Who’s ready to challenge Starmer for Labour top spot?

Remember the shady group with millionaire backers that helped undermine Jeremy Corbyn and crown Keir Starmer as his successor? Well, now they’re bracing for Starmer’s downfall.

Labour Together — the group which Starmer’s right-hand man, Morgan McSweeney, used to “destroy Corbynism” and install a corporate crony — knows the clock is ticking for Starmer. He’s done almost everything to become the least popular prime minister ever while sinking Labour’s poll ratings. Now, the machine is looking for its next replacement.

Is the political tarmac running out?

At the weekend, the Times reported, “the only ‘Starmerite’ think tank” sent a survey to local Labour parties to work out who had “the best chance of leading Labour to electoral victory at the next general election”.

As one might expect, the names suggested offer little in the way of excitement.

Members are asked to rank how likely they'd be to vote for Starmer, Shabana Mahmood, Wes Streeting, Darren Jones, Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband, Lucy Powell and Bridget Phillipson in a leadership contesthttps://t.co/s6fMmCJlff

— Patrick Maguire (@patrickkmaguire) December 7, 2025

Apart from wanting lots of data about the participants and their views, it also wanted to double-check:

whether they preferred “Labour politicians who have principles but are prepared to compromise to get the best outcome possible” or “Labour politicians who stand by their principles no matter what”.

Those responding online could have “entry into a £500 cash draw”.

Local parties would get £100 if “more than ten members” took part, “plus entry for that party to a £1,000 prize draw”. The Times also reported that after closing the poll on 15 December:

Labour Together will convey the results of the survey to the party leadership and conduct further polling and focus-group research on the views of the membership on a range of issues in the coming months.

Labour after Starmer: who’s next?

McSweeney studied at the Peter Mandelson School of Dark Arts and, unsurprisingly, despised Jeremy Corbyn’s politics. He also wanted to “kill the Canary” to ensure the corporate-media propaganda machine held its dominant position. But he destroyed neither Corbyn nor the Canary.

Election loser Jonathan Ashworth’s leadership of Labour Together doesn’t seem to have been too successful either, with reports of redundancies, directionlessness, donors losing confidence, and “top-down centralism” that has turned it into “a vehicle for Ashworth’s ego trip”.

However, none of this means that the forces of darkness won’t stand to benefit from Starmer’s downfall. War criminal Tony Blair, for example, is determined to block any shift leftwards in Labour. And he’s closely monitoring each potential candidate’s leadership campaign, while his think tank crafts a plan for the post-Starmer era. Shabana Mahmood is one such candidate, favoured as a right-wing possibility.

Pundits, meanwhile, say Angela Rayner could return to the frontline. She has a broad enough base of support to make a challenge or, at the very least, have influence over the coming leadership race.

But whoever steps forward will have to wait until Labour tanks in next year’s local elections before launching an official challenge to Starmer.

In the meantime, there’ll be lots of House of Cards manoeuvring among Labour careerists, with little apparent concern for the far right banging at the door.

Featured image via the Canary