Ministers Urge Keir Starmer To Resign As Leader

Keir Starmer will be told to “go gracefully” by members of his cabinet or face a wave of ministerial resignations to force him out, HuffPost UK can reveal.

The prime minister will be confronted by members of his top team when he sits down with them for the weekly cabinet meeting this morning.

Home secretary Shabana Mahmood, foreign secretary Yvette Cooper, defence secretary John Healey and deputy prime minister David Lammy held one-to-one meetings with the PM on Monday and told him he cannot survive after Labour suffered a drubbing in last week’s elections.

Energy secretary Ed Miliband has also communicated to the PM that he should stand down.

Other cabinet ministers, including Pat McFadden and Steve Reed, have urged Starmer to dig in, however.

It is understood that if he refuses to do so, government ministers will then quit their jobs to force their hand.

A senior Labour source told HuffPost UK: “People are being held back to allow the cabinet to give him the opportunity to go gracefully, but if that doesn’t work there will be resignations.

“He’ll no doubt try and hang on and avoid the inevitable but it’s done.”

In a sign of the crisis gripping the government, junior health minister Stephen Kinnock told BBC 2′s Newsnight programme that cabinet members “may well” tell Starmer to go on Tuesday.

He said: “It is possible that members of the cabinet might do that. I genuinely have no idea at all.

“What I am simply saying is any one of my colleagues who is potentially thinking of doing that, I just hope they really will take a beat, pause and reflect, and think about the potential that has for the chaos that might be unleashed.”

More than 70 Labour MPs have now gone public urging the PM to quit, with more set to follow.

Four ministerial aides to cabinet ministers also resigned on Tuesday as the rebellion grew.

No.10 tried to reassert its authority on Monday night by announcing their replacements.

A Labour source said: “They were trying a show of force to demonstrate they could fill any positions, therefore it was pointless people resigning.”

But it seems to have been a pointless gesture, and Starmer’s time in office is coming to an end less than two years after he led Labour to a landslide general election victory in July, 2024.

Health secretary Wes Streeting is expected to announce that he will run to replace Starmer.

But Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham now faces a race against time to find a seat and win a by-election so he can become an MP again and throw his hat into the ring.

His supporters are furious at what they as attempts by Streeting’s team to force a speedy leadership contest while Burnham is unable to take part.

One told HuffPost UK: “It would be utterly shameless for Wes to plunge the party into chaos. It would prove to the whole country that the only person he is interested in is himself. Now is not the time for a contest.”

If Burnham cannot find a way back, former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and energy secretary Ed Miliband could run as challengers to Streeting from the soft left of the party.

Others who could run include foreign secretary Cooper and Healey.

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