Ariane

@JamesMelville Who??

It’s being reported that multiple Labour MPs believe Al Carns is preparing a leadership bid if Keir Starmer quits. Good move. He is an ex Royal Marine. From a working class background in Aberdeen and is relatable and communicates in a way that not many Labour MPs are able to.

@MedDave48 @Peston @breeallegretti A leadership election is just causing chaos. People want real issues to be solved. Noone cares about personal ambitions of MPs, it will only feed Reform.

@Arianed4cg @Peston @breeallegretti Starmer needs to resign. He is sending the country into chaos, betrayed the people who elected him,and don't want him now. Destroyed the Labour Party. And betrayed the people who voted, democratically, to Leave the EU. He is not who we voted for. Good riddance.

I have had the same conversations with MPs as @breeallegretti. The health secretary Wes Streeting, soon to be ex health secretary, is poised to launch his leadership bid tomorrow

@wesstreeting @Anna_Soubry You need to support the PM not stab him in the back. All of you need to be ashamed of yourselves. Labour voters deserve better. We didn’t vote for a replay of the Tories number 10 revolving door. We voted for @Keir_Starmer to lead us. 😡

@wesstreeting now you are just leading the infighting of Labour.

@wesstreeting You are not working on anything now. You have seriously let the country down

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Labour will never privatise the NHS. We’ll work with the private sector to cut NHS waiting lists while we build the staff, the equipment and the technology the NHS needs to treat patients on time.

@DaveWardGS Noone in the country wants a repeat of the division and chaos from the Tories. Pull together and get on with the job. The country needs a strong labour government focussed on working people’s lives, not infighting! That gets nothing done and feeds Tory Press!!

We are at a crossroads. Labour must unapologetically become the party of the working class again. If the party isn’t willing to rise to that challenge then we need to make them.

@johnmcdonnellMP Noone in the country wants a repeat of the division and chaos from the Tories. Pull together and get on with the job. The country needs a strong labour government focussed on working people’s lives, not infighting! That gets nothing done and feeds Tory Press!!

I called for time for serious discussion, no precipitous coup & fully democratic process if leadership election.Instead Wes Streeting has launched coup for fear of a democratic process & whilst candidates are blocked. Handing leadership to Mandelson’s protege is gift to Reform

@Steven_Swinford @breeallegretti @patrickkmaguire @Geri_E_L_Scott Who are these allies?

EXCLUSIVE from @breeallegretti @patrickkmaguire @Geri_E_L_Scott Wes Streeting has told allies that he is preparing to resign and trigger a leadership contest as soon as tomorrow The health secretary confronted Starmer this morning during a meeting ahead of the King’s Speech that lasted just 16 minutes over the turmoil engulfing the Labour Party Allies of Streeting who have spoken to him directly said that he has made clear that he is “going to go for it”. One said that he is likely to resign on Thursday and mount a formal challenge for the leadership One Streeting ally who has spoken to him said: “He is going to go for it. He’s going tomorrow.” Discussions have also been held to prepare for MPs to sign Streeting’s nomination papers, according to one of those with knowledge of the plans. Another who has spoken to him said that claims by Starmer’s allies that he has “bottled it” are wide of the mark and that he made clear in private that he will make a bid for the leadership A spokesman for Streeting said: “Wes is the Health Secretary, he is proud of his record of falling waiting lists and a recovering NHS. He is not planning to say anything following his meeting with the Prime Minister that might distract from the King’s Speech.” thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…

@BethRigby Noone in the country wants a repeat of the division and chaos from the Tories. Labour should pull together and get on with the job. The country needs a strong labour government focussed on working people’s lives, not infighting! That gets nothing done and feeds Tory Press!!

Asked whether Wes Streeting will remain health secretary for the rest of the week, the PM spokesperson said PM "has full confidence" in him

@DeborahMeaden Well said!

Totally and right now I want to see our PM focused on the job in hand… not the revival of the old “ infighting” ways…

@wesstreeting Support the PM Wes. Noone in the country wants a repeat of the division and chaos from the Tories. Pull together and get on with the job. The country needs a strong labour government focussed on working people’s lives, not infighting! That gets nothing done at all!

@wesstreeting Support the PM Wes. Noone in the country wants a repeat of the division and chaos from the Tories. Pull together and get on with the job. The country needs a strong labour government focussed on working people’s lives, not infighting! That gets nothing done and feeds Tory Press!!

