Stubborn Starmer defies Labour plotters - The Latest
episodePreviously titled “Labour plotters v stubborn Starmer: will he resign? – The Latest” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 2, 2026
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Guardian.
I've been speaking to ministers subsequently, including in the cabinet, who say this is beginning to look like an orchestrated campaign. Should Wes Streeting decide to go for it, if Andy Burnham isn't in a position to run, that this off-left will coalesce around at least one other leading figure. And whether that's Ed Miliband, whether that's Angela Rayner, I think it's quite going to be increasingly hard to find anybody, even in his top team, that thinks Keir Starmer will definitely last until the next election.
Ministers resign after Keir Starmer tells his cabinet he's not stepping down as prime minister, despite more than 80 MPs calling for him to go. How much longer has he got?
What triggered the recent ministerial resignations in Starmer's cabinet?
From the Guardian's Today In Focus, this is the latest with me, Lucy Hoth. Joining me is Pippa Kriera, our political editor. Pippa, thank you for joining us on a very, very busy and tense day. Normally, we would ask our political correspondents and editors to go about 15 minutes up some flights of stairs in Westminster, but it's too busy a day for that. So you're in the Guardian office. Let's start with the ministerial resignations that we've had, three of them today against Keir Starmer. How significant and how damaging are they?
So it's worth just saying, Lucy, that, of course, all of this is against the backdrop of what happened yesterday at a very dramatic day at Westminster when dozens of Labour MPs publicly called for the Prime Minister to go to set out an orderly timetable for his departure, including some ministerial aides, but not ministers. And the biggest significance of what's happened this morning or today already is that we're now in the ministerial ranks. So three ministers, as you say, have gone. One of them, Yata Fambula, is of the soft left, an ally of Ed Miliband, and actually somebody we're told who had previously considered her position, wasn't necessarily very happy with the way things were going. And it is the two subsequent resignations which are much more significant, really, in the context of everything that's happening here at Westminster.
One of them, of course, Jess Phillips, a very well-known minister, Home Office, She was responsible for safeguarding and she sent a coruscating letter to the Prime Minister in which he said that he hadn't got a grip of the big challenges facing the country and he was being far too incremental in his delivery and that she felt that the party can continue. Crucially, she is a close friend and ally of Wes Streeting. The third resignation, a woman called Alex Davies-Jones, Liberal MP, who is also in the Home Office, said that she also didn't have faith in Keir Starmer's premiership. She is also an ally of Streeting. And at this point, I've been speaking to ministers subsequently, including in the cabinet, who say this is beginning to look like an orchestrated campaign.
Right. Well, all eyes on Wes, and particularly all eyes were on Wes in what sounds like quite a tense cabinet meeting this morning, where Keir Starmer gave a kind of address, didn't he, without taking questions from ministers, effectively saying, let's get on with the job of governing. What do we know about the vibe in that room?
Yeah, that's right.
How significant are the calls for Keir Starmer's resignation?
So Keir Starmer had a pre-planned cabinet meeting at 9am with his minister's And he opened it by telling them that he's going to fight on as prime minister, saying that the threshold for a leadership challenge had not been met. He's, of course, right in that just because people are writing letters saying that they wanted him to go. There isn't a candidate. There isn't a contest. Those letters have to back one particular candidate, don't they? That's right.
Rather than just a broad wanting to topple a leader.
Yeah, and he made the point that the last 48 hours and all the speculation around his future has been incredibly destabilising for the government. And of course, that has an economic cost because it has an impact on the markets and therefore has an impact on people right across the country.
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