Image source, PA Media

Elections

Last week saw disappointing results for Labour during the English local elections, and Scotland and Welsh parliamentary elections.

MP's challenge to Starmer

After the devastating results, Labour backbench MP Catherine West said on Saturday that if a cabinet minister did not challenge Sir Keir as party leader by Monday, she would attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. For this to happen, 20% of Labour MPs – 81 people – would have had to support her.

Starmer's speech

Attempting to claw back support, Sir Keir made a speech on Monday, admitting the government has "made mistakes", but pledging to prove "doubters" wrong.

Challenge climb-down

West backed down from her threat, instead saying: "I am collecting names of Labour MPs" calling on him to "set a timetable for the election of a new leader in September".

Calls for Starmer to go

And the calls have been steadily coming in. At least 72 Labour MPs have explicitly called for the PM to resign or to set out his departure timetable, the BBC has counted.

Resignations begin

Six ministerial aides have also been replaced after publicly calling for the prime minister to resign, or set out a timetable for his resignation.

Starmer also shown support

It's not all doom and gloom - Starmer has also received words of encouragement from ministers. Both Angela Eagle, MP for Wallasey and Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven MP Chris Ward say this is not the time for a new leader.

We're ending our live coverage for the moment, but you can catch up on all the latest news by clicking here.

We can bring you a quick look at the front pages of Tuesday's newspapers, all of which splash on the speculation over the future of Sir Keir.

"Cabinet turns on Starmer" is the Times' headline, reporting sources who say Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper are urging him to "set out a timeline for his departure". Additionally, the Daily Telegraph writes "Time to go, Cabinet tells Starmer".

The Daily Mail declares "government in chaos" over the leadership speculation. "Starmer's survival on the line" is the Guardian's take, "PM on the edge", writes the Express, and "Starmer on the brink", says the Sun.

"Dear PM, by order of the Traitors ... you have been murdered", says the Daily Star, a nod to the popular reality TV series. "You will be removed from Number 10," the paper writes underneath a hooded photoshopped image of former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

You can read the BBC's paper review for Tuesday here.

Image source, BBC Newsnight

Labour MP Jonathan Hinder says he believes "the prime minister is going", saying "no prime minister can survive this number of MPs losing confidence in him".

Telling BBC's Newsnight that he supports a change of leadership, he criticises Sir Keir's speech on Monday for its reference to free movement of young people in the European Union.

The speech was "at best tone deaf" and "at its worst, downright insulting", the MP says.

Hinder represents the east Lancashire constituency of Pendle and Clitheroe, winning the seat from the Conservatives at the 2024 general election, which was an area that voted leave at the 2016 EU referendum.

Despite Labour's 2024 landslide, he says Sir Keir "has never been an electoral asset".

"We need a new leader for the Labour Party and our country needs a new leader".

Newsnight

Cabinet ministers "may well" tell Keir Starmer to resign at their weekly meeting on Tuesday morning, Stephen Kinnock has told BBC Newsnight.

The health minister, asked by Victoria Derbyshire whether cabinet ministers would tell the prime minister that it was time to go, said: "They may well do...I don't live in the heads of any of my colleagues in the cabinet."

Pressed on whether he was expecting members of Starmer's top team to break ranks at their meeting, he said "it is possible that members of the cabinet might do that, I genuinely have no idea at all".

"I just hope that they really will take a beat, pause, reflect, and think about the potential that that has for chaos that might be unleashed, and think about what we said when this carousel of chaos under the Conservatives was happening."

Six ministerial aides have been replaced by No 10, after they either quit or called for Sir Keir to set out a timetable for his replacement. The MPs who will replace them are:

• David Burton-Sampson – Department for Health and Social Care
• Linsey Farnsworth MP – Ministry of Justice
• Jayne Kirkham MP – Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
• Michael Payne MP – Home Office
• Tim Roca MP – Department for Work and Pensions
• Sean Woodcock MP – Cabinet Office

The PPS role is unpaid, and often done by junior ministers to gain experience.

At the time of writing, 71 Labour MPs have called for Keir Starmer to resign or set out a timetable for his resignation, the BBC has counted.

For context, there are currently a total of 403 Labour MPs.

