New by-election woe for Keir Starmer as Tracy Brabin wins race to be West Yorkshire mayor

Keir Starmer faces the potential of more by-election woe after one of his MPs secured a mayoral seat.

Labour MP Tracy Brabin has tonight been elected as the first West Yorkshire mayor.

But it means Ms Brabin, a former Coronation Street star, will now have to step down from her Westminster seat of Batley and Spen.

This will spark a fresh by-election in the constituency. It comes just days after Labour’s humiliating by-election defeat in Hartlepool.

The constituency, part of Labour’s ‘Red Wall’, turned blue in Thursday’s by-election as it was won by the Conservatives for the first time in the seat’s 47-year history. 

Labour had a nearly 4,000 majority in Hartlepool from the 2019 election.

The party holds a 3,500 majority in Ms Brabin’s seat of Bartley and Spen – a West Yorkshire seat in the Pennines.

And there are likely to be fears of another defeat among Labour officials when voters in the constituency go to the ballot boxes.

The seat has been held by Labour since 1997, having previously been held by Conservative MP Elizabeth Peacock from its formation in 1983.  

It comes as Starmer’s make-or-break reshuffle looks to be in danger of stalling today as Labour MPs openly brand him a ‘coward’ and threaten a leadership challenge in the wake of disastrous Super Thursday elections.

Sir Keir ignored questions from reporters as he was driven away from his north London home, with the 24 hours looking critical for his chances of saving his shattered leadership.

Deborah Mattinson, a pollster for Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, has been appointed as his new strategy director in a bid to stabilise the party after the Tories inflicted more hammer blows to the Red Wall.

But despite being closeted away with aides for the whole day, there is little sense that announcements are imminent, as they seemingly struggle to decide what to do next.

There is fury among left-wingers and moderates after it emerged last night that Angela Rayner has been effectively sacked as party chair, with claims the Ashton-under-Lyne MP is being made to carry the can for Sir Keir’s mistakes.

Ms Rayner was elected as party deputy leader separately to Sir Keir, meaning he cannot axe her entirely – with even his normal supporters conceding it was a ‘bad idea’.

Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds is also expected to be another victim of the overhaul, with shadow Cabinet Office minister Rachel Reeves tipped to replace her.

However, there are claims that some ministers are discussing simply refusing to take other jobs, with Sir Keir facing the threat of a mass walk-out that could deal a fatal blow to his authority. Some shadow cabinet ministers told MailOnline they had heard nothing from the leader.

As alarm bells started ringing over the scale of unrest in the party, shadow Scottish secretary Ian Murray insisted Ms Rayner had not been ‘sacked’ and was instead being given a ‘significant promotion’. He told Sky News she was being moved from the ‘back office to the front office’ as a spokeswoman.

Liverpool MP Kim Johnson took aim directly at Sir Keir saying shifting Ms Rayner was an ‘appalling act of cowardice’.

Corbynite former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott also waded into the spat, saying the decision to move Ms Rayner was ‘baffling’ and demanding Sir Keir reverts to ‘popular’ hard-Left policies.

‘She didn’t take any of the big decisions around Hartlepool and we’ve not heard anywhere in the country people saying they didn’t vote Labour because of Angela Rayner,’ she said.

And Jon Trickett, who was sacked by Sir from the shadow cabinet last year, tweeted: ‘I don’t think we should rule out a leadership challenge.’