#Keir Starmer

#Keir Starmer

Keir Starmer was on the brink of a leadership contest this week, but he pulled it back. That does not mean his rivals have gone away, with one of the most hotly tipped leadership candidates the health secretary, Wes Streeting. Earlier this week, Labour's leader in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, held an astonishing press conference calling for Starmer to resign.

Sir Keir Starmer nominated a former aide for a peerage despite being told he had been supportive of a councillor who had been accused of child sex offences, his ex-communications chief has claimed. The prime minister is facing continued questions over his judgment in appointing his former spin doctor, Matthew Doyle, to the House of Lords after he campaigned for a councillor who had been charged with having indecent images of children.

This was a big, bold intervention from Anas Sarwar - to be the first leading Labour figure to call for the prime minister to go. He has done so out of frustration and anger. Anger at the prime minister's handling of the Mandelson mess. He said on Thursday that the Labour peer should never have been considered for the job of UK ambassador to Washington.

"The distraction needs to end and the leadership in Downing Street has to change. That's why the distraction needs to end, and the leadership in Downing Street has to change... We cannot allow the failures at the heart of Downing Street to mean the failures continue here in Scotland. I have to be honest about failure wherever I see it - the situation in Downing Street is not good enough."

Senior figures in Sir Keir Starmer's government are preparing to hand over tranches of their electronic communications with Lord Mandelson ahead of the release of evidence about his appointment as US ambassador. The deepening scandal prompted an apology on Wednesday from Sir Keir to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein for believing Lord Mandelson's "lies" and appointing him when the peer's friendship with the paedophile was already public knowledge.