#keir-starmer

#keir-starmer

Keir Starmer was on the brink of a leadership contest this week, but he pulled it back. That does not mean his rivals have gone away, with one of the most hotly tipped leadership candidates the health secretary, Wes Streeting. Earlier this week, Labour's leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, held an astonishing press conference calling for Starmer to resign.

Sir Keir Starmer nominated a former aide for a peerage despite being told he had been supportive of a councillor who had been accused of child sex offences, his ex-communications chief has claimed. The prime minister is facing continued questions over his judgment in appointing his former spin doctor, Matthew Doyle, to the House of Lords after he campaigned for a councillor who had been charged with having indecent images of children.

Keir Starmer arrived at Wednesday's Prime Minister's Questions with his claws sharpened. He reminded the Conservatives of Boris Johnson's misdeeds; the Liberal Democrats of their complicity in the austerity imposed by David Cameron's government; and Scottish National Party (SNP) of the corruption cases involving its previous leadership. Welldrilled Labour MPs cheered and applauded their leader. The immediate goal was to contain the fallout from the MandelsonEpstein scandal, which had come close to ending the British prime minister's brief tenure.

When he does go, what will the political death certificate give as the true cause of Keir Starmer's demise? It won't be the Peter Mandelson scandal, the policy U-turns or the bleak nights at provincial counting centres. All these are symptoms, not the disease. No, what is turning the guy elected just 19 months ago into an ex-prime minister is the slow realisation among ministers, colleagues and voters of one essential truth about the man: there is less to him than meets the eye.

"The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change. That's why the distraction needs to end, and the leadership in Downing Street has to change... We cannot allow the failures at the heart of Downing Street to mean the failures continue here in Scotland. I have to be honest about failure wherever I see it - the situation in Downing Street is not good enough."

Westminster has seen plenty of leadership crises over the past decade. Sir Keir has faced questions over his leadership for months. But when a leader is under pressure, there are key questions worth asking: Is there a moment that will tip things over the edge - from crisis to the fall of a prime minister? How does it happen? Is there an obvious successor? Here are three moments that could prove dangerous for the prime minister.

Senior figures in Sir Keir Starmer's government are preparing to hand over tranches of their electronic communications with Lord Mandelson ahead of the release of evidence about his appointment as US ambassador. The deepening scandal prompted an apology on Wednesday from Sir Keir to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein for believing Lord Mandelson's "lies" and appointing him when the peer's friendship with the paedophile was already public knowledge.