Big news.
A Labour MP has issued a dramatic ultimatum to the party’s cabinet ministers, urging them to close ranks and push Sir Keir Starmer out of Downing Street before the end of Sunday.
Catherine West, a former Foreign Office minister who served under Starmer before being sacked in September last year, made the call during an appearance on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.
She also made it clear that she is prepared to launch a formal leadership challenge if the cabinet fails to act.
She said: “What I want the cabinet to do is to close themselves into a room today and come up with somebody who they can all get behind, which would mean we wouldn’t have to have a leadership election. And if that can happen, then we can have a very quiet transition without upsetting anybody.”
West gave Monday as her deadline for the cabinet to collectively force the Prime Minister out, saying that if they fail to move, she will begin the process of a formal leadership contest.
She told the BBC she currently has ten MPs signed up to support her.
However, with her intentions now public, that number could grow quickly.
The intervention comes in the wake of brutal local election results on Thursday.
Labour lost 1,496 councillors and control of 38 councils, prompting calls from multiple MPs for Starmer to resign.
Polling projections from the night suggested that if the results were applied to a general election, Reform UK would take 284 seats to Labour’s 110.
West did not hold back in her assessment of the leadership’s response to those results, saying: “That level of inertia in the face of the election defeat that we saw on Thursday is a disgrace. Working people sent us a message on Thursday. We have to listen to that, and we have to change and we have to do it quickly.”
West stopped short of outright demanding Starmer’s resignation on Sunday, saying she would first listen to a speech the Prime Minister is set to give on Monday, but said: “Once I’ve listened carefully to what he says, I will be demanding a timetable for an orderly transition. If it’s not up to scratch tomorrow, then I’m afraid I will have to take action.”
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