Any member of Parliament would need the support of 20% of their colleagues to spark a leadership contest.
“That has not been triggered,” Starmer told Cabinet, effectively challenging any contenders to make their move.
“I take responsibility for these election results and I take responsibility for delivering the change we promised,” Starmer said. But he echoed the remaining loyalists who say a leadership contest would be distracting at a time when the country needs real solutions to its economic stagnation.
“The past 48 hours have been destabilizing for government and that has a real economic cost for our country and for families,” Starmer said.
Even so, just hours after he spoke, his safeguarding minister Jess Phillips resigned her post and told Starmer his time was up.
“I’m not sure we are grasping this rare opportunity with the gusto that’s needed,” she wrote in an open letter, “and I cannot keep waiting around for a crisis to push for faster progress.”
That followed Miatta Fahnbulleh, a junior minister, resigning and telling Starmer “to do the right thing for the country” and set out a timetable for a leadership transition.
Other ministers emerging from No. 10 early Tuesday remained loyal.
“The prime minister is going to continue with his job, as he should,” Pensions Minister Pat McFadden told the waiting news media. He said that no one had openly challenged Starmer around the large oval table inside.
Tom Baldwin, a former Labour communications director who wrote a biography of Starmer and knows him well, told NBC News “it’s looking very rocky at the moment” for the embattled leader. He described Starmer as “a very stubborn and proud man” who “won’t want to be forced out like this.”
The prime minister “feels a strong sense of duty that this is a really bad time for the party to be embarking on an inward-looking leadership election,” Baldwin said. “We are on the cusp of a possible recession, energy shortages, and there’s a war going on in the Middle East which affects our security and our economy.”
Starmer will “dig his heels in quite hard, but whether that is enough stop him going is another matter,” Baldwin said.
