If Keir Starmer is toppled, Labour need to put their choice to the country at large, Sarah Vine has argued.

Speaking on the latest Alas Vine & Hitchens podcast, the longstanding Mail columnist said she believes a new Prime Minister would need to call an election in order to have a mandate to rule. 

The monarch confers power on a government for a parliamentary term, but Vine says Starmer’s replacement may get a rough ride from the electorate if they fail to head to the polls.  

While Gordon Brown was widely-mocked for ‘bottling’ the chance to call an election after taking over from Tony Blair in 2007, Vine points to the example of ex-PM Boris Johnson.

Johnson became Prime Minister in July 2019 but called a snap general election in December the same year after failing to win parliamentary support for a revised Brexit agreement. 

He subsequently won in the Conservatives’ first landslide victory since Margaret Thatcher in 1987. 

‘Boris Johnson did go to the country. And I think that was a sensible thing, that showed a very, very finely honed political instinct,’ Vine said.   

‘He totally understood that he needed to do it, and he got an actually historic majority.’ 

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during the debate on the King’s Speech in the House of Commons on May 13, 2026

However Vine says that Labour’s disastrous results in the May local elections, in which they lost 1,498 councillors, may put off any successor of Starmer’s from heeding her advice. 

‘I think one of the problems with the Labour Party is that if they do replace Keir Starmer, they will come under pressure to go to the country,’ Vine said. 

‘And of course, if they go to the country now, well, we’ve seen what’s happened in the local elections, and we can see the polling means it might not necessarily be a good idea.’

While Starmer’s popularity ratings remain in the basement, Vine also believes that if Sir Keir can weather the storm from his leadership contenders, there remains the possibility he could bounce back with the electorate. 

‘I think people in this country admire a man who fights against the odds,’ the columnist said. 

‘It wouldn’t totally surprise me if this new version of Keir Starmer, the boy who stood on the burning deck whence all that he had fled, said, “No, I’m not going”.

‘That’s the moment you might say, “Oh well, he has got some guts. Maybe he does have a backbone.” 

‘If he does dig his heels in, and it looks like he’s going to, people might have new found respect for him.’

Mail columnist Sarah Vine (pictured) believes if Keir Starmer is toppled, Labour need to put his successor to the country at large by holding an election

On the latest episode of Alas Vine & Hitchens, Sarah shares her theory that Andy Burnham (pictured) is ‘the Heathcliff of the Labour Party’ 

The podcast also saw the duo debating the merits of universal suffrage – the ability for all citizens to vote – with Vine sharing her theory that Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is ‘the Heathcliff of the Labour Party’. 

‘I think the problem with the way the system that we have is a lot of people vote, and they’re not really informed, they’re they’re not voting because they thought about it. 

‘They’re just voting because they fancy Andy Burnham, because he’s got nice eyelashes or whatever. 

‘I have a theory that Andy Burnham is like the Heathcliff of the Labour Party. 

‘In the same way that the Tory party had a sort of kind of ‘pash’, as you say, in school for Boris Johnson, I think the Labour Party has a ‘pash’ for Andy Burnham.’ 

Hitchens shared his vision for a more informed electorate, with people’s votes given extra weight based on their contributions to society. 

‘I would have extra votes for people who could show qualifications – not for people who were rich, absolutely the reverse, but for people who could show experience of life, who’d shown bravery in war, who’d served in the armed services, who’d successfully raised families,’ he said. 

‘It’s all actually set out in a very good novel by Nevil Shute called In the Wet, in which he explains the system and shows it working in the novel to the great benefit of everybody. 

‘No one loses a vote. Everybody still has a vote. You have to show ability to perform public duties of unselfishness, experience and wisdom, up to a top level of seven votes – the seventh vote being granted by the monarch for particularly distinguished people under that system.’