Manchester: An expat Australian in the UK parliament has vowed to launch a formal leadership challenge against Prime Minister Keir Starmer to force a decision on his fate by Monday after voters spurned the party in local elections.
Catherine West, a Labour MP since 2015, took the extraordinary step in a bid to force cabinet ministers to dump Starmer and choose a new leader, escalating the pressure for swift change when party members are agonising over the government’s direction.
Her move sets a timetable on a leadership spill when more than 30 backbenchers have called on Starmer to quit despite his declaration that he will not “walk away” from the job.
In a bid to demonstrate his agenda for staying in office, Starmer recruited former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown to his government by naming him a special adviser on global finance.
While the job is not a formal ministry, it gives Brown a high-profile role in a part-time and unpaid position when Britain’s is running annual deficits and public sector net debt is 94 per cent of GDP. (In Australia, net debt is 34 per cent of GDP).
Populist leader Nigel Farage and his right-wing Reform UK party delivered a catastrophic defeat to Labour and the Conservative Party in the local elections, seizing power at several councils and building a base to try to win national government.
West went public with her plan for a spill by releasing a video to the BBC on Saturday afternoon (early on Sunday AEST), saying she would put herself forward if cabinet ministers did not replace Starmer this weekend.
“I would like the cabinet to come around the table and elect a leader among themselves without humiliating the current leader, Keir Starmer,” she said.
“He also should have a role, perhaps doing international affairs, but 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 that cannot happen, and 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, and I will be seeking the 81 names that are needed to take to the party chair, and I will begin a leadership election.”
Any potential challenger needs at least 81 signatories from within the parliamentary party – equivalent to 20 per cent of elected MPs – to trigger an election by thousands of party members.
But the party is badly divided over the best leadership contender and none have been willing to step forward during months of backbiting and anonymous briefing about a spill.
While some MPs claimed last week that Health Secretary Wes Streeting had 81 recruits who were willing to force a leadership challenge, that group is yet to go public if it exists.
The two other contenders named in the media as potential leaders are former deputy leader Angela Rayner, who is the subject of an investigation into mistakes with her tax returns, and Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who is not in parliament and wants a Labour MP to resign so he can gain a seat in Westminster.
West, 59, who was born in Victoria and grew up in Sydney, entered politics after moving to the UK in the 1990s. She was elected to the House of Commons in 2015 by winning a constituency in north London, toppling a Conservative minister.
She rose to the front bench when Labour was in opposition, but was sacked by the leader at the time, Jeremy Corbyn, for breaking with the leader and voting against a key step towards Brexit. She then became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Indo-Pacific when Starmer formed government after the 2024 election, but lost that post in a reshuffle last September.
Labour has 403 members in the House of Commons, highlighting the difficulty for West in gaining the numbers if cabinet rejects her demand and she has to act on her threat by seeking the signatories for a leadership spill.
Under party rules, in an election for the leadership – and therefore the prime ministership when the party is in government – every member has one vote. This includes MPs, so there is no greater weight put on the votes of those in the parliamentary Labour Party.
When the party voted on the deputy leadership last year, 87,407 members voted for Lucy Powell – a senior figure on the left – and 73,536 voted for Bridget Phillipson, who was seen as aligned with Starmer.
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.