The starting gun on Keir Starmer’s long-awaited leadership challenge was fired tonight by a former minister.
Catherine West, a backbencher, revealed she will go public with a leadership coup on Monday if the Cabinet hasn’t moved against the Prime Minister by her deadline.
The MP for Hornsey in north London went public with her announcement in an interview with the BBC this evening, in a move that may force key players like Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting to act.
Ms West said she already has 10 people prepared to back her, but this is well short of the 81 required to start a leadership election.
The former Foreign Office minister said: ‘This afternoon I would like the Cabinet to come around the table and elect a leader amongst themselves, without humiliating the current leader Keir Starmer…
‘But we need someone from within the current Cabinet to step forward as the leader and then we will have a new leader of the party without having to have a leadership election.
‘If that cannot happen, and there are no leadership hopefuls that come forward tomorrow, then Monday morning I will put my name forward to stand for the leader of the Labour Party.’
She demanded that a prominent Cabinet minister emerge as the appointed successor to Sir Keir, ‘who can really sell Labour values and sell our programme’.
Catherine West demanded that the Cabinet announce a candidate to replace Keir Starmer by Monday
Nearly 40 MPs have now gone public demanding that Keir Starmer bring his time in No. 10 to an end
Ms West did not specify whom she believes to be the best candidate.
She argued: ‘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’.’
While the announcement set Westminster into overdrive, allies of the Prime Minister insisted that Ms West would not succeed in removing him next week.
One dismissed former Islington council leader Ms West as a ‘misguided North London MP’.
He also told the Mail that her intervention was ‘probably a good thing’ for the PM as it would ‘lance the boil’ of speculation over a potential stalking horse challenge against Sir Keir, with rebels now forced to either back Ms West or back off.
Another Labour source privately mocked Ms West’s challenge, saying she was ‘best friends with Jeremy Corbyn’.
Downing Street appears to believe that Ms West is acting alone, and not as a stalking horse on behalf of any actual contender for the crown.
Her bombshell intervention came after a day of yet more Labour MPs publicly calling on Keir Starmer to start organising his departure from Downing Street.
The current number publicly saying he should either quit immediately, or set out a timetable, has risen to 37.
Ms West made her fury about the current leadership known this morning, when she also called on Sir Keir to resign.
She was followed by Debbie Abrahams, the MP for Oldham East, told the Today Programme she thinks ‘it is a matter of months’ before Starmer will have to decide whether to resign if he doesn’t immediately turn things around.
Clive Betts (MP for Sheffield South East) agreed: ‘There is a responsibility on the Cabinet to recognise this can’t carry on forever.’
Wes Streeting reportedly has the 81 MPs required, but does not want to announce his candidacy first
Angela Rayner is also mulling a bid for leader
But Keir Starmer ally Lucy Powell, the Labour deputy leader, condemned her colleagues’ plotting and warned that a leadership coup would make the party look ‘ludicrous’.
Speaking on the BBC this morning, Ms Powell said Labour needs to change its approach, but with Keir Starmer at the helm.
She argued that Sir Keir ‘is accepting responsibility, he is saying we’ve got to change. He hears what people are saying’.
The Manchester MP said that the Prime Minister is ‘very reflective’ on yesterday’s brutal verdict by voters.
But she lashed out at Labour MPs demanding a change of leadership, arguing: ‘I don’t want to hear about that anymore. I want us to get on with the job.’
Asked whether Sir Keir will still be the party’s leader in six months’ time, she emphatically replied: ‘Yes, yes, yes!’
Labour MPs who have called for Keir Starmer’s resignation or set a timetable for a leadership contest:
Interviewed this afternoon, Starmer said the local election results had been ‘really tough’ and he would ‘reflect and respond’ to the message delivered by voters.
‘I’m not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos, I think the right thing to do is to rebuild and show the path forward.
‘We made a number of really important calls in the last couple of years… we need to couple to that the arguments we’re making about hope and the future.
‘I will be setting out those arguments… setting out with clarity the values and convictions that drive me.’
Asked if he would stand for the leadership if challenged, he notably swerved the question.
