When Charlie Falconer says the game is up, it feels like a “ravens leaving the tower” moment for Keir Starmer.
As in the legend that the fortress will fall if the ravens leave, the walls of protection that the prime minister has erected around himself in his constantly besieged premiership are about to come tumbling down.
And it is not just Tony Blair’s former lord chancellor telling the prime minister that his time is up, after Andy Burnham crushed Reform in Makerfield and now looks set to take over the party leadership and snatch the top job.
Former deputy leader Harriet Harman and former home secretary Alan Johnson are also among the Labour grandees who are pleading with Starmer to go.
Ministers and MPs are queueing up to give him the same message this weekend, as the prime minister is holed up in Downing Street.
Falconer is not regarded as someone who would rock the boat or show disloyalty. But when he was asked on Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday morning whether Starmer should stand in a leadership election against Burnham, he was clear.
“My advice, sadly, would be ‘Don’t stand.’”
He warned that a leadership contest would be “very difficult” and “bad for the country”.
His advice could be taken to apply to former health secretary Wes Streeting, too, as the clamour grows for a Burnham coronation.
On Friday evening, Harman was forthright, saying: “The herd is not just moving against Keir Starmer, it’s stampeding.”
Meanwhile, Johnson, another grandee, told Andrew Marr on LBC: “If I could speak to him now, I’d say, ‘It’s over, Keir; Andy is going to stand, and he’s going to win.’”
These experienced voices are reflecting the view of the 100 Labour MPs who have already told the prime minister he needs to resign. A growing body of ministers, including Heidi Alexander, Shabana Mahmood, Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper, are sending him the same message. They have all seen how Burnham routed Nigel Farage and Reform UK in a constituency that Reform should easily have won.
Increasing Labour’s vote share in the current circumstances is an astonishing achievement. What it has meant, though, is that the prime minister has appeared even more diminished and isolated, and the appetite for a contest has disappeared in favour of calls for a coronation.
It is astonishing that Starmer should be reduced to this less than two years after leading his party to a massive election victory with a majority of 170 – but he has paid the price for being unable to manage the threat from Reform.
