Andy Burnham may be King in the North, but could he rule No 10?

There are five active plots to take down Keir Starmer, says John Rentoul, with a mutinous party a mirror of the national mood. But would any of the PM’s rivals – and that includes the much-fancied Manchester mayor – really do any better?

With less than a week to go before the Budget, Keir Starmer’s leadership is on the line. Last week’s botched briefing against Wes Streeting, accused of plotting against the prime minister, has only made his position weaker.

It may be that his hold on power is sustained only by the absence of a credible candidate with a workable and popular alternative programme. But as Janan Ganesh of the Financial Times observed yesterday, it may be that things can only get worse for Labour. “The people who lead the government are unfit and their internal critics are worse,” he wrote. “As the latter are gaining strength, it follows that Britain will be in ever less capable hands until 2029.”

There are as many as five alleged “plots” that have Starmer in their sights. There is Streeting, accused of manoeuvring by No 10 sources. There is Shabana Mahmood, whose leadership and courage are compared favourably to the prime minister’s. There is the spectre of former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, whose re-emergence last weekend, as we noted, is anything but helpful for the prime minister.

There is whoever else the “soft left” put forward, with The Times reporting this week that MPs in the Tribune Group have met to consider the worth of Lucy Powell, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, and Louise Haigh, the former transport secretary.

And then there is Andy Burnham. On Wednesday’s BBC Two Politics Live show, Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, offered to give up his seat so that the mayor of Greater Manchester could challenge the prime minister. Whether or not Labour’s national executive would allow Burnham to be the candidate is beside the point. The point is that disaffection with Starmer’s leadership has reached the level at which one of his own MPs is on TV talking about sacrificing his own career in order to make way for someone who would get rid of him.

There are caveats. One is that Lewis didn’t sound as if he was sure that he meant it. “It’s a question I’ve asked myself, and I’d have to obviously consult with my wife as well, and family,” he said when he was asked about the idea on the show. But then he decided that he could tell his wife and family later and went on: “Do you know what? If I’m going to sit here and say country before party, party before personal ambition, then yes, I have to say yes, don’t I?”

Another potential flaw in the plan is that if Lewis stood down (and he rowed back his own comments somewhat later on in the day), and if Labour members in Norwich South selected Burnham as their candidate, and if by some mysterious fluke the Starmer-controlled national executive approved him as the Labour candidate, he might not win the by-election.

One projection by Electoral Calculus has Labour holding the seat by a 10-point margin over the Green Party. Another, by YouGov, has Labour 30 points ahead. But funny things happen in by-elections: would an anti-government protest vote go to a candidate intent on bringing the prime minister down as soon as he got into the Commons, or to a Green candidate who wants to replace capitalism?

Still, there was enough in the story to give it a “day two”, as Burnham himself was on the radio this morning, not answering questions about his desire to replace the prime minister.

“I appreciate the support,” he said when asked about Lewis’s heroic if hedged offer of self-sacrifice. “But I couldn’t have brought forward a plan of the kind I’ve brought forward today without being fully focused on my role as mayor of Greater Manchester.”

Funnily enough, his plan for a £1bn public investment fund involved him, he said, in providing “leadership on growth, which is what I think the country needs”. Even more curiously, it meant he was asked about Shabana Mahmood’s plan to make refugees wait 20 years before they are granted permanent settlement. It turned out that he did have an opinion, as it happened, and – what are the chances? – it was negative: the policy could leave people in “limbo and unable to integrate”, he said.

The plan to transform the King in the North into the King in Norfolk is by no means destined to succeed. Streeting and Mahmood are not seconds away from openly declaring leadership bids. Supporters of Rayner, Powell, Nandy and Haigh have not yet decided who will carry the soft-left torch.

But people are interested in the subject, which is the definition of news, because it is a story that tells of discontent in the realm.

An opinion poll out today found that nobody believes the economy is in a “very good state”. It is not surprising that public sentiment about the economy is downbeat, but it is unusual for a pollster to find zero support for any proposition.

There is in opinion research something called the “lizard constant”, which holds that even if people are asked if they think we are ruled by lizards from outer space, a small proportion of responses, between 2 and 4 per cent, will be “Yes”. An actual zero is rare.

It is being so cheerful as keeps the likes of Janan Ganesh going. Starmer and Rachel Reeves are “inadequate and remain preferable to their likeliest usurpers”, he writes. But I fear that there is more than an element of truth in his magisterial pessimism.