Key events
Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature
Starmer’s operation has ‘gone into the bunker’ after cabinet reshuffle, says Labour MP
Backbench Labour MP Olivia Blake said it feels like Keir Starmer’s operation has “gone into the bunker”.
Discussing last week’s reshuffle, she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It does feel like they’ve gone into the bunker, but they’ve actually thrown half the people out of the bunker at the moment, and we need to get back to a much more inclusive parliamentary Labour party (PLP), inclusive discussions happening with ministers and better representation around the cabinet table.
After a disastrous week in which Angela Rayner resigned and Peter Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to Washington, Labour MPs have begun to ask whether Starmer could be challenged as prime minister.
A number of MPs said a challenge was likely if local and Welsh elections went badly next May. Some said the one thing now protecting Starmer was the lack of an agreed replacement.
After a disastrous week in which Angela Rayner resigned and Peter Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to Washington, Labour MPs have begun to ask whether Starmer could be challenged as prime minister. Photograph: Ben Whitley/PA
Blake said last week’s reshuffle saw a “narrowing” of representation of different parts of the party in ministerial positions:
People just felt that it was such a large reshuffle and, you know, people who were actually delivering in their posts were moved. And it just kind of felt like there was a real narrowing in who was sat around the table, and that can’t be positive, because I think there’s a sense that the leadership don’t like to be challenged.
Asked about the No 10 operation, she said it was “really embarrassing” if Starmer was not told about Lord Mandelson’s emails to Jeffrey Epstein soon enough, amid suggestions Downing Street was aware of the messages before the prime minister defended the ex-ambassador on Wednesday.
Blake said:
We saw through the welfare reforms that they did the same again. They didn’t tell Keir, they didn’t tell the prime minister how bad it was on the back benches. So, you know, he was putting statements out saying, ‘oh, some people can sound off’.
Well, the strength of feeling in the PLP was much, much deeper than that. And again, I just think that whoever’s gatekeeping the information to the prime minister needs to stop. They need to be getting stuff to him much earlier.
She also said backbenchers are frustrated after a number of “own goals” for the government. Blake, the MP for Sheffield Hallam, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it is “frustrating” that the good work the government has done is “not cutting through” and added:
Instead, we’ve had a number of kind of own goals, and that has meant that we’ve slipped heavily in the polls, and that we seem to be more interested in focusing on each other rather than what’s in the best interest of the country at the moment.
More on this story in a moment. Here are some other key developments:
The killing of Charlie Kirk is being used by Tommy Robinson to mobilise support before what is expected to be Britain’s largest far-right rally in decades, which will include speakers from Britain, the US and Europe.
Senior Labour MPs and the UK’s largest anti-fascist campaign group have called on Keir Starmer to mount a more heartfelt defence of diversity and anti-racism. They say they fear that Labour is not yet putting its “heart and soul” into the battle against Nigel Farage and the far right. Hope Not Hate’s chief executive has written a letter to Starmer in the lead up to a planned far-right demonstration in London on Saturday, demanding the prime minister speak up more against hate and racism.
Lucy Powell has called for a “change of culture” inside Starmer’s Downing Street to make it more inclusive and better connected to MPs, promising that as Labour’s deputy leader she would when needed deliver difficult truths to the prime minister. Speaking to the Guardian after she secured 117 MP nominations in the battle to replace Angela Rayner, Powell said a sequence of what she called “unforced errors” by the government had left many Labour MPs and members frustrated.
The bill to legalise assisted dying is a “licence to kill” that puts vulnerable people at risk, Theresa May has said, as the legislation was debated in the House of Lords for the first time. The former prime minister said she opposed the bill because she said people in England and Wales with disabilities, chronic illnesses or mental health conditions could feel under pressure to end their lives, and “because there is a risk that legalising assisted dying reinforces the dangerous notion that some lives are less worth living than others”.
Updated at 04.27 EDT