A fourth minister has called for Starmer to resign. Zubir Ahmed was Health Innovation and Safety minister under Wes Streeting:
“Dear Prime Minister,
It is with a heavy heart that I write to you to resign from your government as Health Innovation and Safety Minister.
It has been the honour of my life to bring my twenty years of frontline experience as an NHS surgeon to government. In my time as a minister, I have been proud of delivering a life sciences sector that is now reputationally world class with turbocharged clinical trials delivering innovative life changing medicines to UK patients faster than ever before. I have also been proud to use my clinical experience to accelerate the digital transformation of our NHS and had been planning the rollout of the NHS online hospital later this year. And it has been truly humbling to start the work of correcting some of the wrongs suffered by those harmed by valproate and women harmed by pelvic mesh. I therefore truly wish I could have continued to finish the critical work that I started.But as I raise my gaze above the daily work of ministerial life, it is clear to see that whatever the magnitude of individual achievements and progress, they are now being dwarfed and undermined by a lack of values-driven leadership at the centre. It is clear from recent days, that the public across the UK has now irretrievably lost confidence in you as Prime Minister.
This was apparent in the recent Scottish Parliament elections where on door after door your name was specifically cited as the driving reason why Labour voters of 2024 would not vote for Scottish Labour in 2026. The noise created at the centre of the government you lead, inadvertently became the midwife for the delivery of an incompetent fifth term SNP government, and one which will now inflict more division and decay on my constituents of Glasgow South West. This is an outcome that is as intolerable as it was avoidable.
Throughout the entirety of my surgical career, I have been guided by the principles of precision, clarity, candour and above all else an aspiration for excellence. Those are the principles that I have attempted to bring to Parliament and to my ministerial office. And it is those principles that sadly lead me to conclude that your continuation in office is wholly untenable.
I will be forever grateful for your decency and tireless work in turning our party around, in imbibing in us all a sense of national duty before party. You once also said our work is urgent. I now ask you for the sake of that urgency and that national duty, to step aside and set a timetable for an expedient and orderly transition to new leadership that commands the confidence of our country.”
Ticking up…
Sky News pol ed Beth Rigby attempted to confront minister James Murray with a boom mic only to be blocked by her own wiring set up. At one point Rigby mournfully pointed out that she had spilled two cups of coffee all over the floor. Not to mention the wiring…
Pretty unusual for Cabinet ministers to storm up to the cameras immediately after the meeting. Regurgitating the same language Starmer himself used this morning…
Starmer’s words at the top of today’s Cabinet meeting were, according to the readout:
“As I said yesterday, I take responsibility for these election results and I take responsibility for delivering the change we promised.
The past 48 hours have been destabilising for government and that has a real economic cost for our country and for families.
The Labour Party has a process for challenging a leader and that has not been triggered.
The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a Cabinet.”
He’s trying to stay. This is about to get interesting…
Cabinet is ongoing at the time of going to pixel. 81 MPs (and counting) have called for Starmer to go. To be a fly on the wall in Number 10…
Former Treasury minister and adviser to Burnham in the Makerfield campaign Lord Jim O’Neill, who has turned down a role in his government, said Burnham’s first statement Commons was:
“The last thing investors wanted to hear… gilt yields have risen by a 0.25% in one day, which is a lot. We’ve not had that since Liz Truss days… If your country is under the focus of ‘can they come up with a sensible fiscal strategy’ on a day when the markets think ‘well no, you’re not showing any sign of it’ you’re going to have a tough day…if it stays like this your mortgage rate is going up.”