Catherine West Gives Starmer Cabinet Monday Deadline To Oust Him For Labour Leadership

Labour MP Catherine West has given Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet until Monday to challenge him for the party leadership, warning that if no senior minister steps forward she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself.

West, a former junior Foreign Office minister and MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet, told the BBC she would prefer the cabinet to “reorganise themselves” and put forward its “best communicator” to replace Starmer without a full leadership election.

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If no cabinet figure emerges by Monday, West said she would ask Labour MPs to back her as the formal challenger needed to start a contest, with Labour rules requiring 20% of the party’s MPs, currently 81 people, to support the move.

West said she already had 10 MPs prepared to back her and was “confident” more would come forward, while Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds warned that repeated leader changes in government “just generates instability and it militates against a focus on delivery.”

West’s deadline comes after Labour suffered heavy losses in English council elections and setbacks in the Welsh and Scottish parliaments, with the BBC describing the party as having been “battered at these elections.”

The ynetnews account says Labour lost more than 1,460 seats in English council elections, while in Wales Labour finished third in the Senedd behind Plaid Cymru and Reform UK and in Scotland the SNP won a fifth consecutive term as Labour finished a distant second tied with Reform.

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In the BBC’s framing, unions have also put Starmer on notice, with one union leader telling the outlet: “It’s been a slow motion car crash – we need a concrete promise that things will change.”

The BBC also quotes Starmer saying on Saturday that “We made unnecessary mistakes,” including not doing “enough to convince [the public] about the change that would impact them,” as the prime minister insisted he would not “walk away and plunge the country into chaos.”

The Independent lays out that there is no formal confidence vote procedure to oust a Labour leader, and instead a challenger would require the support of 81 MPs—20 per cent of the party in the Commons—to trigger a contest.

It says written nominations would need to be submitted to Labour general secretary Hollie Ridley, and that if a challenge succeeded Starmer would be on the ballot by default as the incumbent and would not need to gather nominations.

The Independent also describes the timeline decision as being up to the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee to set, while noting that if Starmer were to resign it would automatically start a contest for a new leader.

In parallel, the BBC reports that even Starmer’s most loyal ministers are pushing him to change “and fast,” as the party tries to turn around a situation in which “Millions of voters have told him they aren't impressed with what he's been doing in 22 months of government.”