{"id":579652,"date":"2026-05-12T10:35:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579652\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T10:35:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T10:35:08","slug":"starmer-allies-voice-support-as-they-leave-cabinet-meeting-after-pm-says-he-will-get-on-with-governing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/579652\/","title":{"rendered":"Starmer allies voice support as they leave cabinet meeting after PM says he will ‘get on with governing’"},"content":{"rendered":"

How can MPs trigger a leadership contest? And is 81 actually the magic number?published at 11:15 BST<\/p>\n

11:15 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Harry Farley
Political correspondent<\/p>\n

In his words to cabinet, the prime minister said: \u201cThe Labour Party has a process for challenging a leader and that has not been triggered.\u201d<\/p>\n

In saying that, he\u2019s dared his leadership rivals to publicly challenge him.<\/p>\n

In the Labour party\u2019s rules, there is no formal role for a vote of no confidence. That was demonstrated in 2016 when Labour MPs held a vote of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn but he refused to step down.<\/p>\n

The only way for Labour MPs to trigger a leadership contest is for 20% of them to publicly back a challenger. With the current size of the party in parliament, that means 81 Labour MPs would need to coalesce behind one name.<\/p>\n

At the moment about 80 MPs have urged the prime minister to step down, or set out a timetable for his departure.<\/p>\n

But, crucially, they are not united in who they want to replace Starmer.<\/p>\n

Many calling for an orderly timetable to the prime minister\u2019s resignation hope that would give Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, enough time to find a seat and return to Parliament. Others wanting Starmer to go immediately back Wes Streeting or Angela Rayner, hoping a quick contest would prevent Burnham from having the time to become an MP and so be able to run.<\/p>\n

So far, none of his rivals in Parliament have publicly challenged him. And the prime minister is effectively saying to them, in the words of John Major in 1995, \u201cit is time to put up or shut up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How can MPs trigger a leadership contest? And is 81 actually the magic number?published at 11:15 BST 11:15…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-579652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579652","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=579652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}