Pressure grows on UK PM Starmer as Scottish Labour leader urges him to quit
Starmer’s communications chief also steps down a day after his chief of staff resigned amid fallout from Epstein file revelations.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing more pressure to resign as the leader of the Scottish Labour Party has urged him to quit over the fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Labour’s leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, said on Monday: “The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change.”
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His comments followed the departure of Starmer’s communications chief Tim Allan, who resigned on Monday “to allow a new No 10 team to be built”.
The move came a day after Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, also quit.
Starmer has come under criticism for appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States despite his known links to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who died in a US prison by suicide.
The prime minister on Monday emphasised the importance of moving forward after the resignations.
“We must prove that politics can be a force for good. I believe it can. I believe it is. We go forward from here. We go with confidence as we continue changing the country,” Starmer told his Downing Street staff.
Meanwhile, his spokesperson said Starmer has no plans to stand aside. “The prime minister is … getting on with the task of delivering change across the country,” the spokesperson told reporters.
Despite the growing calls for his resignation, Starmer has received some backing from senior members of his government.
David Lammy, deputy prime minister and justice secretary, said: “We should let nothing distract us from our mission to change Britain, and we support the prime minister in doing that.”
In a social media post on X, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “With Keir as our Prime Minister we are turning the country around.”
Angela Rayner, his former deputy who is seen as a leading leadership candidate, offered him her “full support”.
“I urge all my colleagues to come together, remember our values and put them into practice as a team. The Prime Minister has my full support in leading us to that end,” she said on X.
The leader of the opposition Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, accused Starmer of being unable to run his government.
“He’s like a plastic bag blowing in the wind. We need him to get a grip, and if he can’t do it, then someone else in the Labour Party needs to do that, or they should have an election,” she told Sky News.
Mandelson has been under investigation since his name appeared in files on the Epstein investigation released by the US Department of Justice.
He was sacked by Starmer in September over his friendship with Epstein and last week also quit the Labour Party and House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK Parliament. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it is reviewing an exit payment made to him after he was fired.
The prime minister is later expected to address a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party amid anger over his appointment of Mandelson despite knowing his links with Epstein continued after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences.
