{"id":420540,"date":"2026-05-10T07:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T07:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/420540\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T07:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T07:23:11","slug":"starmer-under-pressure-as-mp-calls-for-ministers-to-launch-leadership-bid-or-she-will-herself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/420540\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer under pressure as MP calls for ministers to launch leadership bid, or she will herself"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Starmer under pressure as MP threatens leadership challengepublished at 06:56 BST<\/p>\n<p>06:56 BST<\/p>\n<p>      Media caption, <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Watch: Catherine West challenges Keir Starmer<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Challenge Starmer by Monday, or I will &#8211; that&#8217;s the ultimatum Labour MP Catherine West issued to Keir Starmer&#8217;s cabinet yesterday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If a minister doesn&#8217;t make a move, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself, she said yesterday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In an exclusive interview with the BBC, she said her preferred option was for the cabinet to put forward their &#8220;best communicator&#8221; to replace Starmer, avoiding a leadership election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If they don&#8217;t do that by Monday, she will seek the support of 81 Labour MPs &#8211; the number needed to challenge Starmer as leader.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, said she already had 10 MPs prepared to back her, but she was &#8220;confident&#8221; enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This morning, West is speaking to the BBC&#8217;s Laura Kuenssberg from 09:00 BST, alongside Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, shadow housing secretary James Cleverly, Reform UK\u2019s deputy leader Richard Tice and Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iowerth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">You&#8217;ll be able to watch live on this page &#8211; and our writers will being you all the key lines and analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starmer under pressure as MP threatens leadership challengepublished at 06:56 BST 06:56 BST Media caption, Watch: Catherine West&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-420540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}