Keir Starmer's cunning plan just backfired. Here's when 81 Labour MPs calling on the PM to quit will matter

It’s a roller-coaster day in Westminster. Psychodrama doesn’t begin to cut it.

Hundreds of Labour MPs are preparing to return to Parliament on Wednesday but have five full days to stew over the disastrous results for their party in their own local areas.

Proroguing Parliament over this week and setting the King’s Speech for Wednesday was an attempt from Keir Starmer to stave off rebellious plots by keeping MPs away from the crucible of conspiracies that is the Palace of Westminster.

This cunning plan, however, may have backfired.

MPs staying out in the real country, talking to real people, seeing real election results – may strengthen their resolve that the Prime Minister’s time is up.

Throughout today, the numbers calling for Starmer to go have ticked up, triggered initially by the self-appointed Sir Graham Brady of the Labour Party, Catherine West – whose hokey-cokey leadership bid has transmorphed into a resignation petition.

The detail on the numbers remains complicated. As I write this, GB News's tracker shows 60 Labour MPs have called on the Prime Minister to resign, with three declaring in the last hour alone.

Unlike in the Conservative Party, there is no threshold of letters to trigger a no-confidence vote.

But the number 81 does carry symbolic weight because that is the number of nominations any Labour MP needs to launch a contest against the Prime Minister.

If 81 Labour MPs declare against Sir Keir, a stalking horse challenger such as Catherine West has much more moral authority to reissue the threat to force a contest if Keir Starmer were to refuse to resign.

The number 81 also carries significant weight in real terms, too. It’s coincidentally close to the number of rebels it takes to wipe away Labour’s significant Commons majority – 83.

Reaching that threshold would symbolise just how difficult it will be for Sir Keir to govern, having lost the confidence of an absolute majority of the House of Commons.

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We have also just seen the first three frontbench resignations, albeit from the most junior rank on the payroll, the parliamentary private secretary.

We’ve seen this show before. It feels as if the Rubicon has now been crossed.

Whispers in Westminster expect junior ministerial resignations as soon as this evening.

It appears that the Prime Minister simply didn’t do enough in his speech this morning.

Perhaps there were no words he could utter to save his position after his universal drubbing across the country last week.

He was under fire from all sides, retreating on all fronts – across much of the country with Reform, the urban left with the Greens, and the Nationalists in Scotland and Wales.

Everything is moving exceptionally quickly now.

Prorogation of Parliament may, however, delay the true fireworks until Wednesday – once the new session is opened by the King. It could be drip, drip, drip until then.

What happens if 81 Labour MPs call on Keir Starmer to resign?

The number of MPs calling on the Prime Minister to resign is climbing by the minute.

Everyone is talking about the magic 81 MP threshold of Labour MPs calling for Starmer to go.

While it is a significant threshold, there is an important point of clarification to be made.

Eighty-one MPs will not constitute a magic threshold that forces a ballot unless all the MPs are backing one candidate.

Unlike the Conservative Party, there is no general route to a no-confidence motion in a Labour Party leader.

There has to be a specific challenge from a Member of Parliament, backed by 80 other MPs as nominations.

However, when the number gets over 80, a couple of important things change. Here’s what will happen:
1. Leadership contenders will be able to say to the Prime Minister that the numbers exist to force a contest. This is especially important for contenders who don’t want to feel like they have fired the starting gun. Catherine West fired the starting gun over the weekend. Then today, she called on other MPs to call for the Prime Minister to go. Now, after 80 MPs say Starmer must go, leadership hopefuls could step into the fray absolved of casting the first stone.

2. Starmer loses his Commons majority. By coincidence, the number of MPs it takes to nominate a leadership challenger (81) is almost aligned with the number to kill the government’s majority (83). This is constitutionally significant as the Prime Minister is only Prime Minister if he carries the confidence of Parliament as a whole. 83 Labour MPs saying they don’t have confidence in him is enough to switch the view of the House. That, again, is an additional argument for a challenger to say they were pushed into the position of declaring their candidacy.

So, while it may seem that nothing has happened after the 81 threshold is passed, behind the scenes it might be the threshold that fires the starting gun for candidates in this race. It might precipitate the end-game big guns: Cabinet-level resignations.