Could Labour's leadership chaos make Ed Miliband PM?

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0:34Jon Sopel:This is a Global Player original podcast. The messages I was getting back were basically saying, hold your nerve. We know what's going to happen. I don't think it was that smart of maybe number 10 friends of Keir Starmer to say, oh, where's he's bottling it? He hasn't got what it takes. He's going to chicken out. He's going to do a runner. he ain't going to go through with it.

0:58Lewis Goodall:He's haunted by the idea. He's always wanted to be Prime Minister from when he was a young man and he is haunted by the idea that this is his David Miliband moment. The Crown is within his grasp that he only needs the courage to pluck up the will and the courage to grasp it and it will be his. Just on West Streeting, is he still the Health Secretary? Can we just confirm that?

1:19Jon Sopel:Again, I don't know. I'm in your studio answering your questions, Sarah. That is my question. Well, why don't you ask him? OK, but are you presuming he is? As I said, I don't know. I mean, I read a lot of speculation. If I asked you if Yvette Cooper was the Foreign Secretary, you'd say yes? Yeah, but I mean, this is not terribly productive use of our time. It sounds like one of those questions a doctor asks when they're looking for early onset dementia. Do you know who the Prime Minister is? This occasion, it's the Northern Ireland Secretary answering a question about whether the Health Secretary is still the health secretary on the BBC this lunchtime.

1:58Why would that question be so pertinent if the health secretary wasn't thinking about quitting his job? What does all this mean for Keir Starmer's position just as the King's speech is taking place? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:22Jon Sopel:The News Agents. It's John.

2:26Lewis Goodall:It's Meatless. It's Lewis. And we are in a very unusual position that everyone expects now. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, this question that has haunted British politics this week. Is there going to be a challenge against Keir Starmer? And it seems that Wes Streeting, the health secretary, has told allies that he is preparing to resign and trigger a leadership contest against Keir Starmer as soon as tomorrow. Hence the confusion of Hilary Benn and others as to whether West Streeting as of this afternoon is even still in his job. Something that Downing Street shortly afterwards did clarify by saying that Keir Starmer, after that 16 minute meeting this morning in Downing Street between the two men, Downing Street saying they have full confidence or the prime minister has full confidence in West Streeting and all of his cabinet ministers.

3:17Lewis Goodall:This all taking place, as Emily said, bizarrely, extraordinarily against the backdrop of the state opening of Parliament, where Westminster is in its finest ermine and silliest frocks, having to pretend as if none of this is happening as the King reads out a speech, including 35 bills of things that this government under this prime minister intends to do, whilst simultaneously not knowing for sure whether this prime minister is going to be in Downing Street at the end of the week. And the big question on everyone's lips in Parliament is does West Streeting have the numbers, the ATMPs he needs to resign and mount that challenge against Starmer?

3:56Let's not forget that the positioning of the King's speech, which is at the behest of the Prime Minister, really spoke to his nervousness about what could happen this week. It was always meant to be a firewall, essentially, to stop any huge political shenanigans from kicking off after those May elections. And to some extent, it has worked because today things are just about holding. What does that mean? Well, it means basically that nobody is swearing at the funeral, right? It's about as simple as that. When I was messaging people who were part of that 80 list, who'd added their voices, their names to the critique of Keir Starmer, I did start asking whether they had been surprised that more hadn't happened yesterday, particularly if there were supporters of Wes Streeting.

4:50Had they expected Wes to go over the top yesterday? and the messages I was getting back were basically saying, hold your nerve. We know what's going to happen. We know it wasn't going to be today. And the sense, every indication has been, we think there is more to come. This is a pause. This is a moment, silence. But tomorrow it all kicks off again. And I wonder whether actually against the backdrop of the King's speech, which I think a lot of people both outside the party, outside government and within, feel was quite a timid response to those election results. It was more incrementalism. It wasn't full-throated.

5:34It wasn't a kind of rip up everything and give the people something that they've been dying for. I think in a way it will embolden others to say, OK, that was the last chance. If that's basically what the legislative agenda looks like for the next year, then, yeah, maybe I'm out of here.

