Keir Starmer on brink as first Labour MP says she’ll problem him for management
Sir Keir Starmer faces a leadership challenge as Labour MP Catherine West warns she’ll trigger a contest by Monday unless the cabinet replaces him
Sir Keir Starmer faces a potential leadership coup after one of his Labour MPs broke ranks(Image: Getty Images)
Sir Keir Starmer is facing a mutiny as the first Labour MP has broken ranks to warn she is ready to topple him in a brutal leadership coup. The Prime Minister is currently clinging to power following a bloodbath at the local elections that saw Labour suffer major losses across England and booted out of power in Wales for the first time ever.
The knives are now officially out after Catherine West, MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet, put the cabinet on notice to find a new leader by Monday, or she’s coming for the crown herself.
Speaking to the BBC, the former junior Foreign Office minister didn’t hold back, suggesting Sir Keir should be shoved into a “different role” while a “better communicator” takes over the keys to Number 10.
West said: “My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there’s plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role.
“Then for others to come to the fore who can communicate the message, who are very able, so we can have minimum fuss.”
While Sir Keir has been frantically calling in the old guard, appointing Gordon Brown as a global finance envoy and Baroness Harriet Harman as an adviser to steady the ship, backbenchers are smelling blood in the water.
To trigger a full-blown contest, 81 Labour MPs (20 per cent) would need to back a challenger. West claims she already has ten rebels in her pocket and is “confident” the rest will follow if the cabinet doesn’t act fast.
She said: “I don’t have a candidate. That’s part of the problem. But I think there are several people who would like to do it, who have been planning for months, but I’m very surprised that none of them has popped up today to say ‘I will do it’.”
The rebellion comes as Labour reels from the loss of more than 1,000 councillors at the local elections. Critics fear Starmer is a dead man walking who can’t stop the surge of Reform UK.
West said: “What we do worry about is taking the fight to Reform on the domestic agenda, which I think he has less of a grip of, and also trying to identify traditional Labour voters who we’ve lost so that we can get them back on side.”
She added: “We can’t just go on with our main spokesperson being Keir. We need to bring on the person who can really sell Labour values and sell our programme.”
The PM is expected to attempt a desperate reboot of his premiership with a major speech on Monday, followed by the King’s Speech on Wednesday.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.
