Keir Starmer has pushed back against the growing speculation about his political future by insisting that the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs support him and want him to remain as prime minister. The pushback came at the end of one of the most turbulent weeks of his time in government and it did little to silence the critics who are becoming more vocal about whether he can continue leading the party.
Speaking to the Sunday Times, Starmer said that in politics there is always talk and that what rarely gets reported is the large number of MPs who are loyal, supportive and simply focused on doing their jobs. He said those MPs had waited a long time to be in government and had no interest in feeding speculation to journalists. The BBC also reported on the growing pressure Starmer faces heading into the May local elections.
The episode at the centre of the crisis involves Lord Mandelson, whom Starmer appointed as the UK's ambassador to the United States. It emerged that security officials had flagged serious concerns about granting Mandelson the required vetting clearance and that those concerns were never passed on to the prime minister before the appointment was confirmed. Starmer said he only learnt of a recommendation against clearance after the fact and was furious that the information had not reached him.
His response was to sack Sir Olly Robbins, the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office who had oversight of the process. Robbins told MPs this week that he had not been informed of a formal recommendation to deny clearance but only that officials were leaning against it. He said he approved the vetting subject to certain conditions being put in place. Starmer rejected the idea that his own handling of the situation had been inadequate and said he could not be expected to go back and question every piece of information put in front of him.
The Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp used the Sunday political programmes to call on Starmer to resign. He said the decision to appoint Mandelson in the face of security concerns was disqualifying for a prime minister. He told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that Labour MPs who had not yet spoken up needed to find the courage to act and remove him themselves. A handful of Labour MPs have publicly called on Starmer to go though the wider parliamentary party has not moved against him.
The political calculation for Labour MPs remains unchanged. Several have privately expressed unhappiness with Starmer's leadership but the absence of a clear alternative candidate makes a formal leadership challenge unlikely in the near term. The gap between private frustration and public action has not yet closed and until it does Starmer retains the numbers he needs to stay in his position even if the atmosphere around him continues to deteriorate.
