Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has said Ed Miliband is in poll position to take over from Sir Keir Starmer.

Speaking on GB News, he said: “The Sword of Damocles has been hanging over Sir Keir Starmer for quite a time and now the horsehair holding it has been set alight by Olly Robbins’s evidence.

“It only needs 80 MPs to nominate one of the other candidates. And there’s Angela Rayner, there’s Ed Miliband, people are even talking about Yvette Cooper.

“That these are possible candidates who you may not think they’re the most exciting candidates in history, but Starmer’s credibility is now so shredded that I would have thought Labour MPs will be thinking, it can’t be worse.

“Wes Streeting is too right-wing, he won’t get it. I missed him off deliberately…

“There’s never a vacancy until people assassinate a prime minister, and they must just be waiting with their knives being sharpened as we speak.

“The one who is handling himself extremely well is Ed Miliband. I mean, not only as a minister is he functionally competent – I don’t agree with what he’s doing at all, but he knows how to run a department. He actually makes decisions.

“He’s making it very clear he’d never have appointed Mandelson. He’s doing the media round in the mornings, I think, so cleverly. Because he’s loyally supporting the Prime Minister whilst distancing himself at the same time, it’s quite a master class in how to do it.

“If Angela Rayner isn’t popular enough with the back benchers, he’s the most popular with the members. He’s consistently topped the polls. He’s had experience. It must be quite tempting for him to think that he can just grasp for it if he wants it.

“You say, I’ve got no ambitions in that direction, but if my friends and colleagues advised it, it’s my humble duty to serve my country? I know how these things work.

“So I think that’s what we’re looking for, we’re looking for an Ed Miliband coronation. The King had better watch out, though I think they agree on all those dreadful green issue