Sir Keir Starmer faces a nightmare following Angela Rayner quitting as deputy leader of the Labour party. An election campaign for this position will trigger an eruption of the anger, frustration, fear, divisions and all that is seething in the Labour party.
It will become an inquest into “what has gone wrong” with the Starmer project that has left the party lanquishing in the polls and rocked by departures and u-turns. The Prime Minister’s own judgement will be scrutinised in potentially brutal public debates. The new deputy leader will be given the job of getting the Labour project back on track with a mandate to challenge Sir Keir.
Potential successors will be pushed by party members and charities to rule out benefit cuts. Unions will demand they pledge to deliver controversial workplace rights which would frighten many employers who are right now struggling to cope with Rachel Reeves’s shock increase in National Insurance contributions.
The details of how and when a successor will be chosen have yet to be revealed. But it is already underway in all but name.
A fierce public row over economic policy would make it even harder for the Chancellor to fill the £50billion-plus hole in the public finances – and would alarm already spooked markets, potentially pushing up borrowing costs even higher.
Contenders will be quizzed on what measures they would support in the upcoming Autumn Budget. The Left will push for more taxes on the rich and the Blairite Right will warn of the catastrophic consequences for the party and the country if it kills off growth.
The weakness of the Prime Minister was exposed before the summer recess when he had to back down on benefits changes. It will be even harder to introduce welfare reform if members elect an unsackable Left-wing deputy leader who would be, in effect, an alternative PM and a lightning rod for internal opposition during crunch votes.
Just as Theresa May was doomed when she could unite neither Parliament nor her party on Brexit, Sir Keir and Ms Reeves are in peril if markets decide they cannot the greatest threats to financial stability.
A torrid would see different factions turn on one another. It would be a prime opportunity for members to vent their frustration that a party which won a historic landslide last year now sits in the polls 10 points behind Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Anger at the scrapping of universal winter fuel allowance – and the subsequent u-turn – would be aired before a country in which only one in five people intend to vote Labour at the next election.
For those on the Left who believe Sir Keir and his allies have tried to purge them from Parliament and party positions, they will see the upcoming contest as a chance for revenge and to win back influence. If they cannot make it onto the official ballot, they will still find ways to attack the leadership.
The upcoming Labour conference could be transformed from a reset opportunity into a civil war battlefield.
Naked divisions are a turn-off for the ordinary voters who decide general election results. With Labour now facing competition on the Left from an ambitious Green Party, the Liberal Democrats’ legendary pavement warriors and Jeremy Corbyn’s new project, maintaining party unity is getting harder for Sir Keir.
As Kemi Badenoch has discovered with the drift of Tory voters and activists to Reform UK, loyalty evaporates quickly if people no longer feel a party is their political home and a dynamic alternative has rolled out the welcome mat.
For both political and personal reasons Sir Keir is sad Ms Rayner has not survived this crisis of her own making. He will have her by his side as Deputy PM when he campaigns in the Welsh and Scottish Parliament elections in May. If the party elects a de facto anti-Starmer then an already difficult job will become downright miserable.