Ex-minister Josh Simons calls for Starmer to be replaced, saying under PM ‘we constantly talk big, then act small’
Josh Simons, the former Cabinet Office minister, has become the latest Labour MP to call for Keir Starmer to quit. In an article published online by the Times he says that Labour’s problem is that “we constantly talk big, then act small” and he says that Starmer has “lost the country”.
Simons used to run the Labour Together thinktank before the general election and he resigned as a minister after it emerged that, when he was in charge, the thinktank had smeared journalists investigating its finances. Until then, he was seen as one of the rising stars of the 2024 intake, and his article is one of the most substantial contributions published since Thursday from a Labour MP saying the leadership needs to change.
Simons, MP for Makerfield, says he was struck by how working class voters turned against the party last week.
In Wigan, Labour lost every ward. Our vote tanked but turnout also increased, in some cases massively. Working class people queued up to vote against politicians who have built and defended the status quo.
Towns like mine birthed the Labour party. In Britain’s heartlands, workers, unions, leaders like Keir Hardie, and thinkers like the Webbs came together to secure freedom and justice for everyone. Now, people whisper that high turnout in working class estates is bad for Labour. When a party fears the people it was created to represent, it is marching towards extinction.
Identifying what has gone wrong, Simons says Labour under Starmer has not been sufficiently radical.
Our party, like many others, is stuck in a politics of incrementalism that cannot meet the moment. We defer to elite interests and stakeholders. We ditch radical reforms that would give people power to change their own lives. We lack a bold agenda to harness transformative technologies like AI for public good. The foundations of our security — energy, water, housing and roads — have crumbled while lining the pockets of billionaires who control them. We Labour MPs must square up to the truth. These elections were not a normal mid-term drubbing, they were an unequivocal judgment that our actions do not meet the moment. We constantly talk big, then act small.
Simons has worked closely with Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, and he is not calling for a leadership contest now. He is calling for a gradual transition to a new leader, the strategy being advocated by soft-left Labour MPs who want Burnham to be given time to return to the Commons before Starmer quits. (See 8.19am.) Simons says:
I do not believe the prime minister can rise to this moment. He has lost the country. He should take control of the situation by overseeing an orderly transition to a new prime minister.
Simons does not name his preferred candidate. In the articile he says “to avoid leadership chaos, senior figures across factions should come together to decide the best way forward”.
Referring to what a new leader should do, Simons says:
We in Labour console ourselves by saying we build things, where our opponents only tear them down. But too often we reject the demolition required to do the building. We must embrace risk. In a crisis, instead of closing our eyes and hunkering down, we must be alert, listen, adapt and take action.
As a model to follow, he cites the US president who oversaw the New Deal in the 1930s, FD Roosevelt. (In his new book on how to take on populists, the Labour MP Liam Byrne also cites Roosevelt as the sort of leader Labour should emulate.)
LabourList has a good list of all the Labour MPs who have said, or suggested, that Starmer should stand down since Thursday.
Key events
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Starmer says there will be ‘no holding back’ in call for UK to be ‘closer to Europe’, ahead of big reset speech tomorrow
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John McDonnell claims Catherine West being influenced by ‘some in shadows’ who want early contest
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Labour has ‘disconnected’ from working people, and will only deliver change if it challenges the wealthy, CWU leader says
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Ex-minister Josh Simons calls for Starmer to be replaced, saying under PM ‘we constantly talk big, then act small’
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Tice claims millions of voters ‘enormously grateful’ to crypto billlionaire who donated £5m for Farage’s security
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Richard Tice refuses to condemn Reform UK councillor over racist rant, implying it’s just ‘daft’ comment or media smear
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Unite leader Sharon Graham says she’s ‘very sure’ Starmer won’t lead Labour into next election
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West sidesteps question about whether she would get enough MP backers to mount leadership challenge herself
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West tells Phillipson in BBC studio she should consider standing for Labour leadership
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Labour losing support because people don’t think it has delivered change they were promised, Phillipson says
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West not likely to get backing she needs to launch leadership challenge, Phillipson says
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Catherine West’s call for leadership contest ‘completely wrong’, says Bridget Phillipson
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Starmer insists he won’t quit as PM, as former minister Catherine West seeks to trigger Labour leadership contest
Starmer says there will be ‘no holding back’ in call for UK to be ‘closer to Europe’, ahead of big reset speech tomorrow
There are two speeches coming up this week that in theory may determine Keir Starmer’s future.
