Angela Rayner pledges her ‘full help’ to Keir Starmer as Cabinet rallies round beleaguered PM: Live updates

Amid the ongoing drama in government, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey has called for a general election.

He told broadcasters on Monday:

Labour were elected to bring change to the country and to end the chaos we saw under the Conservatives. But Keir Starmer has failed to deliver, and we still have this daily soap opera. And it’s damaging the country.”

Labour MPs have either got to sort this out among themselves, or there is going to have to be a general election.

Our political correspondent Sam Merriman has written an extended piece on the revelations about Wes Streeting’s messages with the disgraced Lord Peter Mandelson.

Read here:

Sir Keir Starmer is reportedly ending what has been a turbulent day in a stronger position than when it started.

Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds is the latest senior Labour figure to pledge her support to the PM.

She told GB News:

We have a united front here, and the meeting of the parliamentary Labour party, which I have just come from, there was a real sense of unity in that room behind Keir Starmer because we need this Labour government to face outwards, not inwards, not having fights with ourselves, but actually focusing on delivering the change that we have a five-year mandate to do.

The under-pressure Prime Minister came out fighting at his meeting with Labour MPs on Monday evening, claiming he has no plans to resign.

Now, we can bring you more from the PM’s speech, where he is said to have described Labour’s battle with Reform UK as ‘the fight of our lives’.

I have won every fight I’ve ever been in. I fought to change the Crown Prosecution Service so it better served victims of violence against women and girls. I fought to change the Labour Party to allow us to win an election again.

People told me I couldn’t do it. And then they gradually said, you might just get over the line. We won with a landslide majority. Every fight I’ve been in, I have won.

Detractors that don’t want a Labour government at all, and certainly not one to succeed. I have had detractors every step of the way, and I’ve got them now.

But I’ll tell you this, after having fought so hard for the chance to change our country, I’m not prepared to walk away from my mandate and my responsibility to my country, or to plunge us into chaos, as others have done.

In a defiant speech given to the Parliamentary Labour Party this evening, Sir Keir Starmer revealed he has no intentions of resigning.

‘I have won every fight I’ve ever been in,’ he said. ‘I’m not prepared to walk away.’

It came after widespread calls for Sir Keir to resign from opposition leaders such as Kemi Badenoch, Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar also asked Starmer to stand down in a bombshell press conference on Monday.

Keir Starmer has left this evening’s meeting where he addressed the Parliamentary Labour Party.

The Prime Minister is reported to have stayed for around an hour, and was met by huge rounds of applause and a standing ovation on his arrival.

In messages sharing with Sky News between Wes Streeting and Lord Mandelson, the Health Secretary spoke of three main issues – his election worries, the war in Israel and the government’s growth plan.

Election fears

In a text sent to Mandelson in March 2025, Streeting wrote: ‘I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election.

‘We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats.

‘There isn’t a clear answer to the question: why Labour?’

Labour’s lack of a growth plan

A short time later, Mandelson replies ‘The government doesn’t have an economic philosophy which is then followed through in a programme of policies.’

To which Streeting comes back: ‘No growth strategy at all.’

Israeli war crimes

Later, in July 2025, Streeting reveals his thoughts about the conflict in Palestine.

‘Morally and politically, I think we need to join France,’ he wrote. ‘Morally, because Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes.

‘Their government talks the language of ethnic cleansing and I have met with our own medics out there who describe the most chilling and distressing scenes of calculated brutality against women and children.

‘Politically, a Commons vote will be engineered in September on recognition and we will lose it if we’re not ahead of it.

‘There are no circumstances in which people like me or Shabana [Mahmood] could abstain or vote against, for example.’

Wes Streeting has said he has ‘nothing to hide’ about his relationship with Lord Mandelson.

The British ambassador to the US resigned from his post last week after revelations about his friendship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Streeting is reported to have shown texts between him and Mandelson to Sky News, which show the Ilford North MP claiming he is ‘toast at the next election’.

The Health Secretary also said the government ‘has no growth strategy’, according to a report by the publication.

In an interview on Monday about the WhatsApp messages, Streeting said:

‘I did not know about the nature of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction and had I known, I would not have wanted him anywhere near Washington, anywhere near the Labour Party or anywhere near me or my family.’

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has today claimed that ‘real change’ is needed after the Lord Mandelson scandal.

In an article published in The Guardian, the Ilford North MP admitted the debacle was a ‘scandal, first and foremost, involving the way men treat women and girls’.

Only a couple of days ago, Streeting deleted old photos of him and Mandelson together from social media.

He wrote:

We can’t let this scandal be another that passes by without real change. The rules we live by cannot substitute for behaviour.

There is no vetting good enough, no rules tight enough, no system of accountability strong enough if we do not understand this. We have to have the courage to speak up when silence is easier. We have to confront these moral questions. Politics is hard. Most of the choices are hard and some of them are tragic.

But we need to accept that some forms of power are not worth the moral price they extract.

Reports from the BBC this evening suggest that Starmer’s cabinet meeting this evening has been a success.

Loud applause and cheering has been heard from inside, with MPs even said to have told journalists that they have seen a different side to the Labour leader tonight.

‘If we could bottle this Keir and show it to the country we’ll walk (the next general election,’ one unnamed MP told the BBC.

When he arrived at the committee room to address to the Labour party, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was reportedly welcomed with a huge round of applause and standing ovation.

It was said to be so busy ahead of the meeting that two MPs were refused entry.

‘Don’t forget we’ve got to get the PM in here,’ one security guard told a member of the party.