Starmer’s speech fails to stop more Labour MPs calling for his resignation – UK politics live

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Starmer's speech fails to stop more Labour MPs calling for his resignation

Labour MPs are continuing to come out calling for Keir Starmer to set a timetable for his resignation.

These are from Paulette Hamilton.

The local elections were devastating. We lost outstanding councillors and candidates.

On the doorstep, voters repeatedly told us the same thing, national issues and the party leadership meant they could no longer vote Labour.

We now need an orderly transition to new leadership.

The public have made it clear that they do not wish to hear further talk of a “reset” from Sir Keir Starmer.

Confidence is lost. Voters have stopped listening.

Now, an orderly transition must follow, and change must come from the top.

These are from Markus Campbell-Savours.

1/4 I have listened carefully to the Prime Minister’s speech. Sir Keir Starmer is a decent, principled and kind man. But his leadership is not working, and it is with genuine regret that I say so.

2/4 His position is now untenable. Colleagues should have the courage to say publicly what many have said privately for months.

3/4 Loyalty matters. Loyalty to him, to the Party and to each other. But today loyalty lies with our elected members across the country and with the 1,500 who lost their seats last week. It does not lie in maintaining a course that is not commanding confidence.

4/4. What the Party needs now is leadership with a credible vision for the country, a clear sense of direction, purpose and ambition. Those skills exist within our ranks, and I am confident we can find a leader who has them.

And this is from Emma Lewell.

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Catherine McKinnell, the Labour MP for Newcastle North and a former education minster, has posted an open letter on social media calling for Keir Starmer’s resignation and a “swift and orderly transition” to a new leader.

Welsh secretary Jo Stevens suggests Mark Drakeford's policy agenda helped cause Labour's crushing defeat

Bethan McKernan

Bethan McKernan is the Guardian’s Wales correspondent.

Jo Stevens, the secretary of state for Wales, has said former Welsh Labour leader and first minister Mark Drakeford was distracted from “bread and butter issues”, as the party regroups after losing control of the Senedd for the first time in 27 years.

In an article for WalesOnline, Stevens said:

People are rightly cross about the rollout of 20mph speed restrictions and public money being spent on tree planting in Uganda when we weren’t getting the basics right. The NHS. Education. Cost of living. Any time spent away from those key priorities was time wasted.

Welsh Labour is still reeling from its catastrophic performance in last week’s Senedd elections: it finished a distant third after Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, with just nine seats in a 96-seat parliament. The first minister, Eluned Morgan, lost her seat, triggering a leadership contest. Ken Skates, the MS for Fflint Wrecsam and former cabinet secretary for transport, has taken over as interim leader.

Internal recriminations have begun in earnest, with the Westminster and Cardiff wings of the party laying the blame at each other’s feet for the election loss. Drakeford, widely considered to be on the left of the party, was first minister between 2018 to 2024. He retired from politics at the end of the last Senedd term.

On Monday Keir Starmer said he had spoken to Morgan over the weekend, but did not elaborate on what they talked about.

Sadiq Khan backs Burnham being allowed to stand as byelection candidate so he can return to Commons

Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has joined those calling for Andy Burnham to be allowed to stand as a byelection candidate so that he can return to the Commons. In an interview with George Eaton for Arguably, a new Substack blog Eaton runs for progressive comment, Khan said:

I’m a firm believer in the team that I support winning, you want your best players on the pitch ... If Andy still wants to return, and an opportunity arises he should be allowed to stand … I’m a firm believer in the team that I support winning, you want your best players on the pitch.

Starmer's speech fails to stop more Labour MPs calling for his resignation

Labour MPs are continuing to come out calling for Keir Starmer to set a timetable for his resignation.

These are from Paulette Hamilton.

The local elections were devastating. We lost outstanding councillors and candidates.

On the doorstep, voters repeatedly told us the same thing, national issues and the party leadership meant they could no longer vote Labour.

We now need an orderly transition to new leadership.

The public have made it clear that they do not wish to hear further talk of a “reset” from Sir Keir Starmer.

Confidence is lost. Voters have stopped listening.

Now, an orderly transition must follow, and change must come from the top.

These are from Markus Campbell-Savours.

1/4 I have listened carefully to the Prime Minister’s speech. Sir Keir Starmer is a decent, principled and kind man. But his leadership is not working, and it is with genuine regret that I say so.

2/4 His position is now untenable. Colleagues should have the courage to say publicly what many have said privately for months.

And this is from Emma Lewell.

Kemi Badenoch has claimed (implausibly) that she takes no pleasure in seeing Keir Starmer in difficulties. In a post on social media, she said:

Keir Starmer’s speech was sad to watch. With so many resets, even his reset button needs a reset.

