When the herd moves ...

If Starmer thinks that resuscitating Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman will somehow revive his fortunes, he is just confirming what many of his own MPs already suspect. He really is rubbish at politics.

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Hands up if you know who Sir Anthony Meyer was. (And no Googling at the back …)

Back in the mists of time — well, 1989 to be precise — he stood for the leadership of the Conservative party in what he knew would be a doomed attempt to unseat Margaret Thatcher, who by then had been prime minister for a full decade.

He was, as everyone knew, a stalking horse candidate, putting himself forward in order to encourage more credible candidates to throw their hats into the ring.

And tonight, Saturday 9 May, he is reincarnated in the form of Labour MP Catherine West, an Australian-born Sinologist who just happens to be my constituency MP.

Out of nowhere, she has suddenly ignited what could turn into a full-blown Labour leadership crisis by warning that unless a Cabinet minister puts themself forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself.

She’ll need the backing of 81 of her fellow Labour MPs — she says she already has the support of 10, but is confident that more will come forward if they’re needed.

I am reminded of Boris Johnson’s words when he left 10 Downing Street in July 2022. They were perhaps the truest words he spoke during his entire Premiership: ‘When the herd moves, it moves.’

In other words, there comes a moment in politics when there’s nothing more you can do. It’s over. The die is cast.

So the question this weekend is simply this: is the herd moving? Will Wes Streeting or John Healey or Angela Rayner or Ed Miliband or Shabana Mahmood pick up the gauntlet that Catherine West has thrown down?

If so, after less than two years as prime minister, Keir Starmer is toast. But my guess, as things stand, is that they’ll keep their powder dry. Now, they’ll say, is not the time. We need to take stock, work out exactly what last Thursday’s election results really mean.

And, most importantly for many Labour MPs, find some way to get Andy Burnham back into the House of Commons.

But back to Sir Anthony Meyer. Thatcher easily saw off his challenge, but less than a year later, her former Cabinet colleague Michael Heseltine mounted his own, much more serious challenge and she failed to win enough votes to continue in office. The rest is history.

So yes, Keir Starmer may well survive this weekend’s post-election turbulence. But if he thinks that resuscitating Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman, both of them in their mid-seventies, will somehow inject a semblance of new life into his sickly administration, then he is simply confirming what too many of his own MPs already suspected.

He really is rubbish at politics.

Here’s what I would do. Tell Andy Burnham that I won’t stand in his way if he wants to fight a by-election in the hope of returning to the Commons. (After all, he might not win.)

And then, if he wants to mount a leadership challenge, tell him I’ll fight against him. In the words of John Major when he was similarly under pressure in the mid-1990s: ‘Put up, or shut up.’