The BBC understands Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is among anumber of cabinet ministers to have urged the PM to set out the timetable to leave, but the cabinet is split, and Mahmood is in the minority.

Chris Mason
Political editor

Image source, PA

There is a split in the cabinet tonight, on the most fundamental question any cabinet can wrestle with in terms of its future - whether or not they believe in their boss, whether or not they believe in the prime minister carrying on.

Ministers have been heading into No 10 in the last few hours, some to try and shore up the prime minister, some deeply, deeply concerned about plunging the party into a leadership race which they think is irresponsible and without any sense of where that might end up.

But there are also cabinet ministers who have been to see Starmer and said 'you have to read the room of the parliamentary party', that ticker of MPs going up and up and up, this afternoon and this evening, ultimately saying he should set out a timetable for his departure.

The cabinet will formally meet here first thing tomorrow morning, so Tuesday promises to be an extraordinary day, but today has been one as well.

Chris Mason
Political editor

BBC News understands the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is among a number of cabinet ministers to have urged the prime minister to set out a timetable for his resignation.

It’s understood there are splits in the cabinet over whether Keir Starmer should set out a timetable and that Mahmood is in the minority.

A total of 70 Labour MPs have now explicitly called for Keir Starmer to resign or set a timetable for his resignation as prime minister. This number is steadily rising.

The BBC has counted MPs who have made public statements or interviews saying the PM should resign or set a timetable to go since the local elections last week.

While Keir Starmer is facing increasing calls to resign, we've also heard from Labour MPs speaking out in defence of the prime minister.

Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven MP Chris Ward says "this is not the time to divide the party or ignore the national interest".

He says last week's elections results were "bitterly disappointing" but the "very worst response would be to plunge the party into a divisive leadership contest".

Dover and Deal MP Mike Tapp agrees that the "country needs stability, not another revolving door of leaders".

"At a time of global instability, the responsible thing to do is unite behind the Prime Minister and focus on delivering for Britain."

Angela Eagle, MP for Wallasey, says, two days before the King's speech, which sets out the government's future legislative plans, "is not the time for this sort of destabilisation".

The number of Labour MPs explicitly calling for Keir Starmer to go has now risen to 64.

The BBC has counted MPs who have made public statements or interviews saying the PM should resign or set a timetable to go since last week's elections.

Image source, PA Media

Labour's party chair is reiterating her support for Starmer as he faces growing calls to resign as prime minister.

In a post on X, Anna Turley says she is "proud" of Starmer, "his record as a Labour PM and his leadership".

"This difficult moment isn’t about giving up, it’s about stepping up," she writes.

Turley, who is the MP for Redcar, adds: "I support him to deliver the ambition he set out this morning to bring hope & opportunity to the country."

Labour MP Melanie Ward has now announced she's quit her position as parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to deputy prime minister David Lammy.

In a statement shared on X, Ward says Keir Starmer did "important work" as PM but adds that the message from last week's election is "clear".

"Our country faces enormous challenges and we need a Labour government that can deliver the scale of change that this requires," she writes.

"It is clear the prime minister no longer has the trust and confidence of the public to lead this change."

She calls on Starmer to resign and for a "rapid process" for the selection of a successor.

Image source, PA Media

Now, 60 Labour MPs have explicitly called for Keir Starmer to resign or set a timetable for his resignation as prime minister.

The BBC has counted MPs who have made public statements or interviews saying the PM should resign or set a timetable to go since last week's elections.

The prime minister might have to respond to today's developmentspublished at 19:55 BST 11 May

19:55 BST 11 May

Jack Fenwick
Political correspondent

In his speech today, the prime minister outlined policy areas, like nationalising British Steel, closer ties with the EU, and more apprenticeships.

This was supposed to be a moment to reset his premiership to try to stop the number of Labour MPs calling for his resignation growing.

That hasn’t worked.

That number has increased fairly significantly today to just over one in eight Labour MPs, though there are many who are not speaking.

Right now the pressure on the prime minister feels even greater than it was this morning, and if the number of MPs continues to go up and we get more resignations from government aides, then it feels like the prime minister will have to come out and respond to this.

Starmer now faces pressure to resign from two Labour frontspublished at 19:40 BST 11 May

19:40 BST 11 May

Iain Watson
Political correspondent

The rumours of resignations came this afternoon. I was told they wouldn’t be from the Burnham camp.

