Leadership camps go into overdrive as disastrous elections loom * Wes Streeting, the health secretary, was ambushed with a rendition of I Just Can’t Wait To Be King by colleagues at a karaoke bar last week. He politely told them to fuck off. He has made clear he does not want to be in he first mover * Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are both ready to go and have the numbers to mount a challenge. The big question is what Rayner does next. Will she go over the top? * Team Rayner is divided. Her partner Sam Tarry is said to be among those pushing for her to seize the moment. Others like Nick Parrott, her long term aide, caution against going too far too fast * While Rayner is popular with Labour members, only 13% of voters overall and 22% of Labour voters think she would make a better PM than Starmer * Rayner will take temperature of colleagues in aftermath of elections before deciding whether to go for it * Whither Andy Burnham? Some think his allies - Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, and Lucy Powell, the party’s deputy leader - could step in to defend Starmer to prevent an immediate challenge and allow Burnham time to return * Starmer is letting it be known that he won’t go down without a fight. “If they want him out, they’ll have to drag him out,” one ally said. A speech is in the offing. Some are talking about ditching parts of manifesto and going radical * How bad is it? Well Professor Sir John Curtice - a man not given to hyperbole - has been covering elections for the BBC since 1979 and he has never seen anything like it. * ‘We are going to see records tumble, we are living in unprecedented circumstances. The opinion polls suggest that the traditional Conservative-Labour duopoly is facing its biggest challenge since its advent in the 1920s. ‘The basic assumptions of British politics - there isn’t enough space for a party to the right of the Tories or the left of Labour - have gone. British politics looks more fundamentally different than it has done at any time in postwar history.’ * Labour faces worst set of election results for a governing party in history, losing three quarters of seats it is defending in the locals. It could be third in Wales, where it has been the dominant force for a century, and third in Scotland * Swathes of the parties heartlands are expected to fall - Sunderland, Barnsley and Wakefield to name a few. A six way brawl in Birmingham will leave council in flux. In London Labour expected to secure lowest vote share in history - even lower than Harold Wilson in 1968 after devaluation of pound With the brilliant @Geri_E_L_Scott and @oliver_wright thetimes.com/article/9809d6…
