Labour MP threatens leadership bid as early as MONDAY as Keir Starmer faces brutal election fallout

A Labour MP has threatened to mount a leadership challenge on Sir Keir Starmer as soon as Monday morning following a slew of brutal results for the party in local elections.

Former minister Catherine West said she would launch an unlikely premiership bid in an attempt to force the Cabinet to act to remove Sir Keir.

The Prime Minister will use an address on Monday and the King’s Speech on Wednesday to fight for his position after 30 Labour MPs called for his resignation.

Following 1,400 losses up and down the UK, Sir Keir said his administration needed to be better at offering hope to people, and promised to be clearer about “the values and convictions that drive me”.

Ms West told the BBC: “I’m putting people on notice - if I don’t hear by Monday morning of some leadership hopefuls, I will be asking everybody in the Parliamentary Labour Party to put a name against my name, because we need to get this ball rolling.

“But my preferred option is for the Cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there’s plenty of talent and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role, and then for others to come to the fore, who can communicate the message, who are very able, so we can have minimum fuss.”

She claimed to have the backing of 10 MPs for her initiative, well short of the 81 needed to meet the threshold of 20 per cent to mount a challenge.

With Sir Keir at the helm, Labour has been crushed by threats from both sides - Reform UK on the right making staggering gains, and the Green Party on the left bashing down the red wall.

In England, councils which had been in Labour's grip since World War One were lost, while the party’s steak of London was also left severely weakened.

Results filtering through today saw Reform take control in Barnsley, with Labour’s hopes of retaining Bradford also meeting a grueling end.

A Green surge saw Sir Keir’s party losing control in Lambeth for the first time in 20 years, and the keys to Essex County Council have been handed to Reform as they stole votes from both traditional parties.

In Wales, having been in government with half the seats in the Senedd at the last election, the party was reduced to just nine of the 96 seats available - with First Minister Baroness Eluned Morgan the highest-profile casualty.

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Sir Keir earlier insisted he would not “walk away” from his job, claiming it would “plunge the country into chaos” if he quit.

He said: “But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to respond, it doesn’t mean we don’t need to rebuild. It doesn’t mean that we don’t need to set out the path ahead. That’s what I’m going to do in the coming days.”

The Prime Minister noted one of the “unnecessary mistakes” made by his Government was setting out the financial and international challenges facing the country, but not telling people how their lives would improve.

Sir Keir said: “The hope wasn’t there enough in the first two years of this government.”

Deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell has dismissed the prospect of a leadership change being an immediate fix to the party's problems.

She said:“Thinking that setting out some kind of timetable would put to bed the issues of leadership, I think is actually the wrong conclusion here, because all that would do is fire the starting gun of a, quite honestly, very distracting and ongoing debate about leadership.”

Clive Betts, the party’s joint longest-serving MP, also said the Cabinet should make it clear to the Prime Minister he has to go “in the not too distant future”.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who allegedly garnered support from a sufficient number of MP's to make a beeline for premiership, said the Prime Minister will “have my support” in setting out how the Government will move forward.

However, facing questions from reporters late on Friday night as he attended the count for Redbridge Council, he declined to say whether he believed Sir Keir was the right person to lead the party into the next general election.

Former deputy leader Angela Rayner, widely viewed as a potential challenger for the leadership, has not yet commented on the results.

Nor has Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, whose path back to Westminster has previously been blocked by Labour’s ruling national executive committee.