Cabinet ministers tell broadcasters they're backing Starmer as he vows to 'get on with governing'

LAST UPDATE | 1 hr ago

A NUMBER OF Keir Starmer’s Cabinet ministers have told the media that they are backing him following a crunch meeting this morning where the Labour leader said he was going to get on with governing. 

Starmer is defying mounting calls for him to quit, with a minister among around a fifth of Labour’s 403 MPs calling for him to go after the party’s electoral mauling last week. 

According to Downing Street, Starmer told his Cabinet: “As I said yesterday, I take responsibility for these election results and I take responsibility for delivering the change we promised.

“The past 48 hours have been destabilising for government and that has a real economic cost for our country and for families.

The Labour Party has a process for challenging a leader and that has not been triggered.

“The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a Cabinet.”

In a highly unusual move, a number of ministers marched straight over to journalists outside Downing Street to declare their support for Starmer. 

Business secretary Peter Kyle told Sky News the cabinet meeting was “very purposeful” about the “big issues facing our economy and society”, adding that Starmer “is showing steadfast leadership”. 

Technology secretary Liz Kendall also said Starmer has her “full support”, telling Sky’s Beth Rigby: “Let me just say this – there is a process to challenge the leader. No one has made that challenge.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden told reporters that no one challenged Starmer during the cabinet meeting, adding that there were “many statements of support for the job that he is doing”. 

Notably, health secretary Wes Streeting and energy secretary Ed Miliband – who are both seen as candidates to replace Starmer if he does resign – did not speak to the media when they left Downing Street. 

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The meeting was expected to be fraught, with some ministers said to be joining calls for Starmer to go.

Earlier, housing, communities and local government minister Miatta Fahnbulleh told Starmer “to do the right thing for the country and the party and set a timetable for an orderly transition” as the public had lost trust in him.

Meanwhile, one of Starmer’s closest aides declined to say whether he would lead his party into the next general election.

Cabinet minister Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, said: “I’m not going to get ahead of any decision the PM may or may not take.”

‘Potential for chaos’

Four government aides quit their posts on Monday citing a loss of confidence in his leadership, while others warned his authority was collapsing and called for him to set out a timetable for his departure from No 10.

The Press Association understands British defence secretary John Healey’s message to Starmer was that he wanted a chaotic process to be avoided and for the government to focus on getting the country through the looming risk of geopolitical and economic crises rather than turning inwards.

In a sign of the febrile atmosphere in Westminster yesterday, junior health minister Stephen Kinnock said some Cabinet members “may well” call for Starmer to go at the Cabinet meeting this morning. 

“It is possible that members of the Cabinet might do that. I genuinely have no idea at all,” he told BBC Newsnight.

“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.”

Starmer promised to prove his “doubters” wrong at a press conference yesterday morning as former minister Catherine West withdrew threats to imminently launch a leadership challenge.

But his speech failed to quell demands that he quit or set out a timetable for his departure from discontented MPs, who continued to call for his resignation.

West had previously said she would challenge Starmer for the party leadership as early as yesterday afternoon, in an attempt to force the Cabinet to put forward a replacement as prime minister.

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After Starmer insisted he would not “walk away”, West said she would now canvass support within the party for him to set out a timetable for his resignation by September.

PA understands that 80 MPs have signed a letter from West urging Starmer to take this step, most of whom have publicly expressed their loss of confidence in his leadership.

Meanwhile, Joe Morris, a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to health secretary Wes Streeting, and Tom Rutland, a PPS to environment secretary Emma Reynolds, Cabinet Office aide Naushabah Khan and Melanie Ward, a PPS to deputy prime minister David Lammy, all quit last night. 

Department for Work and Pensions aide Gordon McKee and Mahmood’s PPS Sally Jameson also left their posts having expressed a loss of confidence in Starmer.

Downing Street did not immediately respond to the resignations, but loyalist MPs David Burton-Sampson, Linsey Farnsworth, Jayne Kirkham, Michael Payne, Tim Roca and Sean Woodcock were appointed to PPS positions later in the evening.

The Guardian reported that Mahmood and British foreign secretary Yvette Cooper had both spoken with Starmer about his future, while the Times reported a third Cabinet minister had also told him to consider his position.

Speculation about Starmer’s future has intensified since Thursday’s elections, in which Labour lost almost 1,500 English councillors, went backwards in Scotland and slumped to third place in Wales.

He is expected to meet apprentices today to talk up the UK government’s reforms to the system aimed at helping small businesses take on young apprentices, with training fully funded from August.

The visit is a bid to highlight his promise to tear up the “status quo” which he said yesterday had failed British people and underline efforts to put apprenticeships on an equal footing with university degrees.

With reporting from Press Association

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