Keir Starmer leaves 10 Downing Street on Wednesday to take part in PMQs. Andy Burnham was spotted eating a salad in the window of a Westminster branch of Pret A Manger this week, causing some passers-by to double check it really was the man who professes to hate SW1 so much. He is not the only Labour leadership hopeful with much to chew on as Christmas approaches. The MP does not exist who believes Keir Starmer will not face a challenge at some point in 2026, the only question being whether it will be before or immediately after May’s local elections. Despite No.10′s seeming determination to cancel as many English council votes as they can next year, the prime minister’s imminent reckoning with the electorate is coming one way or another. A poll this week showed that in Wales, where Labour has ruled the roost for a century, the party’s support is a paltry 10%, miles behind both Plaid Cymru and Reform UK . And while the party’s prospects at the upcoming Scottish Parliament elections are not as grim, there is precisely zero chance of them forming the next government at Holyrood. No wonder, then, that SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn could not resist asking Starmer at PMQs on Wednesday how he plans to spend his final Christmas in 10 Downing Street. Even the PM himself admitted on Monday, only half-jokingly, that speculation about who the next Labour leader will be is “pretty rife” at Westminster. Some of the party’s more pessimistic MPs believe that it is largely irrelevant who is in charge when the next general election rolls around. One told HuffPost UK: “Burnham is probably the best chance we’ve got with the electorate, but even then I think we’ve already fucked it, to be honest. We’ve done the Nick Clegg trick on tuition fees.” The former Lib Dem deputy PM never recovered from his decision to ditch his party’s opposition to those fees, instead ordering his MPs to vote to treble them from £3,000 to £9,000 a year. But compared to Starmer, Clegg was something of an amateur when it came to annoying the electorate. From scrapping winter fuel payments for pensioners to cutting disability benefits and introducing the family farm tax, the PM and his government have appeared laser-focused on developing policies seemingly designed to make them ever more unpopular. An MP on the left of the Labour Party said: “The trouble with this government is they aren’t building any alliances with any demographics or groups. They’re just pissing everyone off all the time. “Andy Burnham knows how to build alliances. Just look at what he’s done as mayor of Manchester.” As well as Burnham, other leadership contenders include the painfully-ambitious Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner , both of whom would have little problem getting the 80 MP nominations they would need to run. The main advantage the health secretary and the former deputy prime minister have over Burnham at this stage is that, unlike him, the are already MPs. And while Team Andy are making attempts to identify a vacant and winnable seat where he can run in a by-election, it is by no means guaranteed that he will make it back to Westminster in time to throw his hat into the ring. A Burnham supporter said: “Andy needs to speed it up because I think they’ll move against Keir earlier than May. “Streeting saying all sorts of stuff publicly is fairly obvious to me, and even the remaining Starmer supporters know it’s on. They don’t pipe up in the WhatsApp groups in his defence any more. I feel sorry for him in a way, politics is a brutal business.” Andy Burnham is not happy with the home secretary's asylum shake-up. One Streeting supporter agreed that the prospect of a challenge to Starmer before May should not be ruled out. “The mood among MPs is the worst I’ve ever experienced it,” he said. “It’s like we’ve fast forwarded straight to the end of Reservoir Dogs where everyone gets killed, but without enjoying 10 years of successful government beforehand. “It’s still far more likely that Keir stumbles on until May and is then kicked out, but things are so bad that there is still a chance he doesn’t get that long.” Starmer suffered yet another blow this week when one of his few remaining trade union allies, Christina McAnea, lost her bid to be re-elected general secretary of Unison to the left-winger Andrea Egan. The result shifts the balance on Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) to the left and therefore weakens the PM’s control of the party. One senior Labour source described the result as an “absolute fucking disaster” for No.10. Another insider said: “It’s terrible. The biggest trade union in the country has gone to the hard left for the first time ever. “The No.10 gang need to stop with all this glorifying in punching down on Labour and trade union members. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were always much more respectful of the grassroots. “If you don’t tend to your flock, no wonder they abandon you.” But another Labour veteran insisted the situation was not as black for Starmer as it has been painted. “It’s a blow to Keir and Rachel [Reeves] but not the catastrophe they probably think it is. “But it is a boost for Burnham as Andrea won’t be allowing any NEC shenanigans to block him as a candidate if he wants to run in a by-election.” Downing Street’s response to the never-ending leadership speculation is to plan yet another reset of the government in January in a last-ditch attempt to prove to voters that Starmer is alive to their concerns and able to address them. If it is as successful as the ones which have gone before, it will do little to change the almost universal belief in the Parliamentary Labour Party that the PM’s second Christmas in No.10 will also be his last. Related... 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