Darren Jones in Downing Street for a Cabinet meeting, October 2024 (Alamy)
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Exclusive: Chief secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones has sparked suspicion among colleagues that he is quietly sounding out support for a future leadership bid of his own, PoliticsHome understands.
While taking the mood of the parliamentary party amid growing calls for Keir Starmer to resign, Jones has been interpreted by colleagues as privately gauging support for his own prospects of becoming Prime Minister.
A source close to Jones said he had been calling MPs on behalf of No 10 but had not raised his own leadership prospects and remains supportive of the Prime Minister. However, two other sources have told PoliticsHome that the discussions had taken into account Jones’ own leadership prospects.
As Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and chief secretary to the PM, Jones was the government spokesperson on the media round this morning. He denied that it was “all over” for the Prime Minister today but did not rule out the possibility he could announce a timetable for stepping down.
“I’m not going to get ahead of any decision that the prime minister may or may not take,” Jones said, before adding that Starmer “was very clear yesterday that he will not be walking away, as some of my colleagues have asked him to do”.
Tonia Antoniazzi, the MP for Gower who is one of 80 Labour MPs to call on Starmer to resign, came out as the first to publicly back Jones on Times Radio today.
“I think there’s a number of candidates that would be acceptable to the country. I actually think you were listening to one of them earlier,” she said.
“I think Darren Jones is a very clever, intelligent individual who, when he was chair of the base select committee, showed great leadership. He’s done an excellent job in supporting the Prime Minister as his chief secretary.”
Antoniazzi added that she did not believe Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham – who has the support of dozens of Labour MPs despite not being in the parliamentary party himself – would be a good option to succeed Starmer.
She said: “I think that there are people out there that deserve consideration and it doesn’t always have to be somebody that that’s really obvious. And I certainly don’t think that the answer is the King of the North.”
A senior Labour MP who had previously described Jones as “about as popular as a fart in a lift” among colleagues, after he carried out sackings in the September reshuffle in a way that left many MPs unhappy, predicted a Jones leadership bid would not do well.
“I don’t see where his support base comes from,” they said, suggesting that his expression of interest could be motivated more by the aim of securing a senior post in government.
Jones has been the Labour MP for Bristol West and had a majority of over 15,000 at the last general election with the Greens in second place.
