Angela Rayner has told friends she is ‘ready’ to launch a leadership campaign – as Labour MPs warned Keir Starmer that his premiership is ‘hanging by a thread’.
The former deputy prime minister, who has quietly amassed a £1million war chest, gave Sir Keir a bloody nose on Wednesday when she led a Labour revolt against attempts to ‘cover up’ files surrounding Peter Mandelson’s disastrous appointment as US ambassador.
The Daily Mail understands that in the wake of Wednesday’s Commons vote, Ms Rayner told an MP who observed that the Prime Minister would have to resign: ‘I will be ready.’
Sir Keir issued a grovelling apology for the Mandelson scandal yesterday – but insisted he would not bow to growing Labour pressure for him to quit.
At an emergency press conference in Hastings the rattled-looking PM said he was ‘utterly disgusted’ by revelations about Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and ‘sorry’ he had appointed him as ambassador to Washington DC.
But he insisted that he would ‘go on’, despite mounting Labour fury over the fiasco. And Downing Street rejected calls from Labour MPs to sack the PM’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who championed Mandelson’s appointment.
Seven Labour MPs directly called for Mr McSweeney to go, while numerous others called for a wider No10 clearout – and two said Sir Keir should resign.
Baroness Harman – a former deputy leader of the Labour Party and former leader of the Commons – said Sir Keir looked weak, and gullible. She said on Sky News’s Electoral Dysfunction podcast that the scandal would ‘finish’ him off, unless he could convincingly reset.
And she added: ‘He’s got to stop blaming Mandelson and saying, ‘he lied to me’. Because actually he should never have been considering him in the first place. And to say ‘he lied to me’ makes it look weak and naive and gullible.’
The growing Labour pressure for Mr McSweeney to be sacked is widely seen at Westminster as a proxy for the removal of the Prime Minister.
One insider said: ‘Starmer without McSweeney is like a glove puppet without a hand.’
No 10 said Sir Keir retained ‘full confidence’ in his top aide.
Last night, the PM was due to host Labour MPs at Chequers in an effort to win them round. But former frontbencher Andy McDonald said Sir Keir’s premiership was ‘hanging by a thread’.
As the fallout from the Epstein files continued to rock Westminster:
- A YouGov poll found the public want Sir Keir to resign by a margin of 50:24;
- A powerful committee of MPs warned Sir Keir not to attempt another cover up of documents relating to Mandelson;
- The PM sparked fury by suggesting the security services had failed to vet Mandelson properly;
- The King was heckled by a member of the public demanding a police investigation into his brother Andrew’s links to Epstein;
- Kemi Badenoch urged Labour MPs to back a vote of no confidence in Sir Keir, saying he was ‘in office but not in power’.
Anger on the Labour benches boiled over on Wednesday when Sir Keir tried to water down Conservative calls for ministers to publish all the documents surrounding Mandelson’s appointment in December 2024.
Yesterday, several urged Sir Keir to sack Mr McSweeney – or even resign himself.
York MP Rachael Maskell said: ‘We need to now move forward as a party to ensure that we can gain that support back. I don’t believe we can with the PM in place – it is inevitable that the PM is going to have to step down.’
Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne suggested that Sir Keir should ‘reflect on his position’. He added: ‘The broad opinion of MPs is that with what was already in the public domain, Mandelson should not have been anywhere near that job.
‘The PM has to reflect on the decisions he’s made.’
Another Liverpool MP Paula Barker, a former deputy leadership contender, said she was ‘deeply ashamed’ of the Government’s handling of the scandal and said Mr McSweeney faced ‘huge questions’ about his judgment.
She told the BBC: ‘As we know only too well… when your chief of staff becomes the story, then often it’s time for them to go.’
Hull MP Karl Turner told Times Radio the Prime Minister was in a ‘crisis situation’ and that if he continued to be surrounded by ‘advisers who give him shoddy advice, I think that the reality of that will end in the Prime Minister having to be making a decision about his future at some point soon’.
Jonathan Hinder urged the PM to admit he had ‘cocked up’. The Pendle and Clitheroe MP welcomed the PM’s belated apology, but added: ‘What needs to be acknowledged is that this was a catastrophic error of political and moral judgment.’
Stroud MP Simon Opher said: ‘The PM must clear out his advisers, including the chief of staff – otherwise he will lose the confidence of the Parliamentary Labour Party.’
Jo White, chairman of the Red Wall group of Labour MPs, called for an ‘ethical reset’ in No 10, saying: ‘We need a cleansing, a wiping away of patronage, favours and friends.’
John Cryer, former chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, said the PM had ‘really serious questions to answer’.
Lord Cryer, who is married to Solicitor General Ellie Reeves, the sister of the Chancellor, told GB News: ‘I’ve known Keir for a long time now. He was told twice, as far as we know, that Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein continued.
‘Keir has got to try and explain, and I don’t know how you do it, why he then decided to appoint Mandelson after all that and the previous scandals.’
Labour MPs are urging both Ms Rayner and the Health Secretary Wes Streeting to launch a leadership challenge against Sir Keir.
But a spokesman for Ms Rayner disputed suggestions that she is telling friends saying she is ready to run, adding: ‘We do not recognise these claims’.
Sir Keir yesterday insisted he had been ‘lied’ to by Mandelson during the appointment process.
No 10 admitted this week that he knew the disgraced peer had remained friends with Epstein following the financier’s conviction for child sex offences.
But Sir Keir claimed Mandelson had lied when asked about the evidence and had ‘portrayed Epstein as someone he barely knew’. The PM said he had ‘no reason’ to doubt Mandelson’s words, despite widespread evidence in the public domain.
Photos showed the peer celebrating Epstein’s birthday with him in his Paris apartment. A JP Morgan report on Epstein found the pair had a ‘particularly close relationship’.
But Sir Keir claimed that he had been let down by the vetting process – and insisted he had been betrayed by his former friend. The PM said he was ‘angry and frustrated’ like his MPs.
Sir Keir also issued a belated apology to Epstein’s many victims, saying: ‘I am sorry. Sorry for what was done to you, sorry that so many people with power failed you. Sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies and appointed him.’
