Labour Peer Calls For Keir Starmer To Resign

A Labour peer has called for Keir Starmer to resign over the Peter Mandelson scandal.

Maurice Glasman has become the most senior figure within the party to urge the prime minister to resign, claiming he “cannot conceivably continue” in the job.

It comes after it emerged Mandelson – Starmer’s pick to be the UK’s ambassador to the US – failed security vetting last year.

The Foreign Office then overrode the security advice not to hire the ex-Labour peer and gave Mandelson the plum job in Washington.

Mandelson was sacked over his long-running friendship with convicted paedophile last September, but the decision to hire him continues to haunt Starmer.

The PM insists he was not aware Mandelson failed the vetting process and is blaming Whitehall for keeping him in the dark.

But questions over Starmer’s judgement continue to grow and there is speculation other Labour figures – Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham – could be looking to overthrow him.

Glasman told the Telegraph: “He cannot conceivably continue as a credible prime minister any longer. And that’s all because he cannot say ‘I made a mistake, I’m sorry’.

“If you can’t own your mistakes, you can’t move.

“All he needed to say was ‘we made an error’.

“But he’s completely stuck in saying he hasn’t done anything wrong, so this can’t go away.”

Glasman, known for championing the Blue Labour movement, also warned that his party is facing a bloodbath in the May elections when voters select their candidates for Holyrood, the Senedd and hundreds of local authority seats across England.

He said: “May 7 is going to be another debacle. I can’t see how he [Starmer] carries on after the May elections.

“He could limp on to the summer but the point is we’re doing all this while there’s a war in Iran, there’s a war in Ukraine and where is the political leadership?”

Technology secretary Liz Kendall publicly defended Starmer amid this increase in pressure on Sunday morning.

she told Sky News: “Keir Starmer is my favourite to be the prime minister, to take us into the next election.

“Let me tell you right now, with the cost of living crisis that people are facing and with the world so uncertain, and that’s deeply frightening to people, any politician who focuses more on their future and their job, not on people’s futures and their jobs, will lose the public support. That is why I back Keir Starmer.”

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