Now that they have begun, Keir Starmer faces pressure on two fronts.

Already pressed for a timetable for his resignation from left and centre-left supporters of Andy Burnham, he now has calls for him to go from the right of the party - and so far three resignations of ministerial aides.

These are from people close to the health secretary Wes Streeting (and in some cases home secretary Shabana Mahmood.) But not all his detractors agree on the timetable for him to go.

The Burnham backers want enough time for their pick to find a seat, fight a by-election and return to Westminster.

Some close to Streeting want a swift timetable that would exclude Burnham.

There had been disagreement amongst MPs in the centre-right Labour First grouping between those who wanted a Streeting challenge and those who wanted the PM to stay in place.

Keir Starmer has said he will fight any challenge and I’m told he has seen polling that suggests he might win a contest in which not just MPs, but the wider membership, would vote – so long as Burnham isn’t on the ballot.

If the challengers are Streeting and perhaps Angela Rayner, he may choose to fight on.

But I’m told the pressure is on him tonight to stand aside.

So far only junior aides have gone but at least one of the camps has told me it might be necessary at some point to have ministerial resignations to concentrate his mind.

There are also well-sourced suggestions that a further 50 MPs might call for his departure.

If he does reach the conclusion that his premiership is unsustainable, the timescale for the subsequent leadership contest could determine the winner.

Image source, Reuters

Housing secretary Steve Reed told BBC Radio 4's PM programme earlier he understood MPs were posting calls online for the PM to go, but said there was around "90% of us that don't want that to happen".

"We want to focus on what the public want... not talking to ourselves" about a new leader, he said.

Reed said the Conservatives "showed us why this doesn't work - they went through prime minister after prime minister" after bad polls and elections.

"Clearly we're still dealing with the aftermath of a very, very difficult set of local election results," he said.

Reed said the government accepted there needed to be change but it didn't help to "chuck out" prime ministers.

Things are moving quickly right now and Starmer is very vulnerablepublished at 18:56 BST 11 May

18:56 BST 11 May

Chris Mason
Political editor

Image source, PA

Labour's rollercoaster of emotion and anger has zipped this way and that today.

At the prime minister's speech, this morning - jitters in the audience about what was at stake.

But then the former minister Catherine West backed down from her threat to be a leadership contender intent on derailing his premiership. That was followed by a near constant soundtrack of Labour MPs, one after another, publicly calling for him to go, sooner or later.

And by teatime, the most significant of those - the resignation of ministerial aides, from the lowest rung of the government - saying they too had lost faith in their leader.

One of them, Joe Morris, was the parliamentary private secretary to Wes Streeting, the health secretary not short of prime ministerial ambition. What might Streeting do next?

And how soon could Andy Burnham - currently marooned outside parliament and so ineligible for any imminent contest - find a vacant seat, persuade the party to let him stand, and try to win it, with Labour so unpopular?

Within a month or two, claim his friends. Let's see.

Things are moving quickly right now and Keir Starmer is very vulnerable.

Naushabah Khan says she has resigned as parliamentary private secretary (PPS) to the Cabinet Office as she calls for new Labour leadership.

Khan, who is MP for Gillingham and Rainham, says she has always put her constituents' interests first, and that is why she has made the "difficult decision to resign".

"We need a clear change of direction now and no game playing," she says, adding that a Labour government "can and will rise to meet the moment if we act now".

"I am calling for new leadership, so that we can rebuild trust and deliver the better future that the British people voted for," she writes.

We can now bring you more from Parliamentary Private Secretary Joe Morris following his resignation.

Morris, who was the aide to Health Secretary Wes Streeting, writes that "constituents need a Labour government in order to reduce the cost of living, to invest in our communities and our infrastructure and to make good on the promises made at the General Election".

"Regrettably, it is now clear that the prime minister no longer has the trust or confidence of the public to lead this change," he writes.

"It is in the best interests of the country and the party that the prime minister sets out a swift timetable to ensure that a new leader is in place to regain the confidence of the public and to ensure that the government can deliver on the commitments it has made."

Morris is the MP for Tynedale, West Newcastle, Ponteland and Longhorsley.