johnson did go to the country. And I think that was a sensible thing, that showed a very, very finely honed political instinct," Vine said. "He totally understood that he needed to do it, and he got an actually historic majority."
Labour's Dilemma
However, Vine acknowledged that Labour's disastrous local election results in May, where they lost 1,496 councillors, might deter any successor from heeding her advice. "I think one of the problems with the Labour Party is that if they do replace Keir Starmer, they will come under pressure to go to the country," she said. "And of course, if they go to the country now, well, we've seen what's happened in the local elections, and we can see the polling means it might not necessarily be a good idea."
Despite Starmer's low popularity ratings, Vine believes he could bounce back if he weathers the storm from leadership contenders. "I think people in this country admire a man who fights against the odds," she said. "It wouldn't totally surprise me if this new version of Keir Starmer, the boy who stood on the burning deck whence all that he had fled, said, 'No, I'm not going.' That's the moment you might say, 'Oh well, he has got some guts. Maybe he does have a backbone.' If he does dig his heels in, and it looks like he's going to, people might have new found respect for him."
Universal Suffrage and Andy Burnham
The podcast also featured a debate on universal suffrage, with Vine sharing her theory that Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is "the Heathcliff of the Labour Party." She argued that many voters are uninformed, voting based on superficial appeal rather than policy. "I think the problem with the way the system that we have is a lot of people vote, and they're not really informed... They're just voting because they fancy Andy Burnham, because he's got nice eyelashes or whatever."
Hitchens proposed a system where votes carry extra weight based on contributions to society, such as qualifications, bravery in war, service in the armed forces, or successfully raising families. He cited Nevil Shute's novel In the Wet as a model, where everyone retains a vote but additional votes are granted for demonstrated ability, unselfishness, experience, and wisdom, up to a maximum of seven votes, with the seventh granted by the monarch for particularly distinguished individuals.