5:50Jon Sopel:I think it was the most perfect split screen moment today that you have the king's carriage coming down Whitehall and the horse guards and everything else running perfectly to time. And what it says is that Britain is this place of solidity, tradition, stability, consistency. and the reality of the government is that it's anything but that it is febrile it is uncertain it could anything could happen in the next five minutes and it might well in the next five minutes while we're sitting here uh recording and there was a moment this morning where people were starting to say oh well he's over the worst of it the stability is returning there was almost a two-hour window where people thought oh well starmer's in the clear now this is an ongoing problem that is not resolved and i don't think it was that smart of maybe number 10 friends of keir starmer to say oh where's he's bottling it he hasn't got what it takes he's gonna chicken out he's gonna do a runner he ain't gonna go through with it and what we've since heard is that oh yes he is actually and he may well have the numbers and he is going to force a contest which puts starving the position whether he's going to run or not run he said he will and he said he will but

7:12Lewis Goodall:the psychodrama goes on so this is as i said the question that everyone is is is contemplating does streeting have the numbers does he have the 80 now on the face of this too from what i can gather talking to mp there's two schools of thought about this on the face of it it would seem pretty illogical if he didn't have the numbers for him to wield the knife because if he doesn't have the numbers surely he's just gonna resign and that's going then he's going to be in the wilderness and it will expose him it will make him look weak not as a proper challenger and and and it's certainly possible that you know we know that lots of the people have resigned have kind of been quote unquote his people we know that a lot of the people calling for the pm to go have been his people and he definitely has other allies ministerial allies who haven't resigned yet who when push came to shove i think would resign and would back him so it's possible that he's got the 80.

8:03Lewis Goodall:There is another school of thought I've heard, which included one person telling me he has lost the plot, that this is an insane move. And they think a bit, as you were just saying, John, that he has been streeting, he's been destabilised and driven to anger by all of this talk of bottling it, of looking like a coward, and streeting who is very alive, more than most cabinet ministers too, how he is perceived in the media, is therefore rolling the dice because he was aware there was a picture going around just as a vignette to it to sort of illustrate this there was a picture going around all the Labour MP WhatsApp groups were sent to me last night that had a picture of Newcastle Brown bottles with Wes Streeting's face plastered over it which is you know bottle of Wes and that he this has got to him that he's decided to roll the dice that he's haunted by the idea he's always wanted to be Prime Minister from when he was a young man and he is haunted by the idea that this is his David Miliband moment, that the crown is within his grasp, that he only needs the courage to pluck up the will and the courage to grasp it, and it will be his.

9:09Lewis Goodall:Now, most people in the Labour Party believe that even if he does have the 80 and he gets through to the ballot of the members, that he will not be elected because they will not elect him because the politics of the Labour Party is not where he is, which is on the right of the party. Look, I think it's worth saying that we obviously don't know what we're streeting is going to do tomorrow. And it is entirely possible that actually, as of yesterday, he didn't know either. So maybe he was goaded. Maybe. I mean, we know that people around him resigned. And there is something of the kind of like, you know, if your PPS has resigned, if another health minister has resigned, if your allies have resigned, it's a bit like sort of being the fourth parachutist out of the aircraft and say, yeah, you go.

9:57I'm right behind you. You know, you jump. I'll be fine. I'll be right behind you. And then they're looking back and going, wait, why is he still in the aircraft? Like, what is he doing? So I think there is also a sense of, you know, responsibility, loyalty. If people around you have gone, is he thinking, well, you know, I can't be the one that watches them fall and maybe sort of slightly crash to the ground. Yeah. So you're that doesn't help my analogy. But yes, he's both marched and pushed. But essentially, there is probably a bit of him thinking, I've kind of, I've got to this point now and they've gone ahead of me.

