Three Ministers Resign as Pressure Mounts on Keir Starmer to Step Down

One of Keir Starmer’s most influential ministers, Jess Phillips, has resigned from the government, calling for Keir Starmer to quit and saying she has grown tired of seeing “opportunities for progress stalled and delayed”.

Three ministers quit on Tuesday and joined more than 80 MPs to have called for the prime minister to go. But Starmer told his cabinet earlier in the day that he would fight on as prime minister, saying the threshold for a leadership challenge had not been met.

Phillips, a home office minister, is known to be a close ally of the health secretary, Wes Streeting. “I think you are a good man fundamentally, who cares about the right things, however I have seen first-hand how that is not enough,” Phillips said in her resignation letter.

“The desire not to have an argument means we rarely make an argument, leaving opportunities for progress stalled and delayed.”

Alex Davies-Jones, the victims minister, resigned shortly after Phillips. The communities minister Miatta Fahnbulleh was the first minister to resign from Starmer’s government, calling on him to quit.

Fahnbulleh, who is close to the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, said she would “urge the prime minister to do the right thing for the country and the party and set a timetable for an orderly transition”. The MP for Peckham said the message on the doorsteps at local elections was that the prime minister had “lost the trust and the confidence of the public”.

Phillips said she had several examples of where the government had failed to grasp the moment. “Over a year ago I presented solutions, long worked on by brilliant civil servants, that would end the ability for children in the UK to take naked images of themselves. Ninety-one per cent of online child sex abuse is self-generated by children groomed, tricked and exploited in to abuse.

“We could stop this abuse. It has taken me a year to get you to agree to even threaten to legislate in this space. Not legislate, just threaten. This is the definition of incremental change. Nothing bold about it. The announcement was meant to be in March.”

Davies-Jones wrote in her resignation letter: “The scale of the electoral defeats at the Senedd Cymru and across the United Kingdom have been catastrophic. The country has spoken and we must listen.

“We waited 14 years to get into power and change the lives of those we represent. The time now is for bold, radical action. I implore you to act in the country’s interest and set out a timetable for your departure.”

The Labour MPs have publicly called for Starmer to stand down after dire local and devolved election results across England, Wales and Scotland last week.

Cabinet ministers did not speak out against the prime minister at Tuesday’s meeting. But the Guardian understands that four senior cabinet ministers – Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, John Healey, the defence secretary, and the deputy prime minister, David Lammy – were among those who spoke to Starmer on Monday.

Some told the prime minister he should oversee an orderly transition of power after the crushing election defeats risked ringing the death knell on his premiership.

Others discussed with Starmer how they should take a “responsible, dignified, orderly” approach to what may follow. Several others, including Richard Hermer and Steve Reed, urged him to fight on.

Earlier on Tuesday, Darren Jones, a close ally of Starmer, said the prime minister was “listening to colleagues” who were asking him to set out a timetable for departure but would make his own decisions about the way forward, the prime minister’s chief secretary said on Tuesday.

He warned the prime minister’s rivals that it was a “gruelling” job. “Anybody who thinks that they can just walk into the job of prime minister and, like the second coming of the messiah, fix all of our problems probably hasn’t really thought carefully enough about how difficult it is,” he said.

Asked if Starmer would be leading Labour into the next election, Jones said: “I’m not going to get ahead of any decision that the prime minister may or may not take.

“He was very clear yesterday that he will not be walking away, as some of my colleagues have asked him to do. We’ve got over 400 Labour MPs in the House of Commons. I think there are now 70 who have raised concerns publicly.”

Jones told Times Radio that most MPs wanted to focus on using the time in government to deliver Labour’s policies. “We have to work together then as a party in this new political era of five-party politics, of the rise of populist parties in our country, to be able to set the course for winning that next election.”

Asked if the king’s speech would still happen on Wednesday, he told Sky News: “Yes, as far as I’m aware, the king’s speech is going ahead tomorrow.

“We’ve been working very hard to bring together a programme of bills for the next session that meet the challenges that we face as a country and it’s important that we get on with that work.”

Overnight, some Labour MPs began to voice public support for the prime minister. One, Neil Coyle, said he was “horrified at the elephant trap colleagues are falling into. Those who claimed council elections were about Keir had nothing to offer local communities.”

Another, Nick Smith, said. “A global security crisis and its economic impact on our country means we need political stability. Unity is strength.”