Ex-minister tells UK cabinet to boot Starmer or she’ll challenge him herself

Catherine West’s ultimatum comes amid calls for his resignation after Labour’s crushing defeat in local elections

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, reeling from a crushing local election defeat, faced a new setback to his leadership on Saturday when a former minister said she would challenge him for the top job if no one else stepped forward.

Starmer’s Labour Party recorded the worst losses of a governing party in municipal polls since 1995, prompting a growing number of his ‌own lawmakers to call on him to quit.

To try to shore up his position in the party earlier on Saturday, he named two influential Labour grandees as advisers, former prime minister Gordon Brown and former deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman.

But just hours later, Labour lawmaker Catherine West, a former minister, told BBC Radio that she wanted the cabinet to work out a plan to replace Starmer by Monday, or she would challenge him for the position herself.

“If … there are no leadership hopefuls who come forward tomorrow, then Monday morning I will put my name forward to stand for the ⁠leader of the Labour Party,” she said.

As the extent of the defeat emerged, more than 20 lawmakers publicly and privately ‌called on Starmer to set out a timetable for his departure. Asked whether he would stand down he told British media that was not the right thing to do.