Sir Keir Starmer has told Labour MPs he is “not prepared to walk away” from his mandate as prime minister, after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called on him to resign. The intervention came during a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party (PLP) on Monday evening, as the party reels from the fallout over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US.
Addressing more than 400 Labour MPs and peers, Starmer said: “I have won every fight I’ve ever been in. … People told me I couldn’t do it. And then they gradually said, you might just get over the line. We won with a landslide majority.” He added that he had “detractors every step along the way” but was not prepared to “plunge us into chaos, as others have done.”
The prime minister’s position has been undermined by the resignation of his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, and his director of communications, Tim Allan, who quit after only five months. Chris Wormald, the UK’s most senior civil servant, is also negotiating his exit as part of a Downing Street shake-up. Despite these departures, Starmer received the full backing of his cabinet, with Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner publicly throwing her weight behind him, halting any potential coup.
However, Sarwar’s call for resignation – and similar demands from most opposition leaders – has left Starmer damaged. While many at the PLP meeting said the PM succeeded in shifting the narrative by taking accountability and pledging to mend relations, others warned he is “not out of the woods yet”. The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, stopped short of calling for Starmer’s resignation but reiterated that a general election should be held if Labour MPs do not “sort themselves out”.
The crisis leaves Starmer exposed as he heads towards a series of policy and electoral challenges, including the Gorton and Denton by-election later this month. Labour insiders fear that McSweeney’s departure could leave the prime minister dangerously vulnerable. For now, Starmer is surviving but not thriving.
