Most senior Labour determine to date calls for Starmer’s head | Politics | News | EUROtoday

The most senior Labour determine but has reportedly damaged ranks to demand Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation, declaring the Prime Minister has made his place unimaginable by refusing to confess he was incorrect.

Maurice Glasman — the peer and political thinker who established the Blue Labour motion — is known to have stated that Sir Keir had backed himself right into a nook from which there was no escape.

He is reported to have stated: “If you can’t own your mistakes, you can’t move. All he needed to say was ‘we made an error’. But he’s completely stuck in saying he hasn’t done anything wrong, so this can’t go away. It’s as straightforward as that, really.”

Pressed on whether or not the Prime Minister ought to go, Lord Glasman was allegedly unequivocal. “He cannot conceivably continue as a credible Prime Minister any longer. And that’s all because he cannot say ‘I made a mistake, I’m sorry’.”

Vetting scandal

The intervention comes as Sir Keir faces mounting fury over the revelation that intelligence officers had formally really helpful towards granting Lord Mandelson safety clearance earlier than he was put in as Britain’s ambassador in Washington, experiences The Telegraph. The Prime Minister has stood agency on his declare that he was by no means knowledgeable the vetting course of had produced an opposed discovering.

That place has drawn scepticism from inside his personal ranks. Sir Keir has individually conceded that he went forward with the Mandelson appointment whereas already conscious of the peer’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein — a concession that has solely deepened the questions surrounding his decision-making.

The timing may hardly be worse. A management problem was already being overtly mentioned forward of native elections now lower than three weeks away, with projections suggesting Labour may shed as much as 2,000 seats on May 7.

A warning that went unheeded

Lord Glasman had tried to go off the disaster months earlier than it exploded into public view. Early in 2025 he put his issues in writing, sending a memo on to Morgan McSweeney — at that time Sir Keir’s most senior aide, who would later depart his publish over the identical scandal — setting out the risks posed by Mandelson’s Epstein associations and calling on each males to desert the nomination solely.

His verdict on the peer on the time was blunt: “the wrong man at the wrong time in the wrong place.”

His warnings went unheeded. Speaking on Sunday, he made clear he believed the implications had been now unavoidable.

“So how critical is it? He [Sir Keir] is still stumbling on with all this, but it’s just not going to go anywhere. May 7 is going to be another debacle. I can’t see how he carries on after the May elections.

“He may limp on to the summer season however the level is we’re doing all this whereas there is a battle in Iran, there is a battle in Ukraine and the place is the political management?”

Downing Street pointed Sunday to remarks Sir Keir made in March in which he accepted personal responsibility for the Mandelson decision. The Prime Minister said at the time: “It was me that made the error… and it is me that makes the apology to the victims of Epstein.”

The significance of Lord Glasman’s name for resignation extends past his private views. As the architect of Blue Labour — a motion that has repeatedly pressed Sir Keir to take more durable strains on welfare, defence spending and migration — his public break with the Prime Minister indicators a rupture that stretches properly past the Westminster village.