10:32So I've got to do this. I think there's also a point, you know, when you see Andy Burnham arriving at Euston saying, I think I've got my seat. You know, I think I've got my by-election to fight. maybe to our point yesterday about you know you choose your own adventure maybe where street is going i've probably i've probably got 48 hours to get this off the ground now look your

10:54Jon Sopel:parachutist analogy is a good one because i think that's probably exactly what he's doing he's seeing what the reaction is to those resignations and seeing whether people are kind of ringing him up or whatsapping him and saying you're absolutely right i'm behind you i mean you quoted lbj on the podcast yesterday and the kind of rule number one of politics of lbj is learn to count actually i quoted roosevelt fdr which is do something but the lbj one is the next one right okay learn how to count learn how to count sorry i i'm i'm mistook i'm mistook i'm mistook i'm mistook on the eurostar coming back from wherever i was coming back from um and i think that that is you know surely he must know whether he's got the numbers and then presumably he must i mean i know this is a dynamic process so there are no kind of 100 guarantees and people are duplicitous and so you know it's perfectly possible that mps are not being straightforward when they say oh wes i absolutely don't know either there's so many newbies coming in right they're probably thinking shit i think so but i don't know i mean i've also been hearing i have to say um from people who contacted me because they said that their names had been added to the other list as in the kia a supporter list when they hadn't put them on.

12:09Now, we know about Rupa Hark, right? She sort of tweeted quite visibly that she hadn't actually signed up to that letter and she was holding her council. Other people have been in touch with me since. And it's not just the question of why their names were on it. It's also a question of why they felt the need to get in touch to say, this seems to be happening.

12:28Jon Sopel:Well, it seems that an awful lot of MPs are holding their breath right now. that they you know if you think of the people that have signed and said right here you've got to go and then you've got the payroll vote which is all the ministers and cabinet ministers and parliamentary private secretaries you know that's about 80 or 90 people there are an awful lot of people who've not said one thing nor the other and I think it does leave Starmer in this position now where he is too strong to die but too weak to thrive too weak to govern too weak to be able to do anything and so this Labour does seem to have managed to get itself into the worst of all possible positions right now where you cannot see an easy clean way out of this.

13:11Lewis Goodall:I think that said if if streaking does have the numbers I think it's impossible to really imagine how Starmer survives no I agree because although I mean but that would mean okay so that would mean people that hadn't yet sign their name because of that 81 we know that not all of those people are streeting people so he has got to have a whole bulk that haven't yet signed up that he knows are for him well start well i mean in the event of a contest of course um starmer and we should talk about the rules for this maybe maybe a bit which is that you know starmer automatically goes on the ballot as the leader if he wants to contest and doesn't need numbers but just in terms of the parliamentary support um starmer has i mean or might might not have i mean john you talk about the the 80 or 90 or so have come forward to say he's got to go.

13:53Lewis Goodall:Got to remember as well, there are a lot of Labour MPs who have not said anything publicly but have said something to the Whips. I was talking to one last night who told me this. He said, I let my whip know yesterday there are a lot of us in this position. I believe the PM should resign. We want him to understand the mood of the Parliamentary Party and go with dignity, who want to maximise the ability of the Labour Party to come together after this. The PM's reputation is being damaged by his refusal to accept political realities. So in the event, of course, that there is a contest and what happens is the rules are that you have to have 80 MPs come forward to challenge Starmer, at which point there will be a contest within the Labour Party.

14:32Lewis Goodall:Starmer, if he wants to fight it, will automatically be on the ballot. That's what happened when it's kind of the Jeremy Corbyn precedent when he was challenged in 2016 by his own MPs. He automatically goes on the ballot. So theoretically, and Starmer has said he will do this, he says that he will put himself forward. Now, I think in that scenario, I think it will become very clear from those sorts of MPs I've just talked about, they will go public and say, Prime Minister, do not stand in this election. And not just Labour MPs. I mean, it's something I think that has kind of been sort of missed a bit today or hasn't sunk in quite enough today is this extraordinary and unprecedented joint statement from all of the affiliated unions of the Labour Party, the 11 affiliated unions, some of whom, remember, some of which endorsed Starmer back in 2020, all saying that it is clear that the Prime Minister will not lead Labour into the next election.

