Downing Street is increasingly confident that Anas Sarwar’s call for Keir Starmer to stand down was not part of a coordinated plot by a leadership rival to bring down the prime minister, the Guardian understands.
The Scottish Labour leader spoke to several cabinet ministers including Wes Streeting, as well as former deputy leader Angela Rayner, ahead of his explosive intervention on Monday, but sources said he had not revealed his plans.
No 10 had been braced for further calls for Starmer to go, including from Eluned Morgan, Labour’s first minister in Wales, along with ministerial resignations in Westminster. They immediately acted to shore up the prime minister.
But insiders revealed that initial fears that Streeting, the health secretary, was coordinating an operation with Sarwar to bring down the prime minister quickly fell away when the alleged putsch fizzled out.
One minister close to Streeting said: “No 10 seems to have an obsession with Wes. They are saying that he bottled it without any evidence he was going for it. Wes is a smart political operator who would have known that if you call for the PM to go and don’t have a plan it falls flat.”
Sources close to Sarwar confirmed that he was acting alone, and in what he felt was Labour’s best interests in Scotland. He had been reflecting on the move for several weeks and only decided to act on Monday. “This is our intervention – not a structured attempt to oust Keir,” one said.
One Scottish MP who had spoken to Sarwar added: “The judgment was, the strategy of being close to Keir hasn’t worked, he might as well roll the fucking dice. Keir is extremely unpopular, in Scotland as much as anywhere.”
Scottish Labour sources sought to justify Sarwar’s risky decision by arguing a challenge to Starmer’s leadership could still materialise.
“There are people in the cabinet and Westminster who want to run,” said one. “The place has been buzzing on this for weeks now. It has crystallised recently and I would give it to the end of this week to see what happens. I’m not convinced there will be a reset moment.”
Sarwar and his team were furious, allies said, that some of the prime minister’s internal rivals believed it was sufficient to wait for Labour’s defeats in the Scottish, Welsh and English local government elections to challenge him.
“We’ve worked very very hard [to win],” they said. “We’re not going to be a sacrificial lamb because people haven’t got the gumption to say to Keir you’ve got to go now.”
But the move alarmed Labour politicians in the Scottish parliament, who fear his intervention was mistimed. “It’s a very high-risk strategy. You’ve got to succeed. It didn’t,” said one senior figure at Holyrood.
The move raises short-term challenges for Scottish Labour’s credibility, with the latest polls showing the party is languishing in third place behind the Scottish National party and Reform UK, with only 12 weeks until May’s Holyrood election.
Several ministers said they did not believe Sarwar was acting in a vacuum and that they had been expecting him to get public support from Scottish MPs. “I think it is pretty clear something went wrong,” one said. Another MP added: “We were expecting more but everybody else seemed to disappear off into the hills.”
Downing Street, aware of the anger among Scottish MPs ahead of the May elections, has attempted to ease relations by inviting them to No 10 for talks on Tuesday, and to Chequers on Thursday to see the prime minister. MSPs have not been invited.
Downing Street is also keeping a close eye on the situation in Wales, where several Labour MPs said Morgan felt that the prime minister was damaging their chances in May.
“Everybody was expecting her to come out and row in behind Anas and then she didn’t. We know that she feels that Keir is a drag anchor on what’s happening in Wales,” one MP added.
Sources close to Morgan said she had spent all Monday afternoon in meetings in Cardiff and that Sarwar had only contacted her after his explosive press conference. She then messaged Starmer to say he had her support.
Allies denied the first minister had her head in the sand over Starmer’s unpopularity in Wales. “She does respect and like Keir, but that doesn’t mean she blindly follows him,” one said.
Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary in Starmer’s cabinet, portrayed the rift as a dispute between two people “who have strong and clear opinions, but who do not bear grudges”, as he sought to calm the controversy.
