Catherine West’s call for leadership contest ‘completely wrong’, says Bridget Phillipson
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is speaking on Sky’s Sunday with Trevor Phillips.
Asked about Catherine West’s leadership challenge, she says:
Catherine is a great colleague, and I’ve known her a long time. And I have real respect for Catherine.
On this one, I do part company with her. I think she’s got this completely wrong.
She says Labour got a “real kicking” from voters.
But she says she does not think a leadership contest is the answer.
I don’t think … a leadership contest and all of the problems that that would bring is the answer.
Key events
Tice claims millions of voters ‘enormously grateful’ to crypto billlionaire who donated £5m for Farage’s security
When Laura Kuenssberg asked Richard Tice about Nigel Farage’s failure to declare the £5m donation that he received before the 2024 general election, Tice also claimed that was a media smear.
Tice claimed that Farage did not have to declare the donation because it was a personal gift to fund his security. And he claimed, after voters did become aware of it (following the Guardian revelation), “they said, ‘We want more Nigel, we want more Reform leadership, we more Reform councils’.”
Tice said that £5m was probably “not enough” to pay for Farage’s security for the rest of his life. And he claimed that millions of voters were “enormously grateful” to Christopher Harborne, the crypto billionaire, who donated the money.
This was a personal gift, based around safety and security.
And, frankly, I’m delighted, I’m grateful. And millions and millions and millions of British voters are enormously grateful …
This complied with the rules. And thank heavens a wonderful person who’s given that gift is utterly determined to keep Nigel safe and Nigel secure.
When it was put to him that Farage has a problem because he has a track record of not declaring donations properly, Tice replied:
The problems that we have is an establishment media that is going to try anything all the time to do us down.
Richard Tice refuses to condemn Reform UK councillor over racist rant, implying it’s just ‘daft’ comment or media smear
Kuenssberg asked about the candidate in Sunderland, now a councillor, who had talked of Nigerians being melted to fill potholes. She said the BBC were going to raise this before Bridget Phillipson raised the subject. (See 9.34am.)
Tice replied:
We have an internal party process, but here’s the point … We’ve heard all this smearing and sneering. Let me tell you what people really concerned about …
I’m going later to a campaign against the scourge of antisemitism which is the greatest threat facing us here in, particularly in London, but elsewhere across the UK. That’s what people are really concerned about. We’ve stood up strongly for the Jewish community.
And if people have said daft things, of course it will be looked at.
But, let’s just remember, we’ve got a a party that has been successful that is now the antisemitic Green party.
Q: Is someone who suggested that Nigerians should be melted down to fill potholes someone that you are happy to have representing the party?
Tice replied:
This weekend we are celebrating our incredible successes. Like any party, you have internal party processes to look at where people have said or done the wrong thing.
Q: So you condemn those remarks?
Tice replied:
I condemn anything that is wrong and inappropriate.
Then, as Kuenssberg tried to ask another question, Tice pressed on:
The point is voters have heard all of this smearing and this sneering against all of us, and they voted for more Reform because they want action. They want delivery. They’re sick of the failures of the Tories and Labour that have impoverished them because of mass immigration and because of net stupid zero.
Kuenssberg put it to Tice that asking him about a comment made by a Reform candidate was not a smear, but Tice again refused to directly condemn the remark. He said:
I’ve just said, we look at all these things, of course.
But the reality is voters are furious with the failures of Labour, the failures of the Tories. And they’ve said we want more reform, more success, more reducing backlogs and send in potholes. And they want Nigel to be the next elected prime minister of the United Kingdom.
Laura Kuenssberg started her interview with Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader, by putting it to him that, because Reform’s vote share was actually down in the elections, it might have peaked.
Tice suggested she should be congratulating the party for what it had achieved.
Unite leader Sharon Graham says she’s ‘very sure’ Starmer won’t lead Labour into next election
Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, told Kuenssberg that she was “very sure” that Keir Starmer would not lead Labour into the next general election.
And she said that the problem with Labour’s response to the election defeats on Thursday was that ministers were just arguing that they needed to do a better job of explaining what they had done. She went on:
If you had the achievements in stereo, in everybody’s house in Britain, full blast, it still isn’t enough for what’s going on.
Of course, you can say breakfast clubs are a good thing. Of course you can.
But on their own, these achievements are not the same as having a different economic direction and a different political direction.
