Keir Starmer Says He Will Never Walk Away From Labour Leadership

Keir Starmer has said he will never walk away as he vowed to lead Labour into the next general election.

The PM insisted his landslide election victory in 2024 had given him a “mandate … to change this country” and he was determined to do so.

He was speaking just 24 hours after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar broke ranks by demanding Starmer stand down over his handling of the Peter Mandelson scandal.

The disgraced peer faces a criminal investigation into allegations he leaked sensitive government information to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein when he was business secretary.

Despite knowing about his links to the billionaire financier, Starmer made Mandelson the UK’s ambassador to Washington, only to sack him just seven months later.

Sarwar said: “The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change.”

However, his attempted coup backfired and more than 100 Labour MPs – including every member of the cabinet – publicly backed the PM.

In his first public comments since the leadership crisis, Starmer said: “There are some people in recent days who say the Labour government should have a different fight, a fight with itself, instead of a fight for the millions of people who need us to fight for them.

“And I say to them – I will never walk away from the mandate I was given to change this country, I will never walk away from the people that I’m charged with fighting for, I will never walk away from the country that I love.”

Asked by broadcasters if he will lead the party into the next election, the prime minister said: “Yes I will. I had a five-year mandate to deliver the change. I intend to get on with what I was elected to do, which is deliver that change.”

His comments will be seen as a direct challenge to those Labour MPs who want his job, including health secretary Wes Streeting and former deputy PM Angela Rayner.

Speaking at an event in Hertfordshire, Starmer said he was determined to improve the lives of ordinary people, as Labour had promised to do.

He said his own brother, Nick, who died in 2024, “spent his adult life wandering from job to job in virtual poverty”.

“This system, this political system, didn’t work for him and there are billions of people in the same boat, children in poverty, young people who don’t get the opportunities they deserve,” he said.

“Millions of people held back because of a system that doesn’t work for them, who are not given the dignity, the respect, the chance that they deserve.

“And I’m fighting for them. I am their prime minister, and this is their Government and I will never give up on that fight.”