Technically, the most important is the king’s speech on Wednesday, at the state opening of parliament (the formal start of the next parliamentary session). The king will list all the main bills the government hopes to pass over the next 12 months. Many laws will change as a result.
But a king’s speech rarely contains any surprises, because the government signposts well in advance (via white papers etc) what bills are going to be included. The House of Commons library has even published a briefing on what the speech is likely to include.
In practice, much more important will be what Starmer says in the speech he is due to give tomorrow. Labour MPs will be looking at it for evidence that he is responding to the scale of the challenge presented by the Thursday elections.
Starmer has already said that he wants a more ambitious, closer relationship with the EU and, in his Observer interview, he signals that this will be part of his message tomorrow. He says:
We have to be closer to Europe. I want to be full-throated about this, not holding back, no half measures in what I’m saying. We have to be bolder in the arguments that we are making in relation to our economy and in relation to our young people.
In her write-up of her interview, Rachel Sylvester says the government is close to agreeing a youth mobility scheme with the EU. She says:
Under the plan, which is expected to be up and running by 2027, Britons under 30 will be able to live or work in the EU. Young Europeans will also be allowed to come to the UK, with the number capped at “tens of thousands” a year. The new “youth experience visa” is set to give 18 to 30-year-olds the right to base themselves abroad for two to three years.
Negotiations are continuing and the UK is still refusing to agree to EU demands that its students pay the same university tuition fees as domestic students, rather than the higher rate paid by foreign students.
But the prime minister said a deal would be unveiled before the summer. “Brexit has held back our young people,” he said. “They should be free to work, study, travel in European countries, just as I was able to when I was growing up. That has been snatched away from young people because of Brexit. I’m not going to let Brexit stand in the way of their opportunities.”
Is there anything that Starmer can say tomorrow that will persuade sceptical Labour MPs that he has the potential to turn things round? It will be hard. Many of the MPs saying that Starmer deserves a chance to deliver the change needed sound as if they don’t actually believe he can do it but they do want a contest delayed until Andy Burnham can win a byelection.
One move that would be dramatic, and that would change the way Starmer is perceived, would be a commitment to join an EU customs union, or the single market – or even eventually to rejoin the EU itself. But Starmer has repeatedly said he feels bound by his manifesto red lines which ruled out these options for this parliament.
How might Keir Starmer be removed? Kiran Stacey and Alexandra Topping have a guide to how it might happen.
John McDonnell claims Catherine West being influenced by ‘some in shadows’ who want early contest
John McDonnell, the Labour MP who was shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, has criticised Catherine West for trying to trigger a leadership contest now. In a post on social media, he suggested that people in the “shadows” were influencing her. He said:
Catherine West is reflecting the upset in her constituency where so many seats were lost but I don’t think this is right approach. We need to discuss how we go forward & I worry some in shadows want to exploit her concerns and bounce us before we have a proper democratic process.
McDonnell was one of the first Labour MPs, as the results came in on Friday morning, to call for Keir Starmer to be replaced. But he said there should be an “orderly transition”, taking months (the position favoured by MPs wanting Andy Burnham to get the job – see 8.19am.)
McDonnell’s comment about people in the “shadows” allegedly exploiting West was probably a reference to Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and his supporters. Streeting would benefit from a contest taking place while Burnham is unable to be a candidate, and Streeting is strongly distrusted and disliked by leftwingers like McDonnell.
Labour has ‘disconnected’ from working people, and will only deliver change if it challenges the wealthy, CWU leader says
Yassin El-Moudden
Yassin El-Moudden is a Guardian reporter.
Another union leader has this morning accused the government of letting down working people. As Unite’s Sharon Graham criticised Keir Starmer on the BBC (see 9.42am), Dave Ward, the general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), was speaking to delegates at the union’s conference in Bournemouth.
Referring to the many Labour councillors who lost their seats in the elections this week, he said:
There’s nobody in this room who doesn’t understand that that wasn’t down to the work of Labour councillors out on the ground. That was down to the simple fact and truth that Labour has completely and utterly misread a lot of the situations that it faces and it has disconnected from working-class people …
Surely now, everybody knows with the situations that we face on inequality, on wealth and power, if you haven’t got the courage to stand against and challenge the wealthy and the powerful, and redistribute wealth and power back to working people, then don’t stand up and say that you’re gonna deliver real change because it ain’t gonna happen.