Asked if Starmer would lead Labour into the next election, Graham said:
That will not happen, I am very sure of that.
Graham accepted that, in the union movement as a whole, there were different views as to whether Starmer should stay.
But she said Unite wanted an orderly transition to a new leader.
Bridget Phillipson was the next interviewee on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, and she repeated many of the points that she made on Sky earlier.
But she also said she was really concerned about the division we are seeing in Britain. She said Reform UK did “incredibly well” in Sunderland, where they took control of the council. But she said that one of their candidates, who was elected as a candidate, is on record as suggesting “we should melt down Nigerians to fill in potholes”. She said that sort of racism had to be challenged.
Q: Is it true that Andy Burnham’s supporters have asked you to pull back because they don’t want to have a leadership contest now?
West did not answer the question. Instead she said she thought it was important to “move quickly” because “uncertainty” would be bad for Labour.
West sidesteps question about whether she would get enough MP backers to mount leadership challenge herself
Q: We spoke to Labour MPs, and most said you had no chance of getting the numbers needed for a leadership challenge?
West said she was a “fair person”. She said she would listen to what Starmer says in the speech planned for tomorrow.
If I’m still dissatisfied, I will put out my email to the parliamentary Labour party asking for names.
And the reason I’m doing that is not for me. It’s for working people. Because Labour is the only party that can beat Reform. We are the only national force that can take on Reform across the whole of the UK, and that will be the job coming up in the 2028 or ‘29 general election.
Q: But do you think you can get the numbers?
West said: “We will find out.”
She said Anna Turley, chair of the Labour party, was a good friend. She said she had asked her for a timetable for an orderly transition into a leadership contest.
And she repeated her point about wanting women to consider standing.
Kuenssberg started her main interview by asking West why she was asking the cabinet to act.
West replied:
What I’d like the cabinet to do is to reflect on the result from Thursday, where the voters sent us a very strong message that we are not good enough.
If you a school failing an inspection report, you would take the head out, wouldn’t you? Or you take the chair of the council out. The same goes for a hospital inspection or in a company. The CEO would have to take responsibility and the board would have to basically bring on new leadership.
West tells Phillipson in BBC studio she should consider standing for Labour leadership
At the start of her programme Laura Kuenssberg addressed Catherine West and Bridget Phillipson who were sitting waiting for the main interviews.
Kuenssberg told West she wanted a cabinet minister to challenge Keir Starmer. She said she was sitting next to one of them. What was her message to her?
West replied:
Well, there’s nothing stopping Bridget from standing. Why are all the men better than the women? We do need some senior women to step forward and to challenge for what is going to be a really difficult two and a half years between now and the general election, and also to take us into that second term.
In response, Phillipson said:
I love you dearly, Catherine, but I just disagree on this one.
On the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, said Labour was at risk of becoming “extinct”. It abandoned the working class, and the working class then chose to abandon Labour. Labour needed “a completely different economic direction and political direction”, she said.
At the end of the interview Trevor Phillips asked Phillipson if she thought Starmer would lead the party into the next election, and if she wanted him to.
Phillipson replied: “Yes on both counts.”
In the panel discussion in the studio after, the journalists Anne McElvoy from Politico and Patrick Maguire from the Times both said they thought Phillipson did not show 100% enthusiasm as she answered the question in the way she did.
Q: Angela Rayner says that Shabana Mahmood’s plan to extend the amount of time immigrants have to wait until they can apply for indefinite leave to remain. Will those plans change?
Phillipson said that was subject to consultation.
But it is right that we take action on immigration. It is also right that we demonstrate to the public that not only can we control the borders, we control who lives in our country.
Trevor Phillips told Phillipson that Harriet Harman and Gordon Brown were serious people, and friends of his. But he mocked the idea that people who did not vote Labour last Thursday might have changed their mind if they had known Harman and Brown were getting appointments as government envoys.
Phillipson said that Harman and Brown were “tremendously talented people” who had “a lot to offer”.
Q: Starmer on Friday talked about Labour having made mistakes. But he did not say what they were. What have been the party’s biggest mistakes?
Phillipson said there had been a few. One of the biggest was cutting winter fuel payments for most pensions, she said.
Another problem was being “too gloomy and too negative”. She explained:
Early on people knew the country was in a mess. They didn’t need us to remind us to to remind them in such detail that the country was in a mess.