15:24Lewis Goodall:Now that means that Starmer is losing the support and authority from within the Parliamentary Labour Party and within the wider movement. And it means that basically Starmer will not have a majority on the NEC, the ruling body of the Labour Party anymore because the unions are so represented. His power within the party, he kind of looks a bit stronger today on the surface, but he's not. It is ebbing and ebbing and ebbing away.

15:46Jon Sopel:I think we're very close to what happened with the Thatcher leadership when she faced the challenge and she was two votes short of winning outright. And so there would have to be another contest. And what happened then was, and I think this is what happens if West Streeting gets the numbers, that the cabinet on day one, you know, came out that mad scene, those mad scenes yesterday of people rushing to the microphone, West Streeting scurrying up Downing Street. But, you know, and you played it on the podcast yesterday, you know, they're all coming out to say, oh, well, yeah, we've got Keir's back and we love Keir.

16:19Jon Sopel:I think that if there is properly a challenge and it's going to happen, that is the moment when the cabinet go in one by one to see Keir and say, I'm sorry, we wanted to support you. we did support you but now we're in a position where the game is up which is exactly what happened with Thatcher when all these ministers went in one by one to say I'm sorry Margaret you can't carry on you don't have the support to do that and I think that's what would happen then. Currently the cabinet or at least some of it's in the tea room we're just hearing from Lucy McDade at Sky News that Rachel Reeves is in Parliament of the Commons members tea room trying to persuade them from not backing Wes.

16:59In other words, this is a leadership battle that's already on. And I know there'll be people listening to this podcast, this episode now and saying, why are you getting ahead of yourselves? Like nothing has happened. Wes Streeting went in to have a 50 minute coffee with Keir Starmer. And since then we've heard nothing. Please don't jump the gun. But I would have to say, as I think we tried to say yesterday, this is not happening because the media is sort of frothing at the mouth. It is happening around us, whether or not, you know, you want to hear about this and it sounds as if Rachel Reeves right now realises that her part to play certainly if she wants to stay as Chancellor is in persuading people around her not to back the Health Secretary who as we discussed earlier may or may not be the Health Secretary this time tomorrow.

17:46Lewis Goodall:Look let's assume for a moment that streeting has got the numbers and there is going to be a contest. Feels to me again from conversations I've been having that that there are then two big decisions for two different people to make. We know there it's going to be a leadership contest. It takes Andy Burnham out of it. He cannot run as much as he might want to. He's not in Parliament. Therefore, the big question becomes, where Streeting is representing the right of the party? Let's also assume that Starmer wants to stand, but struggles to have legitimacy to do so. What happens to the soft left of the party?

18:15Lewis Goodall:Who is representing the soft left of the party, which is the bulk or at least, you know, a lot of Labour MPs? the natural answer would be Angela Rayner does she stand in that contest now there are lots of schools of opinion on that about whether she even wants to do it the HMR CSU is not resolved but there are other potential reasons she might not want to as well and there are some people around who I think don't want her to do it but want her to be a big part of the next government if she does not stand the name on everyone's lips in terms of representing standing for the soft left of the party is Ed Miliband.

18:48Lewis Goodall:And I do think that the scenario we're seeing play out is a scenario that has been being muttered about for a long time now and whispered about, which is the Ed Miliband scenario, which is the Ed Miliband who does not want to actually be leader, I think, again. I think he would dearly like to be chancellor, possibly in a Burnham government, who knows. But in a situation where he felt where streeting was going to stand, the impression I get from talking to MPs is that he would feel that he could not and would not risk Wes Streeting, this is a guy who does not like Miliband, the right of the party, he would not risk a Streeting victory and would therefore potentially stand.

