Time is Running Out, MPs Warn Starmer

Pressure on PM to repair his faltering premiership after disastrous week

- Peter Walker Eleni Courea Pippa Crerar

Keir Starmer has been warned that time is running out to repair his faltering premiership, with Labour MPs beginning to ask whether he could be challenged as prime minister.

After a disastrous few days in which Angela Rayner resigned and Peter Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to Washington, a series of MPs said a challenge was likely if local elections went badly next May. Some said the one thing currently protecting Starmer was the lack of an agreed replacement.

"Personally, I think the clock is ticking," one MP said. "It sometimes happens to people who are incredibly well meaning, but you can pass that tipping point and can't recover."

Lucy Powell, who was sacked from the cabinet in the reshuffle after Rayner's departure and who is in the final two candidates vying to replace her as deputy leader, called for a "change of culture" in a Downing Street she described as overly factional and error-prone.

"We've got a bit of a groupthink happening at the top, that culture of not being receptive to interrogation, not being receptive to differing views," Powell told the Guardian.

The only MP to go public in saying Starmer should go was Clive Lewis, a regular critic of the government from the left of the party. The Norwich South MP told the BBC that Starmer had "lost control within the first year", adding: "We don't have the luxury of carrying on this way with someone who I think increasingly, I'm sorry to say, just doesn't seem up to the job."