{"id":419243,"date":"2026-02-11T04:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T04:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/419243\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T04:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T04:13:12","slug":"no-10-confident-sarwar-acted-alone-in-call-for-starmer-to-go-labour-party-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/419243\/","title":{"rendered":"No 10 confident Sarwar acted alone in call for Starmer to go | Labour party leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"

Downing Street is increasingly confident that Anas Sarwar\u2019s call for Keir Starmer to stand down<\/a> was not part of a coordinated plot by a leadership rival to bring down the prime minister, the Guardian understands.<\/p>\n

The Scottish Labour<\/a> leader spoke to several cabinet ministers including Wes Streeting, as well as former deputy leader Angela Rayner, ahead of his explosive intervention on Monday, but sources said he had not revealed his plans.<\/p>\n

No 10 had been braced for further calls for Starmer to go, including from Eluned Morgan, Labour\u2019s first minister in Wales, along with ministerial resignations in Westminster. They immediately acted to shore up the prime minister.<\/p>\n

But insiders revealed that initial fears that Streeting, the health secretary, was coordinating an operation with Sarwar to bring down the prime minister quickly fell away when the alleged putsch fizzled out.<\/p>\n

One minister close to Streeting said: \u201cNo 10 seems to have an obsession with Wes. They are saying that he bottled it without any evidence he was going for it. Wes is a smart political operator who would have known that if you call for the PM to go and don\u2019t have a plan it falls flat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sources close to Sarwar confirmed that he was acting alone, and in what he felt was Labour\u2019s best interests in Scotland<\/a>. He had been reflecting on the move for several weeks and only decided to act on Monday. \u201cThis is our intervention \u2013 not a structured attempt to oust Keir,\u201d one said.<\/p>\n

\"ScottishScottish Labour leader calls for Keir Starmer to resign as PM \u2013 video<\/p>\n

One Scottish MP who had spoken to Sarwar added: \u201cThe judgment was, the strategy of being close to Keir hasn\u2019t worked, he might as well roll the fucking dice. Keir is extremely unpopular, in Scotland as much as anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scottish Labour sources sought to justify Sarwar\u2019s risky decision by arguing a challenge to Starmer\u2019s leadership could still materialise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are people in the cabinet and Westminster who want to run,\u201d said one. \u201cThe place has been buzzing on this for weeks now. It has crystallised recently and I would give it to the end of this week to see what happens. I\u2019m not convinced there will be a reset moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sarwar and his team were furious, allies said, that some of the prime minister\u2019s internal rivals believed it was sufficient to wait for Labour\u2019s defeats in the Scottish, Welsh and English local government elections to challenge him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve worked very very hard [to win],\u201d they said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to be a sacrificial lamb because people haven\u2019t got the gumption to say to Keir you\u2019ve got to go now.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the move alarmed Labour politicians in the Scottish parliament, who fear his intervention was mistimed. \u201cIt\u2019s a very high-risk strategy. You\u2019ve got to succeed. It didn\u2019t,\u201d said one senior figure at Holyrood.<\/p>\n

graph<\/a><\/p>\n

The move raises short-term challenges for Scottish Labour\u2019s credibility, with the latest polls showing the party is languishing in third place behind the Scottish National party and Reform UK, with only 12 weeks until May\u2019s Holyrood election.<\/p>\n

Several ministers said they did not believe Sarwar was acting in a vacuum and that they had been expecting him to get public support from Scottish MPs. \u201cI think it is pretty clear something went wrong,\u201d one said. Another MP added: \u201cWe were expecting more but everybody else seemed to disappear off into the hills.\u201d<\/p>\n

Downing Street, aware of the anger among Scottish MPs ahead of the May elections, has attempted to ease relations by inviting them to No 10 for talks on Tuesday, and to Chequers on Thursday to see the prime minister. MSPs have not been invited.<\/p>\n

Downing Street is also keeping a close eye on the situation in Wales, where several Labour MPs said Morgan felt that the prime minister was damaging their chances in May.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody was expecting her to come out and row in behind Anas and then she didn\u2019t. We know that she feels that Keir is a drag anchor on what\u2019s happening in Wales,\u201d one MP added.<\/p>\n

Sources close to Morgan said she had spent all Monday afternoon in meetings in Cardiff and that Sarwar had only contacted her after his explosive press conference. She then messaged Starmer to say he had her support.<\/p>\n

Allies denied the first minister had her head in the sand over Starmer\u2019s unpopularity in Wales. \u201cShe does respect and like Keir, but that doesn\u2019t mean she blindly follows him,\u201d one said.<\/p>\n

\"IsIs Starmer out of the woods after Labour showdown? – The Latest<\/p>\n

Douglas Alexander, the Scottish secretary in Starmer\u2019s cabinet, portrayed the rift as a dispute between two people \u201cwho have strong and clear opinions, but who do not bear grudges\u201d, as he sought to calm the controversy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Downing Street is increasingly confident that Anas Sarwar\u2019s call for Keir Starmer to stand down was not part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-419243","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}