Sir Keir Starmer will have to hold a "humiliating" no confidence vote if he loses next week's crunch welfare vote, a former New Labour Work & Pensions Secretary has warned.
Lord David Blunkett, who established himself as a titan of the New Labour project, said the Prime Minister should delay next Tuesday's vote on cutting Britain's ballooning benefits bill until the autumn in a bid to reach a compromise with his rebellious backbenchers.
The ex-Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough MP also warned that the Prime Minister failed to dissuade rebels from staging their welfare cuts mutiny because he has spent a lot of his premiership focusing on issues abroad.
"If they lost it, they'd have to go for a vote of confidence, I think," Lord Blunkett told LBC.
"But the embarrassment of that one year in leaves you with two problems.
"One is you've been humiliated, and the second is you've still got the problem. The welfare issue has not gone away.
"So, solving the problem, not taking the hit, is the sensible solution."
Blunkett added: "Keir Starmer, for very understandable reasons, has been diverted onto the international agenda.
Keir Starmer faces 'humiliating' no confidence vote as Labour rebels plot 'regime change' over welfare cuts
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"I think he now needs to come back from Holland and be absolutely focused on this."
Starmer's woes have only been confounded by a slanging match between No10 aides and backbench Labour MPs.
Disgruntled Labour MPs blame the Prime Minister's top team for the debacle, including Starmer's right-hand man, Morgan McSweeney.
A Labour MP told The Times: "It’s so depressing to think Keir and Morgan did all that work to cleanse the party of this self-indulgent rubbish, only for it to erupt back."
Lord David Blunkett and Alastair Campbell, former Director of Communications and Strategy for Tony Blair at Southwark Cathedral
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Tensions have reached such heights that some Labour MPs have suggested it is time for "regime change" in Downing Street.
Starmer was already forced to shove ex-civil servant Sue Gray into the House of Lords following her fall-out with McSweeney last year.
Despite Chancellor Rachel Reeves, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting being wheeled out to win over Labour rebels, the "master list" compiled by welfare mutineers continues to grow.
Welfare rebels have voiced particular frustrations about the welfare bill's efforts to claw back £5billion in spending by cutting benefits payments to 800,000 disabled Britons.
Keir Starmer at Nato
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However, Starmer swatted away speculation that a rebellion could spell the beginning of the end for his premiership.
Speaking at yesterday's Nato summit in The Hague, the Prime Minister said: "We were voted in absolutely clearly saying we need a decade of national renewal with a huge majority.
"It's really important I lead from the front and take the long-term decisions for the future of this country."
There had been speculation that the Prime Minister was going to delay the vote to avoid his day of reckoning with around 130 Labour rebels.
Angela Rayner confirms welfare vote to go ahead in just days as Keir Starmer set for showdown with rebelsHowever, Rayner confirmed the crunch Commons vote would go ahead during her stand-in appearance at Prime Minister's Questions.
During her heated despatch box exchanges with Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride, the Deputy Prime Minister said: "We won’t walk away and stand by and abandon millions of people trapped in the failing system left behind by [Stride] and his colleagues."
She added: "I don’t know if he listened to what I said … but what I can tell him, and I don’t need a script, we will go ahead on Tuesday."
Offering Labour an opportunity to pass the legislation, Stride replied: "We will help her [Rayner] to get their bill through, if they can commit to actually reducing the welfare bill and getting people off benefits and into work."
He later added: "The bill will see the number of people on welfare rising for every single year."
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