The panicked phone calls Cabinet received ‘begging them not to humiliate’ Starmer

After a tortuous week of manoeuvrings from Sir Keir Starmer’s rivals, the Prime Minister’s closest allies were still pleading for calm on Friday in a desperate bid to avoid a “damaging” leadership battle. “I would just advise colleagues right now, take a breath, have a think about what happened to the Tories when they did this,” Housing Secretary Steve Reed urged his fellow MPs. Such words are likely to fall on deaf ears as both Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham weigh up their prospects of unseating Starmer and taking the keys to Downing Street. Shorts Starmer had been rocked on Monday when scores of his own MPs demanded he stand down, but it was later that evening when he realised just how much danger he was in. The Prime Minister was visited by a trio of senior Cabinet ministers, led by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, telling him his time was up and he should spell out a timetable for his departure the following day. It prompted frantic defensive action, with the Prime Minister’s aides putting out a call just before their weekly Cabinet the following day not to raise the issue of his leadership, despite the rapidly deteriorating situation. The Prime Minister knew that Tuesday’s Cabinet threatened to be a flashpoint, so rather than allow the likes of Mahmood and Streeting, then the health secretary, who was suggesting he was about to quite and challenge the PM, dominate proceedings, he told them he would meet each of them individually after the Cabinet had concluded. He then promptly rowed back on the offer and refused to see them face to face. One insider claimed that Starmer’s team had “begged” the Cabinet not to challenge him at the top of the meeting. ‘Shabana handed him the pearl revolver’ “It was briefed out that no one said anything to the PM during the Cabinet meeting, when we had all been called beforehand and begged not to humiliate him,” a Cabinet source said. Another Whitehall insider added: “Shabana Mahmood handed him the pearl revolver and he turned it on the Cabinet.” It led to the surreal situation of the Prime Minister chairing his Cabinet meeting by discussing the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and the Government’s plans for the economy, health and transport despite his Government collapsing around him. The desperate rearguard action at Cabinet had come 24 hours after an initial trickle and then a deluge of Labour MPs and ministers had called on him to stand down over the party’s disastrous performance in last week’s local elections. ‘It’s pathetic’ While a smattering of backbenchers had demanded he go in the immediate aftermath of the polls, the majority were still willing to give the man, who had delivered a landslide less than two years before, one last chance to set out his vision for the country in a make-or-break speech on Monday. It fell woefully short. “Shit,” was how one backbencher summarised it. “Poor,” was the less Anglo-Saxon view of another. By Monday evening scores of MPs had said enough was enough, with a handful of junior ministers choosing to resign in a bid to put further pressure on the Prime Minister. This prompted Starmer’s Cabinet shimmy on Tuesday morning. It was a move designed to buy time, knowing that King Charles III would be setting out his Government’s agenda at the State Opening of Parliament the next day. By Tuesday evening, it looked as though his ploy had worked as the coup began to peter out, prompting one frustrated MP to complain: “Is Shabana the only one with the balls to pull the trigger? It’s pathetic.” By Wednesday, all sides were keenly aware that all hostilities should be paused for the King’s Speech, in order to avoid embarrassing Charles. There was time, however, for Starmer and Streeting to hold a brief 16-minute chat in the morning, during which the health secretary said he would be standing down, having lost confidence in the Prime Minister. But the decision did little to spur Starmer into a charm offensive of his own ministers. Hours after his Streeting encounter, the Prime Minister was spotted at the Speaker’s King’s Speech reception in the state rooms. ‘He’s just too stubborn and lacks self-awareness’ To the surprise of many gathered, he and his wife Vic ignored the throngs of Labour MPs and made an immediate beeline for Alister Jack, the former Tory Scottish secretary. Starmer and Jack, now a Conservative peer, spent around 10 minutes together before the PM promptly left. For many of Starmer’s critics, it neatly summed up the Prime Minister’s failings. “He’s just too stubborn, and lacks the self-awareness you’d want from a leader,” one Labour insider said. If the Prime Minister had hoped that the King setting out his legislative agenda for the Government would give his fractious party pause for thought, he was badly mistaken. Streeting announced his resignation on Thursday, but rather than triggering an immediate leadership challenge, he calculated that he would have to allow Burnham into the race to have any legitimate mandate to lead the party. The State Opening of Parliament offered Starmer a firebreak on Wednesday (Photo: Kirsty Wigglesworth/Reuters) His decision sparked another round of defensive tactics from Starmer loyalists, with Government spinners phoning journalists to insist Streeting did not have the backing of enough MPs to mount a challenge. “Even Wes’s allies are fed up with him,” a Government source said. “Ed Miliband despises him and his politics and the likes of him and Lisa Nandy are not shedding any tears for Wes. The Cabinet is behind the PM.” Starmer himself was adamant that staging a change of leadership now would only return the country to the “chaos” overseen by the previous Tory administration, in response to Streeting’s resignation letter. Burnham must now take on Reform But hours later Burnham had revealed his own route back to Westminster after the Makerfield MP Josh Simons announced he was stepping down to make way for the Greater Manchester Mayor. Burnham must now hope to convince Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC) to allow him to stand in the by-election, and then there is the even greater challenge of seeing off an increasingly confident Reform UK. Nigel Farage’s party won all the council seats in the Wigan council elections last week, and needs to overcome a Labour majority of less than 5,000 to secure the Makerfield seat. “Makerfield will be tough,” a Burnham ally told The i Paper. “The NEC obstacle is still real as I wouldn’t trust some of them even if they are signalling they won’t block Andy.” But others were less pessimistic, pointing to Burnham’s name recognition in Greater Manchester. “There’s no real Muslim vote in Makerfield,” an MP from a nearby seat said, referring to the Greens’ success in winning the Muslim vote in their Gorton and Denton by-election victory over Labour in February. “Andy will smash Reform.” If he does then he will be able to claim to Labour MPs that he is the best person to see off the threat of Reform and that he should be made leader. It will be a difficult argument to resist, and one likely to doom the Prime Minister. As one MP mused during the turmoil this week: “On paper Keir Starmer ticked all the boxes for the job but was just completely the wrong person. He is completely incompetent. First he lost the doorstep, then he lost his MPs, we cannot now let him lose the country.”