Anas Sarwar has called for Keir Starmer to resign as Prime Minister (Alamy)
3 min read
Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar has called for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign.
Sarwar made the intervention in a press conference on Monday afternoon, in the latest blow to Starmer’s premiership.
PoliticsHome understands that Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan could follow Sarwar in calling for Starmer to step down.
Sarwar said “the distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change” and “the situation in Downing Street is not good enough”.
He said the decision to speak out against Starmer “is not easy and “not without pain” as he has “a genuine friendship with Keir Starmer”.
But he said his “first priority” had to be to his country.
Sarwar said: “We cannot allow the failures at the heart of Downing Street to mean the failures continue here in Scotland, because the election is not without consequence for the lives of Scots.
“The situation in Downing Street is not good enough. There have been too many mistakes. They promised they were going to be different, but too much has happened.
“Have there been good things? Of course there have many of them, but no one knows them and no one can hear them because they’re being drowned out.
“That is why it cannot continue.”
Sarwar said he had spoken to Starmer earlier on Monday and “it’s safe to say that he and I disagreed.”
His call for Starmer to quit comes after the Prime Minister lost his director of communications, Tim Allan, and his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, in less than 24 hours, with both resigning in quick succession.
McSweeney announced his resignation on Sunday over his role in the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.
The pressure on Starmer has been growing since his admission at PMQs on Wednesday that he knew about the ongoing friendship between Mandelson and paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein when the former was appointed as US ambassador.
Labour is expected to suffer significant losses at Scottish Parliament elections in May, with the party trailing both the Scottish National Party and Reform UK.
A Scottish Labour source told PoliticsHome that Sarwar wanted to be the first to make the call for Starmer to go to gain the maximum electoral advantage among the devolved leaders ahead of the Holyrood elections.
The source confirmed there have been conversations between Sarwar and allies of Health Secretary Wes Streeting, widely seen as a leading candidate to succeed Starmer, in the run-up to the decision to call for Starmer to quit, though the electoral factor was the key reason for his announcement.
Every member of the cabinet has publicly declared support for Starmer following Sarwar’s press conference, including Health Secretary Wes Streeting, as has former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “Keir Starmer is one of only four Labour leaders ever to have won a general election.
“He has a clear five-year mandate from the British people to deliver change, and that is what he will do.”
Additional reporting by Sienna Rodgers
