Starmer faces crunch cabinet meeting as 80 Labour MPs call for him to quit

BRITISH PRIME MINISTER Keir Starmer is facing the biggest leadership crisis of his premiership this morning after a number of his Cabinet ministers reportedly urged him to consider his position.

UK home secretary Shabana Mahmood is said to have privately called for an orderly transition of power last night as a fifth of Labour’s 403 MPs demanded Starmer stand down after the party’s electoral mauling last week.

Four government aides quit their posts citing a loss of confidence in his leadership, while others warned his authority was collapsing and called for him to set out a timetable for his departure from No 10.

Starmer faces an extraordinary weekly Cabinet meeting this morning, with senior ministers split over how best to move forward and concerns among some about plunging the party into a potential leadership contest.

The Press Association understands British defence secretary John Healey’s message to Starmer was that he wanted a chaotic process to be avoided and for the government to focus on getting the country through the looming risk of geopolitical and economic crises rather than turning inwards.

In a sign of the febrile atmosphere in Westminster yesterday, junior health minister Stephen Kinnock said some Cabinet members “may well” call for Starmer to go at the Cabinet meeting this morning. 

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“It is possible that members of the Cabinet might do that. I genuinely have no idea at all,” he told BBC Newsnight.

“What I am simply saying is any one of my colleagues who is potentially thinking of doing that, I just hope they really will take a beat, pause and reflect, and think about the potential that has for the chaos that might be unleashed.”

Starmer promised to prove his “doubters” wrong at a press conference yesterday morning as former minister Catherine West withdrew threats to imminently launch a leadership challenge.

But his speech failed to quell demands that he quit or set out a timetable for his departure from discontented MPs, who continued to call for his resignation.

West had previously said she would challenge Starmer for the party leadership as early as yesterday afternoon, in an attempt to force the Cabinet to put forward a replacement as prime minister.

After Starmer insisted he would not “walk away”, West said she would now canvass support within the party for him to set out a timetable for his resignation by September.

PA understands that 80 MPs have signed a letter from West urging Starmer to take this step, most of whom have publicly expressed their loss of confidence in his leadership.

Meanwhile, Joe Morris, a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to health secretary Wes Streeting, and Tom Rutland, a PPS to environment secretary Emma Reynolds, Cabinet Office aide Naushabah Khan and Melanie Ward, a PPS to deputy prime minister David Lammy, all quit last night. 

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Department for Work and Pensions aide Gordon McKee and Mahmood’s PPS Sally Jameson also left their posts having expressed a loss of confidence in Starmer.

Downing Street did not immediately respond to the resignations, but loyalist MPs David Burton-Sampson, Linsey Farnsworth, Jayne Kirkham, Michael Payne, Tim Roca and Sean Woodcock were appointed to PPS positions later in the evening.

The Guardian reported that Mahmood and British foreign secretary Yvette Cooper had both spoken with Starmer about his future, while the Times reported a third Cabinet minister had also told him to consider his position.

Speculation about Starmer’s future has intensified since Thursday’s elections, in which Labour lost almost 1,500 English councillors, went backwards in Scotland and slumped to third place in Wales.

He is expected to meet apprentices today to talk up the UK government’s reforms to the system aimed at helping small businesses take on young apprentices, with training fully funded from August.

The visit is a bid to highlight his promise to tear up the “status quo” which he said yesterday had failed British people and underline efforts to put apprenticeships on an equal footing with university degrees.

With reporting from Press Association

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