Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has insisted he will still leading the country this time next year, dismissing concerns about his leadership, despite growing rumours about challenges within the party.
The Labour leader said that frequent leadership changes were not in the national interest, taking note of the “chopping and changing” of prime minister under the Conservatives, who saw three different leaders during the 2020- 2024 period.
However Starmer has been polling poorly in recent months and backbencher discontent is continuing to grow.
He is also thought to be leading Labour towards a poor set of local elections results in May, with the outcomes predicted to spark fresh calls for a change of leadership.
Starmer noted that he “is not surprised that people are frustrated” and “lost trust in politics”.
Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, he said: “Under the last government we saw constant chopping and changing of leadership, of teams- it caused utter chaos, utter chaos and it’s amongst the reasons that the Tories were booted out so effectively at the last election.”
“Nobody wants to go back to that. It’s not in our national interest.
“I will be sitting in this seat by 2027.”
Leadership bids
In the lead up to Christmas, the prime minister was reported to have faced two potential leadership bids, from health secretary Wes Streeting and mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.
Whilst Streeting denied any plans to challenge Starmer, rumours are continuing to circulate that the health secretary is planning a leadership bid in January, according to reports in The Sunday Times.
Burnham refused to rule out a potential bid, but has repeatedly pledged to finish his current mayoral tenure which runs until 2028, preventing him from standing for a seat in Parliament.
Political commentators have also suggested that former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner or foreign secretary, Shabana Mahmood, could also pose a threat to Starmer’s leadership.
Starmer’s tenure
Starmer told Kuenssberg that he was elected on a five-year mandate to change the country and he intended to deliver on that promise.
He said: “I will be judged, and I know I’ll be judged, when we get to the next election, on whether I’ve delivered on the key things that matter most to people.”
“I said we’d do it in a serious way with long-term measures that would actually benefit the country, not slogans, not east answers, not all the things that failed so miserably over the last 14 years in the last government.”
The prime minister’s interview followed his New Year message where he acknowledged life was still “harder than it should be” for many Brits, but promised “a sense of hope” would begin to be felt in the coming months.
Starmer added the government would defeat division offered by others, staying on course to deliver on its efforts to improve public services and the cost of living.
But, despite Labour’s promise to improve the cost of living, according to the latest Office of Budget Responsibility predictions for wage growth and inflation, workers are likely to end poorer in real terms by the 2030-2031 tax year, due to being dragged into a higher tax band.
The likelihood of being pulled into paying more tax has been credited to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ decision to freeze tax thresholds until 2031.
This would see someone on £50,000, end up £505 poorer, while the value of universal credit is estimated to rise by £290, while the state pension will go up by £306.
Writing in The Sunday Times, CPS Director, Robert Colville, said: “In other words, the triple lock is emphatically not free, nor is Labour’s expansion on welfare.
“They are being paid for by making millions of workers poorer.”