Backbencher threatens rebellion as Starmer vows to stay put
A Labour backbencher has issued the Prime Minister with an ultimatum as Sir Keir Starmer battles to stay in Number 10 after taking a battering at the local elections.
Catherine West, a former junior minister and MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet, said she will trigger a leadership bid on Monday if cabinet ministers fail to launch a challenge to Starmer.
The Prime Minister has vowed not to walk away following catastrophic local election results for Labour, which saw the incumbent party lose nearly 1,200 seats and 36 councils.
West, who Starmer sacked as a junior Foreign Office minister in September, said she would prefer a new Prime Minister to emerge from a cabinet reshuffle, but said she was putting herself forward to force the government into action.
She told the New Statesman: “Some people will be upset with me because of the risk, because some of them had a plan about, you know, in six months time, we’re gonna do this, and then we’re gonna do that. Sorry, that’s just too late.”
‘Completely wrong’ to challenge Starmer
She said on Saturday night that she had received support from around 10 Labour MPs, well below the 81 required to trigger a leadership contest.
On Sunday, West appeared to suggest she could pull back from her leadership bid if she is convinced by Starmer’s reset speech on Monday.
“I will hear what the Prime Minister’s got to say tomorrow and, then if I’m still dissatisfied, I will put out my email to the Parliamentary Labour Party, asking for names,” she told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson told the BBC that West was “completely wrong” to challenge Starmer.
“What I do recognise, however, is that Catherine, like lots of other colleagues, and like lots of candidates who stood in the elections that we’ve just had, are really hurting, really hurting this morning, and I feel that too.
“Friday morning, I felt absolutely sick to the bottom of my stomach about the scale of the defeat that we’d suffered. We got a real kicking from the voters,” she told Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.
A number of Labour MPs have publicly called for Starmer to quit, including Josh Simmons, Clive Betts, Debbie Abrahams and Richard Burgeon.
Leadership challengers circle
Reports suggest former Labour leader Ed Miliband and health secretary Wes Streeting are both being urged by their separate camps to challenge Starmer.
Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is said to have support within Labour for a leadership bid but would need to undergo the lengthy process of becoming an MP via a by-election before he could challenge.
Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner had been positioned as a potential candidate for leader but it is understood she lacks the necessary support.
On Sunday, Starmer told the Observer he would fight any challenger for his position and sees his government as a “10-year project of renewal”.
Reform UK stormed through Labour heartlands at the local elections, taking more than 1,300 seats and 14 councils, as leader Nigel Farage hailed a “historic shift” in British politics.