Chapter 1: 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?
Chapter 2: 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.
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Chapter 3: 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. So he made his opening statement.
He said that if ministers wanted to come to talk to him one-to-one, they could do that later. And then the whole meeting moved on to talking about the Middle East and other issues that the government is dealing with. And I'm told by sources in the room that West Streeting came in, acted entirely normally, despite all the speculation about whether he may or may not go over the top.
One colleague described him as having a brass neck. Somebody else suggested that some of his colleagues are very angry because they feel that he is among those in the Labour movement, Labour Party, this destabilised the Prime Minister, and suggested that some ministers were giving evils, evil eyes in his direction. So it should probably say that Wes Treating
has always said that you'd run in a contest should somebody else initiate one, but that he didn't want to be the person to start it off, to kick it off himself. Whether that's changed over the last 24 hours, we just don't know.
Yeah, and we are obviously waiting to hear what... whether he decides that now is the moment to move or not. As per your reporting, West Streeting reportedly requested a meeting with Keir Starmer after the cabinet meeting that Keir Starmer refused. Do we know who else he's been talking to this morning?
We knew that no other cabinet ministers had meetings with him before or after the cabinet, apart from Richard Hermer, the attorney general, who is, of course, not just a close colleague, but a close friend of the prime minister. They started a legal career 30 years ago together. and he would have been seeking his counsel.
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