Ex-minister Josh Simons calls for Starmer to be replaced, saying under PM ‘we constantly talk big, then act small’
Josh Simons, the former Cabinet Office minister, has become the latest Labour MP to call for Keir Starmer to quit. In an article published online by the Times he says that Labour’s problem is that “we constantly talk big, then act small” and he says that Starmer has “lost the country”.
Simons used to run the Labour Together thinktank before the general election and he resigned as a minister after it emerged that, when he was in charge, the thinktank had smeared journalists investigating its finances. Until then, he was seen as one of the rising stars of the 2024 intake, and his article is one of the most substantial contributions published since Thursday from a Labour MP saying the leadership needs to change.
Simons, MP for Makerfield, says he was struck by how working class voters turned against the party last week.
In Wigan, Labour lost every ward. Our vote tanked but turnout also increased, in some cases massively. Working class people queued up to vote against politicians who have built and defended the status quo.
Towns like mine birthed the Labour party. In Britain’s heartlands, workers, unions, leaders like Keir Hardie, and thinkers like the Webbs came together to secure freedom and justice for everyone. Now, people whisper that high turnout in working class estates is bad for Labour. When a party fears the people it was created to represent, it is marching towards extinction.
Identifying what has gone wrong, Simons says Labour under Starmer has not been sufficiently radical.
Our party, like many others, is stuck in a politics of incrementalism that cannot meet the moment. We defer to elite interests and stakeholders. We ditch radical reforms that would give people power to change their own lives. We lack a bold agenda to harness transformative technologies like AI for public good. The foundations of our security — energy, water, housing and roads — have crumbled while lining the pockets of billionaires who control them. We Labour MPs must square up to the truth. These elections were not a normal mid-term drubbing, they were an unequivocal judgment that our actions do not meet the moment. We constantly talk big, then act small.
Simons has worked closely with Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, and he is not calling for a leadership contest now. He is calling for a gradual transition to a new leader, the strategy being advocated by soft-left Labour MPs who want Burnham to be given time to return to the Commons before Starmer quits. (See 8.19am.) Simons says:
I do not believe the prime minister can rise to this moment. He has lost the country. He should take control of the situation by overseeing an orderly transition to a new prime minister.
Simons does not name his preferred candidate. In the articile he says “to avoid leadership chaos, senior figures across factions should come together to decide the best way forward”.
Referring to what a new leader should do, Simons says:
We in Labour console ourselves by saying we build things, where our opponents only tear them down. But too often we reject the demolition required to do the building. We must embrace risk. In a crisis, instead of closing our eyes and hunkering down, we must be alert, listen, adapt and take action.
As a model to follow, he cites the US president who oversaw the New Deal in the 1930s, FD Roosevelt. (In his new book on how to take on populists, the Labour MP Liam Byrne also cites Roosevelt as the sort of leader Labour should emulate.)
LabourList has a good list of all the Labour MPs who have said, or suggested, that Starmer should stand down since Thursday.
Here is Rowena Mason’s story from Bridget Phillipson’s interviews this morning.
Tice claims millions of voters ‘enormously grateful’ to crypto billlionaire who donated £5m for Farage’s security
When Laura Kuenssberg asked Richard Tice about Nigel Farage’s failure to declare the £5m donation that he received before the 2024 general election, Tice also claimed that was a media smear.
Tice claimed that Farage did not have to declare the donation because it was a personal gift to fund his security. And he claimed, after voters did become aware of it (following the Guardian revelation), “they said, ‘We want more Nigel, we want more Reform leadership, we more Reform councils’.”
Tice said that £5m was probably “not enough” to pay for Farage’s security for the rest of his life. And he claimed that millions of voters were “enormously grateful” to Christopher Harborne, the crypto billionaire, who donated the money.
This was a personal gift, based around safety and security.
And, frankly, I’m delighted, I’m grateful. And millions and millions and millions of British voters are enormously grateful …
This complied with the rules. And thank heavens a wonderful person who’s given that gift is utterly determined to keep Nigel safe and Nigel secure.
When it was put to him that Farage has a problem because he has a track record of not declaring donations properly, Tice replied:
The problems that we have is an establishment media that is going to try anything all the time to do us down.
Richard Tice refuses to condemn Reform UK councillor over racist rant, implying it’s just ‘daft’ comment or media smear
Kuenssberg asked about the candidate in Sunderland, now a councillor, who had talked of Nigerians being melted to fill potholes. She said the BBC were going to raise this before Bridget Phillipson raised the subject. (See 9.34am.)
