Labour MP issues ultimatum with a threat to challenge Keir Starmer | News Politics

A Labour MP has said she will trigger a leadership contest if the cabinet fails to move against Sir Keir Starmer by Monday.

Catherine West called on cabinet ministers to select a new leader in the wake of disastrous local election results for Labour.

West, who represents the north London seat of Hornsey and Friern Barnet, said it was impossible for Labour to recover with Starmer at the helm.

She told BBC Radio 4 Today: ‘This afternoon I would like the cabinet to come round the table and elect a leader among themselves, without humiliating the current leader Keir Starmer.’

The former parliamentary undersecretary of state for Indo-Pacific said if no candidate came forward to replace the prime minister, she would stand herself.

She hinted that Starmer could continue to have a role in government ‘doing international affairs’.

The Labour MP, who has represented her area since 2015, said she would seek 81 names needed to take to the party chairman to trigger a contest.

Starmer has vowed he will not resign and ‘plunge the country into chaos,’ although he admitted that the results were a tough pill to swallow.

He said today: ‘I’m not going to walk away from this, that would plunge the country into chaos.

‘But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to respond. It doesn’t mean we don’t need to rebuild. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to set out the path ahead.

‘That’s what I’m going to do in the coming days’

Speculation over Starmer’s future as leader has mounted following Thursday’s election results, which have seen Labour swept from power in Wales and lose more than 1,000 English councillors.

The party also performed poorly in Scotland, where the SNP achieved a fourth successive victory in the Holyrood elections.

Several prominent backbenchers, mainly from the left of the party, have called on Starmer to go, including Clive Betts, John McDonnell and Jon Trickett, the latter who said the election results meant it was ‘curtains for Keir’.

Some, like West, however have suggested the party should elect a new leader without the drama of a leadership election over the summer.

However Labour deputy leader Lucy Powell said the PM should stay in position.

She said: ‘Thinking that setting out some kind of timetable would put to bed the issues of leadership, I think is actually the wrong conclusion here.

‘Because all that would do is fire the starting gun of a, quite honestly, very distracting and ongoing debate about leadership.’

‘I don’t want to see a leadership challenge, that’s not how we operate in the Labour Party’, she added.

Several potential leadership contenders have yet to publicly comment on the results, including Angela Rayner and Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham.

Friday saw Reform surge in most areas of the country, taking control of several councils including Barnsley, Walsall and Havering, while the Green Party made significant inroads in London and other cities.

Starmer is set to use both a major speech on Monday and the King’s speech on Wednesday to attempt to reset the agenda.

Health secretary Wes Streeting said the PM would ‘have my support’ when he sets out his government would move forward.

In the aftermath of the poll, Starmer has given new roles to party grandees Baroness Harman and former PM Gordon Brown.

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