Angela Rayner, a former deputy prime minister who grew up in poverty, is the betting market’s current favourite. According to odds derived from £500,000 ($680,000) of bets wagered on Betfair, a gambling exchange, Ms Rayner has a 20% chance of being the next prime minister (see chart). Her odds shortened sharply after her intervention in the House of Commons on February 4th, which forced the government to relinquish its control of which files it will release on Mr Mandelson’s ambassadorial appointment. Yet Ms Rayner is not entirely squeaky clean herself: she had to quit the cabinet last September after she failed to pay the correct taxes on a second home.
Until this week Wes Streeting, the health secretary, had been seen as Sir Keir’s most likely challenger. During one bizarre episode in November, anonymous briefings allegedly from Downing Street led to press reports that Mr Streeting was preparing a leadership bid and that, in turn, Sir Keir was ready to fight. Mr Streeting denied his thinly disguised leadership ambitions and blamed the reports on a “toxic culture”. But he too has been wounded this week by his willingness to defend Mr Mandelson, an ideological ally in the Blairite tradition. In September he said that the disgraced peer was “not guilty by association”.
The odds for Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, sank recently after Sir Keir’s allies in the party’s National Executive Committee prevented him from standing in a by-election. Ed Miliband, who was Labour leader during its wilderness years in the early 2010s, was previously thought to be enjoying himself too much in the energy and net-zero department. But his odds have recently risen from 4% to 7%. (Mr Miliband was one of the few to prove immune to Lord Mandelson’s charms. “All of us believe in dignity in retirement,” he said, when declining to offer Lord Mandelson a shadow cabinet job.) Beyond that, Labour’s pool of talent is remarkably shallow.
To challenge Sir Keir, just one-fifth of Labour’s parliamentary party—amounting to 81 rebel MPs—would be required to nominate an alternative party leader (and prime minister) from sitting Labour MPs. All candidates who attract at least 20% of MPs’ votes, as well as Sir Keir, would then go onto a broader ballot of around 250,000 Labour Party members and affiliated supporters such as trade unions. In a head-to-head against a working-class hero such as Ms Rayner, Sir Keir would surely be toast.
However, Labour backbenchers may well be wary of changing horses in midstream. The Conservative Party’s decision to oust Boris Johnson led to the disastrous 49-day prime ministership of Liz Truss, which shattered public confidence in the Tory party. Labour, according to our poll tracker, is around nine percentage points behind Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage. But with a general election not likely until 2029 and the electorate especially fickle, that race is still wide open.
The most striking line in our chart shows Mr Farage’s falling chances of being the next prime minister, according to the betting market. This reflects the increasing probability that Sir Keir is replaced by his own party before the next general election. Gamblers on Polymarket, a prediction market, reckon that there is a two-in-three chance of Sir Keir being removed before the end of the year.
The drip-drop of new revelations from the documents relating to Lord Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador is likely to bring fresh trouble for Sir Keir, as are local elections in May. In the short term, though, he might be spared by the weakness of all his potential rivals. “Is there anyone of my colleagues who I would want to see replace him?” one left-wing Labour MP, Paula Barker, wondered in an interview. “Genuinely, not even without saying names, there’s nobody who I would be prepared to back at this stage.”
So far, the speculation over the leadership is all presaged on personality, with no real sign of a meaty debate about the ideological or policy direction of the party. Above all there is little discussion of what to do about the trap of high borrowing costs, buckling spending pressures and low growth. Or what to do about Donald Trump. It is all decidedly lightweight—and not a pretty sight for voters.
The Labour Party’s 2024 manifesto promised to “stop the chaos” of the Conservative administration. The document described a “vicious cycle” of “decline feeding off chaos; chaos feeding off decline”. Britain has seen four prime ministers come and go over ten tumultuous years. Do Labour MPs think the public can stomach one more?