But I do not take pleasure in watching the Prime Minister flounder. The country needs leadership, not another speech from a man who clearly knows something has gone badly wrong, but still can’t explain why.

This is Labour’s real problem. It is not just Starmer - all the pretenders jostling for his job do not have the answers either, because they all believe the same things: more welfare, more state control, more borrowing, more regulation. They are busy arguing over who should drive the car, but the truth is they are all heading in the wrong direction. They have no vision for the future.

And Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, criticised Starmer for not committing to joining an EU customs union.

Voters sent Keir Starmer a clear message that Britain needs a bold new direction, but he keeps delivering the same old speech.

If the Government wants to regain the trust of the British people, they have to end the cost of living crisis. There is no way of doing that without getting rid of Keir Starmer’s red lines on Europe and fixing the botched Brexit deal, including a customs union. It’s really that simple.

Here is Peter Walker’s story on Catherine West urging other Labour MPs to join calls for Starmer’s resignation – but no longer proposing to stand as a candidate herself.

This is from Jessica Elgot, summing up the change in West’s position perfectly.

Labour MP: “Catherine West is no longer trying to appoint herself as PM, she’s trying to appoint herself as Graham Brady.”

Curtis says new Labour leader should be elected well before September, which is timetable proposed by West

The Labour MP Chris Curtis started his interview on Sky News by paying tribute to Keir Starmer, and what he had done to get Labour elected.

But he went on:

But I think the moment, the dramatic situation that we face – the geo-political context, the fact that we had such a difficult economic inheritance – does mean that we need more radical change than the government has set out so far.

I don’t think we saw a plan from the prime minister this morning in order to implement the kind of change that this country needs.

And I therefore think it’s time for us to look for new leadership.

And I think what that means is the prime minister rightly now setting out a timetable and an orderly process for a leadership election, and one in which Labour has a discussion about the vision for the country and what changes we think are needed in order to face the very real challenges that Britain currently faces.

Curtis said the Labour Growth Group would be publishing a report tomorrow on economic plans to renew Britain. He said he hoped a new Labour leader would be able to take forward some of those ideas.

Asked about the call from Catherine West for Starmer to set a timetable for the election of a new leader in September (see 12.20pm), Curtis said that was too long to wait. “I certainly think the timetable should be much shorter,” he said.

Asked if he expected to see “overwhelming” numbers of Labour MPs coming out this week demanding a timetable for Starmer’s resignation, Curtis replied: “Possibly.”

Curtis is seen as a Wes Streeting supporter. In an interview on the Today programme this morning, when he was told that Streeting had once described him as “brilliant”, Curtis claimed not to be aware of that. Asked if he thought Streeting himself was brilliant, Curtis said he was doing a “fantastic job” as health secretary.

Asked if he thought Streeting would be a brilliant PM, Curtis said there was “a wide range of talent” in the party.

Agreeing to elect a new Labour leader by September would (provided he could win a byelection) allow Andy Burnham to be a candidate. Holding the election sooner would benefit Burnham’s rivals.

Labour MP Chris Curtis says Starmer should stand down

In an interview on Sky News, Chris Curtis, the Labour MP who is chair of the Labour Growth Group, has just announced that he no longer has confidence in Keir Starmer and wants him to set a timetable for his resignation.

Getting back to wider policy, Rayner said “tweaks” would not be enough to fix the problems facing the economy.

I don’t need to be persuaded that tweaks won’t fix the fundamental challenges that our country faces.

This government needs to put measures in place that makes people’s lives better. We need to fix the foundations of a system that is rigged against them, because we know that things can be so much better than this.

Spain and Canada have shown that a economies can grow and people can thrive when governments stay true to their values and put people first. And we need to learn from that.

In London, we lost young people who fear they will never afford a home.

And in my patch and across the north, we lost working people whose wages are too low and the costs are too high.

In Scotland and Wales people do not currently see Labour as the answer.

Conference, for too long governments have allowed wealth and power to concentrate at the top without a plan to ensure that the benefits of economic growth are shared fairly.

The result has been an economy that does not work for the majority, with wealth concentrated in far too few hands.

Rayner said that the the government could “cut the cost for households and put money back in the everyday economy”, in a way that was consistent with the government’s fiscal rules.

She ended by quoting the late John Prescott, who was also a union person and a former deputy PM.

The late John Prescott used to tell me, ‘You’ve got a voice, kid, use it.’ A union man to his core. John would have relished this fight.

Addressing the importance of affiliation to the Labour party, Rayner said that the government would not have passed the Employment Rights Act, or other workers’ rights measures, without having trade unions affiliated to the party.

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