Tice replied:
We have an internal party process, but here’s the point … We’ve heard all this smearing and sneering. Let me tell you what people really concerned about …
I’m going later to a campaign against the scourge of antisemitism which is the greatest threat facing us here in, particularly in London, but elsewhere across the UK. That’s what people are really concerned about. We’ve stood up strongly for the Jewish community.
And if people have said daft things, of course it will be looked at.
But, let’s just remember, we’ve got a a party that has been successful that is now the antisemitic Green party.
Q: Is someone who suggested that Nigerians should be melted down to fill potholes someone that you are happy to have representing the party?
Tice replied:
This weekend we are celebrating our incredible successes. Like any party, you have internal party processes to look at where people have said or done the wrong thing.
Q: So you condemn those remarks?
Tice replied:
I condemn anything that is wrong and inappropriate.
Then, as Kuenssberg tried to ask another question, Tice pressed on:
The point is voters have heard all of this smearing and this sneering against all of us, and they voted for more Reform because they want action. They want delivery. They’re sick of the failures of the Tories and Labour that have impoverished them because of mass immigration and because of net stupid zero.
Kuenssberg put it to Tice that asking him about a comment made by a Reform candidate was not a smear, but Tice again refused to directly condemn the remark. He said:
I’ve just said, we look at all these things, of course.
But the reality is voters are furious with the failures of Labour, the failures of the Tories. And they’ve said we want more reform, more success, more reducing backlogs and send in potholes. And they want Nigel to be the next elected prime minister of the United Kingdom.
Laura Kuenssberg started her interview with Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, by putting it to him that, because Reform’s vote share was actually down in the elections, it might have peaked.
Tice suggested she should be congratulating the party for what it had achieved.
Unite leader Sharon Graham says she’s ‘very sure’ Starmer won’t lead Labour into next election
Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, told Kuenssberg that she was “very sure” that Keir Starmer would not lead Labour into the next general election.
And she said that the problem with Labour’s response to the election defeats on Thursday was that ministers were just arguing that they needed to do a better job of explaining what they had done. She went on:
If you had the achievements in stereo, in everybody’s house in Britain, full blast, it still isn’t enough for what’s going on.
Of course, you can say breakfast clubs are a good thing. Of course you can.
But on their own, these achievements are not the same as having a different economic direction and a different political direction.
Asked if Starmer would lead Labour into the next election, Graham said:
That will not happen, I am very sure of that.
Graham accepted that, in the union movement as a whole, there were different views as to whether Starmer should stay.
But she said Unite wanted an orderly transition to a new leader.
Bridget Phillipson was the next interviewee on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, and she repeated many of the points that she made on Sky earlier.
But she also said she was really concerned about the division we are seeing in Britain. She said Reform UK did “incredibly well” in Sunderland, where they took control of the council. But she said that one of their candidates, who was elected as a candidate, is on record as suggesting “we should melt down Nigerians to fill in potholes”. She said that sort of racism had to be challenged.
Q: Is it true that Andy Burnham’s supporters have asked you to pull back because they don’t want to have a leadership contest now?
West did not answer the question. Instead she said she thought it was important to “move quickly” because “uncertainty” would be bad for Labour.
West sidesteps question about whether she would get enough MP backers to mount leadership challenge herself
Q: We spoke to Labour MPs, and most said you had no chance of getting the numbers needed for a leadership challenge?
West said she was a “fair person”. She said she would listen to what Starmer says in the speech planned for tomorrow.
If I’m still dissatisfied, I will put out my email to the parliamentary Labour party asking for names.
And the reason I’m doing that is not for me. It’s for working people. Because Labour is the only party that can beat Reform. We are the only national force that can take on Reform across the whole of the UK, and that will be the job coming up in the 2028 or ‘29 general election.
Q: But do you think you can get the numbers?
West said: “We will find out.”
She said Anna Turley, chair of the Labour party, was a good friend. She said she had asked her for a timetable for an orderly transition into a leadership contest.
And she repeated her point about wanting women to consider standing.
Kuenssberg started her main interview by asking West why she was asking the cabinet to act.
West replied:
What I’d like the cabinet to do is to reflect on the result from Thursday, where the voters sent us a very strong message that we are not good enough.
If you a school failing an inspection report, you would take the head out, wouldn’t you? Or you take the chair of the council out. The same goes for a hospital inspection or in a company. The CEO would have to take responsibility and the board would have to basically bring on new leadership.