An almost forgotten character walked back onto the stage of British politics this weekend. After decades in the wilderness, the “stalking horse” — previously a star of Tory leadership dramas — was revived by Labour MP Catherine West when she announced that if the cabinet did not challenge Keir Starmer’s leadership by Monday, then she would.

The idea of a stalking horse is about as far removed as you can get from today’s Labour Party. Its original use was to describe hunters who disguised themselves as they approached their target. When transferred into the political lexicon, it means an unlikely leadership candidate standing against an incumbent leader to lay the groundwork for more serious challengers.

The stalking horse enjoyed its heyday from 1965 to 1998, when Conservative rules empowered MPs alone to choose the party leader and provided for annual leadership elections. The majority of the time, only the incumbent leader was nominated, and life carried on as normal. But when MPs wanted to gauge the mood for change, they could put up an unlikely candidate to see how many MPs were feeling rebellious.

Such was the case with Sir Anthony Meyer in 1989. Margaret Thatcher had spent a decade in N0. 10, and an increasing number of Tory MPs thought it was time for her to retire. But then, as now, senior ministers were reluctant to launch a challenge themselves. Even Michael Heseltine, who was no longer in the Cabinet and was desperate to take Thatcher’s place, would not stand. Although he seemed the most likely person to benefit from a leadership contest, he was taking his own advice from 1986: “He who wields the knife never wears the crown.”

But what if the person who wields the knife doesn’t want to wear the crown? That was the position of Meyer. He stood against Thatcher and asked MPs to vote for him as a means of withdrawing their confidence in the prime minister. He only attracted 33 votes against 318 for Thatcher, but as one Cabinet Minister wrote after the vote: “The party [had] left a warning card.” A stalking horse candidacy enabled it to do so.

Like Meyer before her, West is not hoping to become the leader but to be the catalyst for change at the top of the party. Already, her actions seem to have raised the temperature among MPs and prompted some aspiring leaders — including Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner — to begin showing their hand.

What happens next likely depends upon the way Labour interprets its own leadership rules and what West’s fellow MPs do next. One option is for the party to announce a timetable for accepting nominations for leader, after which she would try to gain enough backers to goad more serious candidates to enter the contest. That would be all but guaranteed if she looked like she might attract the 81 names needed to be nominated herself.

If the Labour hierarchy refuses to open nominations, West will need to privately collect names to prove that she has enough support to force a contest. In theory, these will be supporters of West for leader; in practice, they will be backing only the principle of removing Starmer. And again, if she can convince a critical mass of MPs to join her, more heavyweight leadership candidates will have no choice but to make their own move.

To truly qualify as a stalking horse, West would need to have someone lined up behind her with Starmer in their sights. It’s far from obvious that she does. But while Meyer laid the groundwork for Heseltine to remove Thatcher in 1990, John Major went on to win that leadership contest. Crucially, he proved that stalking horses need not be designed solely to benefit one aspiring leader.

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Lee David Evans is an historian of the Conservative Party and the John Ramsden Fellow at the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary, University of London.

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