As Labour’s net approval rating tests new depths - YouGov reports that 72% of the country disapprove with only 11% approving - and with hefty tax rises and public spending cuts slated for the November budget, talk in Westminster is turning to the need to remove Keir Starmer, likely with Andy Burnham.
But how does this happen? This post addresses the Labour Party Rules for choosing leaders - and how Burnham navigates them.
Image: Anthony Devlin for Getty Images
The Labour rules for leadership elections
The current machinery for leadership elections is set out in the Labour Party Rulebook of 2025. There are different rules governing leadership elections depending on whether there is a vacancy or not. I’ll assume that Keir Starmer does not resign so there is no vacancy.
The key provision is in Chapter 4 Clause II.2.B.ii which states: “Where there is no vacancy, nominations may be sought by potential challengers. In this case any nomination must be supported by 20 per cent of the Commons members of the PLP.” Currently there are 399 Labour MPs so 80 would need to nominate a candidate to spark a leadership election. There is no need to obtain the support of constituency Labour Parties or affiliates such as unions.
(The same provision settles an argument outstanding from the Corbyn years by providing that a sitting leader is automatically on the ballot: Starmer would not need to seek nominations to stand in any leadership election.)
To accept the nomination a challenger must notify the General Secretary in writing.
Chapter 4 Clause II.2.D.i provides that an election is triggered by the nomination of 20% of MPs. And there is no explicit provision for other challengers to enter an election sparked by - eg - a stalking horse candidate. But the National Executive Committee (NEC) is required to ensure that elections are “conducted in a fair, open and transparent manner” and it will want to avoid multiple leadership elections so it is a racing certainty that the timetable for the election - which must be set by the NEC and approved by an independent scrutineer - would be set to enable other MPs to seek the requisite number of nominations.
The electorate is made up of Party members and “affiliated supporters”, each of whom must have a minimum of six months continuous membership to vote. The Rulebook does not define “affiliated supporters” - and uses various overlapping terminology to describe what appears to be the same people (“affiliates” and “affiliated members”) but the rules provide that “precise eligibility criteria shall be defined by the NEC”: Chapter 4 Clause II.2.C.vii. In 2020, there were 12 affiliated unions and 20 affiliated societies and one might expect affiliated supporters to be those who have membership of those.
Voting is by preferential ballot: “the votes shall be totalled and the candidate receiving more than half of the votes so apportioned shall be declared elected. If no candidate reaches this total on the count of first preference votes, a redistribution of votes shall take place according to preferences indicated on the ballot paper”: Chapter 4 Clause II.2.C.ix. And the result is declared at a Party Conference.
What about Andy Burnham?
In principle Andy Burnham appears to be the leading candidate to replace Keir Starmer. But the Labour Rule book provides that “All nominees must be Commons members of the PLP” (Chapter 4, Clause 2.II.B.iii) and Mr Burnham is not. His allies anticipate that he would satisfy the requirement via a friendly MP resigning their seat, which Mr Burnham would step into.
Even if such an MP can be identified - and two possible MPs, Andrew Gwynne and Graham Stringer, have already ruled themselves out - there are, apparently, formidable further difficulties.
The procedure for an MP voluntarily to resign their seat is arcane and requires that they be appointed to an “office of the crown”; this disqualifies them from holding a seat in the Commons and so triggers their departure. The Chief Whip of the resigning MPs’ party then asks the Speaker to hold a by-election.
Any seat that would be vacated to make way for Andy Burnham would by definition be a Labour seat and so the Chief Whip would be an appointee of the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. This matters because the Chief Whip can choose when to ask the Speaker to hold the by-election. As the Parliament website puts it: “A new Writ [for a by-election] is usually issued within three months of the vacancy. There have been a few times when seats remained vacant longer than six months.” Indeed, there appears to be no legal obligation to hold a by-election at all. And the polling day follows a further 21 - 27 working days after the writ is issued.
So, from the date a friendly MP resigned, Andy Burnham would qualify to be nominated as leader after a couple of months at theoretical best - Labour will want to select a candidate before the writ for a by-election - but might take as long as four months at reasonable worst. So Burnham would have to signal - several months before even qualifying to do so - that he planning to challenge Starmer for the leadership. And it would be against that background that he would have to be selected by a Labour Constituency Party and then win a by election. He would need to hold himself out simultaneously as loyal to Labour (for the CLP), keen to commit regicide (to nominating MPs), and promising a bright future for the Government (to the constituency electorate).
James Maxton wrote, of politicians, that ‘if you can’t ride two horses at once you shouldn’t be at the circus’ but in this scenario Burnham would be riding three.
(It’s also worth pointing out that the NEC has power - see Chapter 5, Clause IV.8.A - to block a candidate selected by a constituency party from standing as an MP. But it is hard to imagine the NEC blocking a candidate of Burnham’s stature: to do so would cause enormous political harm to the Party and would certainly face legal challenge.)
Still, there is a plausible path through. The NEC has a broad power in Chapter 4 Clause 2.1.A to vary the rules - ironically, it used a similar discretion to allow Keir Starmer to stand for election for Labour in 2015 despite him not satisfying the requirement of having been a member of the Labour Party for a year - to allow someone who is not, or not presently, an MP to stand for leader.
Superficially, you would think an NEC under Starmer would not exercise that discretion to aid his deposing. However, if the alternative was to rule out, on a technicality, the most plausible candidate, one who would qualify to stand shortly, possibly even during the timetable of the leadership election (Labour’s timetable to elect Starmer ran for three months), with a possible alternative being successive leadership elections when Burnham did qualify to stand, weakening Labour internally and externally, you might expect it to do the sensible thing and exercise its discretion to allow his candidacy.
The most likely way through seems to be this.
A candidate - perhaps a stalking horse for Andy Burnham - succeeds in gathering the nominations of 80 MPs to stand against Starmer. And, prompted by that leadership election, a sitting MP resigns his seat to clear the way for Burnham to stand as well. The NEC, aware of its power to block Burnham, but cognisant of the practical harm of doing so, allows him to stand. The rest is then up to the Labour electorate - which YouGov polling suggests favours Burnham