Labour losing support because people don’t think it has delivered change they were promised, Phillipson says
Asked if she had a message for Labour MPs asked to support West’s leadership challenge, Phillipson said:
What I heard [from voters during the election] was not a desire for a leadership contest, for the Labour party to spend more time talking amongst ourselves. What I heard loud and clear from voters was their deep sense of frustration that they’d voted for change in 2024. They were hopeful that that change would be delivered, and they don’t feel that we as a party, or we as a Labour government, have delivered what they wanted.
West not likely to get backing she needs to launch leadership challenge, Phillipson says
Asked what would happen if Catherine West is able to get all the signatures she needs to launch a leadership challenge, Phillipson replied: “I don’t think that will happen.”
But she said that was not the point, because the party did need to respond to the election results.
Catherine West’s call for leadership contest ‘completely wrong’, says Bridget Phillipson
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is speaking on Sky’s Sunday with Trevor Phillips.
Asked about Catherine West’s leadership challenge, she says:
Catherine is a great colleague, and I’ve known her a long time. And I have real respect for Catherine.
On this one, I do part company with her. I think she’s got this completely wrong.
She says Labour got a “real kicking” from voters.
But she says she does not think a leadership contest is the answer.
I don’t think … a leadership contest and all of the problems that that would bring is the answer.
Starmer insists he won’t quit as PM, as former minister Catherine West seeks to trigger Labour leadership contest
Good morning. There were many predictions for Labour’s future ahead of the English, Scottish and Welsh elections, which have been terrible for the party, but there is one outcome foreseen by no one: a leadership challenge by Catherine West.
West, MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet and a junior Foreign Office minister until she was sacked in the reshuffle last year, announced yesterday afternoon that, unless a cabinet minister comes forward to challenge Starmer for the Labour leadership by tomorrow morning, she will do it herself. She would need the support of 81 Labour MPs to trigger a contest; there is no evidence that she has those numbers and (for reasons that are probably a mystery to anyone under the age of 50 – more on that later) she is being described as a stalking horse.
While there may not be 81 Labour MPs who want to see West as party leader, there probably are many more than 81 who want to see Starmer replaced as leader befor the next election. Almost 40, by one count, have been going public since the elections on Thursday saying as much. But, in their comments, mostly they have been adopting the same line as St Augustine took on chastity; ‘Lord, give me a Labour leadership contest, but not yet.’
Why? Some of them have been saying Starmer should be given a chance to show that he can turn things round. But mostly the Labour MPs speaking out are on the soft left of the party and believe Andy Burnham would be the best replacement. They want a commitment from Starmer that he will stand down in the medium term, so that Burnham has time to get elected to parliament first so he can stand as a candidate.
West is trying to speed up the process. This is seen as fatal to Burnham and potentially helpful to Wes Streeting, the health secretary, and Angela Rayner, the former deputy PM, who would probably be the lead candidates in a contest held now. West has dismissed suggestion that she is acting on behalf of someone else. Yesterday she said there was “plenty of talent” in the shadow cabinet capable of providing leadership. Since Thursday, Rayner has not yet commented on the election defeats; Streeting has said he supports Starmer.
The prospect of an early contest explains why some Labour MPs on the soft left are now reviving talk of trying to get Ed Miliband to stand. Here is our story by Peter Walker and Jessica Elgot.
Starmer insists he will not give up without a fight. He has given an interview to the Observer and he told the paper that he was engaged in a “10-year project of renewal” and that his intention was to lead the party into the next general election and serve a full second term.
He said:
I’m not going to walk away from the job I was elected to do in July 2024. I’m not going to plunge the country into chaos.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, is interviewed on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News. The other guests are: Richard Tice, the Reform UK deputy leader; Rhun ap Iorwerth, the Plaid Cymru leader set to become the next first minister of Wales; James Cleverly, the shadow housing secretary; and Stephen Flynn, who is stepping down as SNP leader at Westminster having been elected to the Scottish parliament.
9.30am: Catherine West, the former Labour minister, is interviewed on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg. Phillipson, Tice, ap Iorwerth and Cleverly on on too.
1pm: A rally against antisemitism is happening outside Downing Street organised in support of Britain’s Jewish community.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (from 9am today, until about lunchtime), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Leave a Reply