Desperate times call for desperate measures. So Keir Starmer has decided to issue one, final despairing plea to Labour MPs preparing to oust him from office. ‘Stick with me. Or you’ll get nuked.’
As a minister explains: ‘This is going to be the new line pushed at the backbenches by the Whips. The argument will be that we’re on the brink of war with Russia, Trump is threatening Greenland, the Middle East is a tinderbox and China has spies lurking round every corner in Westminster. So who do you want dealing with all that – Keir or Andy Burnham?’
On one level it’s easy to see the attraction of this apocalyptic narrative. The Prime Minister’s New Year’s relaunch has already imploded. As we report today, the global threats facing Britain are all too real, with Trump genuinely considering an occupation of Greenland, fresh strikes on Iran reportedly imminent and Putin threatening retaliation for the seizure of his tankers.
And while Keir Starmer has been grappling with these geopolitical threats, his potential successors – Burnham, Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner – have primarily been struggling to get to grips with the Manchester Bee Network, the BMA and the Inland Revenue’s regulations on stamp duty.
As one Starmer ally told me: ‘It’s going to be the old Ed Miliband question. Who do you trust most to stand up to Vladimir Putin?’
But trying to get Labour MPs to focus on the threat of thermo-nuclear annihilation, rather than their increasingly vulnerable parliamentary majorities, is not going to prove an easy task. Not least because it’s a strategy that has been tried – and failed – in the recent past.
Keir Starmer has decided to issue one, final despairing plea to Labour MPs preparing to oust him from office. ‘Stick with me. Or you’ll get nuked.’ Illustration by Henry Davies
It became a running joke that whenever Boris Johnson was facing a domestic political crisis he would suddenly pop up in Kyiv. Liz Truss spent the last days of her brief premiership checking Met Office weather charts because she had been warned by security chiefs that Russia was preparing to detonate a low-yield nuclear device over the Black Sea.
Yet the very real and present danger posed by Putin’s aggression was not enough to convince rebellious Tory MPs to stay their hand. And there is precious little evidence their Labour counterparts will prove any more forgiving. The other problem for Keir Starmer is that foreign affairs no longer provides the political sanctuary it afforded at the start of his premiership.
It was significant that at last week’s session of Prime Minister’s Questions, Kemi Badenoch chose to focus on Ukraine and defence spending, rather than domestic issues. And even more significantly, she gave the Prime Minister a proper shellacking over his failure to deliver a full parliamentary statement over his agreement to deploy British troops as part of a post-ceasefire Ukrainian peacekeeping operation, or to provide a hard date for the proposed increase in defence spending to 3.5 per cent.
Starmer and his aides have long been of the view his unwavering support for Ukraine plays well with the voters. But his MPs are not so sure. As one told me last year: ‘People in my constituency are saying, “How come we can afford drones for the Ukrainians but we haven’t got any money to fix the potholes at the end of my street.”’
The other major issue with his ‘Get Burnham, Get Nuked’ line is that the Prime Minister’s backbenchers are becoming just as concerned at the increasingly reckless adventurism of his erstwhile ally Donald Trump as they are at the predatory behaviour of Putin.
As one Starmer ally told me: ‘It’s going to be the old Ed Miliband question. Who do you trust most to stand up to Vladimir Putin?’
The Prime Minister’s backbenchers are becoming concerned at the increasingly reckless adventurism of his erstwhile ally Donald Trump, writes Dan Hodges
Foreign affairs committee chairman Emily Thornberry spoke for many colleagues with her intervention in the wake of the US attack on Venezuela when she chided: ‘We condemn Putin for doing it. We need to make clear that Donald Trump shouldn’t be doing it either. People just can’t do whatever they want. I mean, we really can’t have a kind of international anarchy.’
Her words were quickly echoed by Labour’s First Minister in Wales, Eluned Morgan, who warned: ‘There comes a point when you have to stand up and be clear with your friends and say, “Up to here and no further”, because if you’re not they just go on to the next thing, as you are seeing in relation to Greenland.’
These comments reflect a wider view within the Labour movement that Starmer has gone far enough in his efforts to ingratiate himself with Trump, and that he now needs to start to put some distance between himself and the President’s increasingly erratic, and potentially electorally toxic, behaviour.
‘Keir can bang on as much as he likes about the importance of the special relationship. But look at the polls. British voters don’t like Trump and they don’t trust him. We can’t be seen to be getting too pally with him,’ one MP told me.
But the biggest drawback with Downing Street’s new strategy is that however scared Starmer’s MPs may be by Putin’s aggression and Trump’s irrationality, the British people scare them more.
The continuing slide in Labour’s poll ratings, the angry reaction to Rachel Reeves’ betrayal of her pledge not to raise taxes on working people and the chaotic start to the New Year – which has already seen panicked U-turns on farmers’ inheritance tax and pub business rates – are what is focusing their minds.
They are less worried at the prospect of Russian paratroopers landing in their back garden than they are of the response they will get when they knock on the front doors of their constituents.
‘Look, am I delighted at the thought of Andy or Angela sitting down opposite Vladimir Putin to try to prevent World War III? No. But to be honest that’s a pretty abstract problem. People in my area are focused on bread and butter issues such as the cost of living. And at the moment I don’t see any prospect of Keir or Rachel getting to grips with that,’ one backbencher admitted.
Another MP was even more blunt. ‘Unless Keir can demonstrate he can turn things around, he has to go. Because if he doesn’t then the person in charge of our foreign policy will be Nigel Farage. And who does that help?’
The reality is that raising the spectre of nuclear annihilation as a means of ushering rebellious Labour MPs back on side is a sign of No 10’s increasing desperation. One that merely underlines the extent to which they have run out of cards to play.
In 1940, Neville Chamberlain was ousted by his party while Britain was facing the gravest international danger.
In 2026, despite Keir Starmer’s best efforts, history may be about to repeat itself.