Starmer fighting for his future as cabinet ministers quit

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces the biggest leadership crisis of his premiership as cabinet ministers including the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood reportedly urged him to consider his position and British government aides quit their posts.

Ms Mahmood is said to have privately called for an orderly transition of power on Monday night as 75 MPs demanded the prime minister stand down after Labour's electoral mauling last week.

Four government aides quit their posts 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.

Mr Starmer faces an extraordinary weekly cabinet meeting this morning, with senior ministers split over how best to move forward and concerns among some about plunging the party into a potential leadership contest.

In a sign of the febrile atmosphere in Westminster yesterday evening, junior health minister Stephen Kinnock said some Cabinet members "may well" call for the Prime Minister to go at the meeting.

"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," he told BBC Newsnight.

The Prime Minister promised to prove his "doubters" wrong at a press conference yesterday as former minister Catherine West withdrew threats to imminently launch a leadership challenge.

However, 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.

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

After Mr Starmer insisted he would not "walk away", the former Foreign Office minister said she would now canvass support within the party for the UK prime minister to set out a timetable for his resignation by September.

The Guardian reported that Ms Mahmood and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper had both spoken with the Prime Minister about his future, while the Times reported a third cabinet minister had also told Mr Starmer to consider his position.

Speculation about the UK leader'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.

In a speech in central London, Mr Starmer said he took "responsibility" for the losses but would fight on and cast the current political moment as a "battle for the soul" of the UK, warning that if Labour failed, the country would head down "a very dark path".

Mr Starmer is expected to meet apprentices today to talk up the 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 had failed British people and underline efforts to put apprenticeships on an equal footing with university degrees.