Under Labour, NHS waiting lists are falling, ambulances are arriving faster, there are more GPs, and higher patient satisfaction. Lots done, lots to do. The Health Bill will boost the impact of our investment and modernisation: cutting bureaucracy to invest in patient care.

@BBCPolitics @BBCNews BBC again constantly barraging is with propaganda about this PM. Relentless bias. No more news on Farage’s corruption!

"No one seems to have the names to stand up against Keir Starmer... let's get on with the business of running this country," Deputy PM David Lammy tells reporters in Downing Street Follow latest developments: bbc.in/4nHK6tP

@CatherineWest1 If you were putting the country first you would standby your PM instead of creating chaos and division last seen in the Tory governments. Noone in this country wants a leadership election which detracts from real issues we are facing. Just causing more delays to action!

I am hereby giving notice to No10 that I am collecting names of Labour MPs to call on the Prime Minister to set a timetable for the election of a new leader in September.

I have listened to the Prime Minister's speech this morning. I welcome the renewed energy and ideas. However, I have reluctantly concluded that this morning’s speech was too little too late.

@zarahussain999 If you were putting the country first you would standby your PM instead of creating chaos and division last seen in the Tory governments. Noone in this country wants a leadership election which detracts from real issues we are facing. Just causing more delays to action!

I read Labour MPs are forcing Keir Starmer to resign. Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham are favourites to be the next PM But I predict Shabana Mahmood will be the UK's next prime minister. She’s one of the best candidates to lead Britain.

@Miatsf If you were putting the country first you would standby your PM instead of creating chaos and division last seen in the Tory governments. Noone in this country wants a leadership election which detracts from real issues we are facing. Just causing more delays to action!

This morning I sent my letter of resignation to the Prime Minister. I urge the Prime Minister to do the right thing for the country and the Party and set a timetable for an orderly transition.

@labourlewis If you were putting the country first you would standby your PM instead of creating chaos and division last seen in the Tory governments. Noone in this country wants a leadership election which detracts from real issues we are facing. Just causing more delays to action!