19:25Lewis Goodall:And if he were to stand, this might strike some viewers and listeners as weird, considering, of course, he lost the 2015 election and so on. He is deeply popular among Labour Party members who would be the ones who would be voting. So if this is a scenario we're seeing playing out and you're out there wishing, if you're a 2015 voter wishing that Ed Miliband had become Prime Minister, this is the scenario which is most likely to yield Ed Miliband as Prime Minister of this country.

19:49Jon Sopel:So are there other candidates who can emerge? Because if it's 80 to get on the ballot and there are 400 Labour MPs, John Sopel's maths is just about capable to work out that there could be five potential candidates who could get 80. Kier actually doesn't have to get 80, so he could just stand away. Yeah, it could be six if they were evenly distributed. I mean, of course, they won't be. But I'm just wondering, is there anyone else who, you know, because there will be people who will take against the idea of it. Can I just say one thing? I mean, you know, you don't have to be that old or have that long a memory to go back to Ed Miliband winning the Labour leadership against his brother David and others and Burnham, in fact.

20:29And then going on to, you know, fail the election against, come to lose the election to David Cameron. It does seem to me, and we did talk yesterday about trying to avoid the psychodramas, the problem with the Labour Party or with any party really is it talks to itself the whole time. So Ed Miliband is fantastically popular within a group of people that already like Ed Miliband and the Labour Party. If you go out to the wider country, there is almost no one in the cabinet who is less popular with people who are not natural Labour voters than Ed Miliband. And if you ask people outside the Labour Party or who would not naturally vote Labour, who they might warm to, you know, as a Labour prime minister, if they had to choose somebody, it would be more in the character of Shabana Mahmood.

21:20Right. And Shabana Mahmood will never get the leadership because the Labour Party don't like her. And sorry, but that is that is the vicious circle that you're in, that the Labour Party.

21:31Jon Sopel:Well, that's always been party politics, hasn't it? In the sense that the party is a way to the left or the right of the electorate. Yes, but that is why Keir worked, works stroke worked, because people didn't have an image of him as being one flank or another. He just about, he was just about, OK, he was OK for the bond markets. He was all right for people who were natural Lib Dem voters, maybe even some natural Tory voters who said, yeah, we've had enough. We're going to give Labour a chance. this is just repeating what Labour already knows that people who like Labour will vote for Ed Miliband

22:04Lewis Goodall:and people who won't vote Labour won't. I'll just push back with the kind of this is what people say, the case for Ed, right? If he were to stand. The case is, right, first of all he could unite the party. He's on the soft left of the party. That's where most of the party is. You have streeting or someone like that he pulls the party apart. Ashubana also potentially pulls the party apart. Ed would unite the party. That's important. They would also say what is the criticism of one of the main problems that Starmer has had? You basically have a politician without politics, who doesn't really know what he thinks, who doesn't have a sense of mission about what his government should be about.

22:36Lewis Goodall:Ed Miliband, that is not the case for Ed Miliband. Ed Miliband has a deeply cultivated political philosophy. He has a very clear idea about what he wants to do. The sharpest sense of what social democracy means in the 21st century. And they would also say, yes, of course, he was leader. Yes, it didn't go well. They would say that he's grown a lot since then. He's a far more fluent and formidable communicator. He gets the sort of 2026 content age that we're in. He's one of the few members of the cabinet who can actually really do that. And so it would be reluctant. Honestly, he would be a gift to reform.

23:09He would be a gift to Kemi Bader. Here at the moment is a gift to reform.

23:12Jon Sopel:So, I mean. Well, that's why they've got to do better. So we mentioned on Passon, one particular group there and what their reaction would be. And that is the bond markets. And if the bond markets thought it was going to be Ed Miliband. I wonder what would happen to the cost of government borrowing. And I kind of I know it's utterly anathema and rightly so that, you know, people think, well, hang on. How can the bond markets decide who our next prime minister is going to be? What? Yeah. But it does matter. The cost of government borrowing. Well, actually, up to a point. I mean, look, I understand that when Rachel Reeves, you know, cries in parliament and the bond markets get really shirty, then nothing happens and we go, oh, thank God we've calmed them down.