MP Who Initiated Race To Replace Starmer Bizarrely Supports PM

The Labour MP who effectively pulled the plug on Keir Starmer’s premiership has now suggested she could still end up backing him to stay on as prime minister.

Catherine West announced last Saturday that she would run as a “stalking horse” in a leadership challenge to the prime minister in response to the party’s horrendous performance in last week’s elections.

The former Foreign Office minister said she planned to gather the required 81 Labour MPs’ names to formally challenge Starmer.

After Starmer vowed not to “walk away” from Downing Street in his make-or-break speech on Monday, she then decided to collect names of Labour MPs who would agree to set a timetable for the election of a new leader by September.

But her efforts were overtaken as ministers started to resign, putting more direct pressure on the prime minister.

Speaking after health secretary Wes Streeting dramatically resigned on Thursday, West then bizarrely claimed she could potentially vote for Starmer in any subsequent contest.

She said the “important thing” was the Labour Party is now having the conversation about how to beat Reform UK.

Asked if this was the outcome she wanted on Radio 4′s World At One, West said: “The original request I made was for the cabinet to get around the table and nominate someone to explain, to highlight, all the fantastic things the government has been doing with some urgency.”

She said she wants an “honest conversation” from candidates, including from the prime minister if he is a candidate.

“Many of us like Keir very much as a person, he’s got excellent credentials on the international stage and he could well win a competition if he were to put his name forward,” the MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet said.

Asked who she would vote for, she said: “We don’t know who the other candidates are.”

But she added: “If Keir Starmer decides he’s got the bottle, then he can come and fight, fight as though he’s fighting for the working people of this country, then he could beat the others!

“Because he’s a very bright man but the impression he gives is that he’s driving a car but he’s not putting the gears into action.”

She said the country is “idling like a car which cannot go forwards or backwards”.

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