Westminster may finally be about to have the argument it has spent 40 years avoiding. If Andy Burnham returns to Parliament, the political class will know how to cover it. A leadership drama. Who is up, who is down, whether Keir Starmer can survive, whether Labour is once again turning inward. The familiar machinery of Westminster psychodrama will whirr into life. That framing misses the larger point. Burnham’s possible return matters not because of what it says about Labour’s leadership, but because of what it reveals about the British state: what it can still do, what it has forgotten how to do, and what kind of country it must become if it is serious about resilience. Britain is finally having a more serious conversation about national security. The Strategic Defence Review, the pivot back towards Europe, the recognition that hybrid warfare turns citizens, infrastructure and civic institutions into part of the front line: all of it marks a real shift in how the state thinks about its own survival. But at the centre of that conversation lies a question that the defence establishment, and most of Westminster, still does not want to answer. What kind of society do you need to be before resilience is possible? Finland is now the model everyone cites. Comprehensive security. Whole-of-society defence. Civilian preparedness woven into military planning. British strategists admire the Finnish system and ask how it might be copied. But the admiration stops short of the uncomfortable question: why does it work there? The answer is not geography or history or some mysterious quality of Finnish national character. It is structural. Nearly 80% of Finns say they would defend their country if attacked. In Britain, the figure is closer to 33%. That gap is not an accident. It exists because Finland has spent decades building a society in which people have a genuine stake in what they are being asked to defend. Energy is affordable. Housing is available. Public services function. Institutions command trust. The Nordic welfare state is not a sentimental add-on to Finnish security policy. It is the foundation of it. You cannot ask people to defend a country that does not work for them. Britain has spent 40 years building the opposite. The privatisation of essentials – energy, water, transport, housing – transferred wealth upwards from households to shareholders while making the basics of everyday life more expensive. The state, stripped of the tools to control costs at source, has been reduced to compensating after the fact. Out of every pound the Government spends on housing, 88p goes to subsidising private rents. Just 12p goes to building homes. When energy prices spiked in 2022, the Government spent £40bn in a single winter cushioning the blow, not because it had a resilient energy system but because it lacked one. Debt interest now consumes more than £100bn a year. Britain has the highest debt servicing costs in the G7: the compounding price of financing failure rather than eliminating it at source. This is what bond market dependency actually looks like. It is not an abstract fiscal condition. It is the consequence of a state that has been stripped of the supply-side tools that would let it cure the problems it now pays, indefinitely, to manage. And here is the paradox the Treasury refuses to confront. The countries that borrow most cheaply are often those that have retained the public investment model Britain abandoned. The spread between UK and Dutch borrowing costs has widened sharply not because markets fear public investment, but because they have lost confidence in a model that borrows to subsidise private failure while never addressing its causes. This is the connection Britain’s defence debate is missing. The familiar framing, that social spending is what must be sacrificed to meet the NATO target, is not merely politically toxic. It is strategically illiterate. Cutting the foundations of social cohesion to fund the hardware of national defence is self-defeating. You end up with planes and no pilots, submarines and no crew, an army that cannot recruit because the society it is meant to protect has stopped believing in itself. I think Burnham understands this. That is why his programme is more interesting than the leadership gossip suggests. What he has been building in Greater Manchester – public control of transport, expanded social housing, investment in the productive foundations of the city economy – is not a nostalgic rerun of postwar nationalisation. It is a proof of concept for a different kind of state. The Bee Network is the most visible example, but the argument behind it travels. A state that can shape markets is not condemned to subsidise their failures. A state that produces affordable energy through public generation does not need to spend tens of billions cushioning every price shock. A state with a serious public housebuilding programme does not need housing benefit to rise endlessly in line with private rents. A state that builds institutions people can see, use and trust begins to restore the civic confidence on which resilience depends. The real constraint on Britain is not money. It is capacity: the workers, institutions, supply chains and public purpose needed to turn national will into national renewal. Britain’s tragedy is not that it has run out of money. It is that after 40 years of hollowing out the state, it has made itself less able to act. Burnham’s critics will reach for the familiar warning. Borrow more, spend more, spook the gilt markets, repeat the Truss disaster. But this misunderstands both the problem and the opportunity. Bond markets do not have ideological preferences. They have functional ones. They prefer clarity, credible revenue streams, productive investment, and a state with a plan. What they punish is not public ambition but incoherence. A properly designed productive state programme would not be a leap into fiscal fantasy. It would be an attempt to end the much costlier fantasy that Britain can keep borrowing to compensate for broken markets while refusing to repair them. The defence conversation and the economic conversation need to become the same conversation. Finland did not build national resilience by choosing between welfare and security. It built resilience by understanding that they are inseparable: that a country in which the basics work, where people trust one another and the institutions around them, is one that can face danger with something more than anxiety. That is the deeper argument Burnham represents. Westminster will be tempted to treat him as a leadership story. It should resist the temptation. The question is not whether Burnham can return to parliament. It is whether Britain can return to the idea that the state should make life work. Because a country that cannot command the confidence of its people cannot truly defend itself.

@campbellclaret Noone in this country wants a leadership election which detracts from real issues we are facing. Just causing more delays to action!

Whatever complaints MPs have about Keir Starmer, they are now descending into the kind of headless chickenry that - whatever and whoever the outcome - will make the situation even worse for Labour. If there is a grand plan starring Catherine West and a few PPSs, then it doesn’t feel terribly thought through. A period of calm would do none of them any harm. The general election is a fair way off. The next legislative programme is about to be unveiled. There are better ways to reach such an important decision and better times too. You are MPs not commentators who exist to feed a frenzy.

@KayBurley All we had was chaos and division last seen in the Tory governments. Noone in this country wants a leadership election which detracts from real issues we are facing. Just causing more delays to action!

I have never been a fan of Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. Top politicians need to realise it’s not just the message, but how you sell it that cuts through to the public psyche. His policies may well have been among the best for the country and some undoubtedly were but Sir Keir never seemed able to land them with the public. Voters rarely reward policies they don’t emotionally connect with. Yesterday’s reset speech didn’t help. What exactly was he trying to tell us. Now, in what could be the death throes of his tenancy in No 10 after less than two years at the top, I do find myself feeling for him. He pulled himself up by his bootstraps and reached not one but two of the highest offices in the land. So, as the wannabes circle the Cabinet table this morning, positioning for what may come next, spare a thought for a man who genuinely wanted to make a difference, but never quite mastered the art of making his case. Fair?