Labour MP warns cabinet ministers - 'Topple Keir Starmer today or I will"

A Labour MP has put cabinet ministers "on notice" that if they don't topple Keir Starmer , she will. Catherine West, a former junior foreign office minister, gave ministers until Monday to decide among themselves who the next leader should be. "This afternoon I would like the cabinet to come round the table and elect a new leader for themselves," she said. "We need someone from within the cabinet to step forward as the leader and then we will have a new leader of the party without having to have a leadership election." If not, she said, she would put herself forward and ask Labour MPs to back her for the leadership. Any leadership challenger would need a minimum of 81 names of fellow Labour MPs to back them to trigger a leadership contest. Ms West says she already has ten. She said she had been "surprised" that leadership rivals including Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner had held their fire so far. And she suggested the PM could be shifted into a a role "he might enjoy, perhaps an international role." Ms West said: "I'm putting people on notice: if I don't hear by Monday morning of some leadership hopefuls, I will be asking everybody in the Parliamentary Labour Party to put a name against my name. I need eighty names. ... Because we need to get this ball rolling. I have ten. That's because I only thought about this this morning, because no one else who is a genuine hopeful is coming forward. But if I have to do it myself, I'm confident that enough people would come forward to trigger the beginning." She added: "My preferred option is for the Cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there's plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role. Then for others to come to the fore who can communicate the message, who are very able, so we can have minimum fuss. Let's get out there in the television studios, let's get out there talking to people, about this election result. What they didn't like, what can we do to be better, and then go forward with those proposals. The building blocks of the Party that Keir gave us between 2019 and 2024, that part of the project is finished. Now we need to bring on the person who can really sell Labour values and sell our programme." Ms West has been Labour's MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet since 2015. She was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Indo-Pacific from the July 2024 general election until September last year.