A furious Anas Sarwar has today called for Keir Starmer to quit as Prime Minister.
The Scottish Labour leader made the intervention in a press conference in Glasgow this afternoon as he attacked the "failures" in Downing Street in the wake of revelations surrounding Peter Mandelson's links to Jeffrey Epstein and fears over damage the scandal may do to his party's chances at the Holyrood elections in May.
He told reporters his first priority is to Scotland and that he did not want to “sacrifice” the country to a third decade of an SNP government.
“That’s why the distraction needs to end, and the leadership in Downing Street has to change.
“It is so obvious that we desperately need change in Scotland and in three months time the opportunity to get rid of a failing SNP government is one that is too important to be missed.
“We cannot allow the failures at the heart of Downing Street to mean the failures continue here in Scotland, because the election in May is not without consequence for the lives of Scots.”
Mr Sarwar is the most senior Labour politician to call for Sir Keir to go, conscious of the uphill struggle facing Scottish Labour in May’s Holyrood elections.
Responding to Mr Sarwar’s call for the Prime Minister to step down, a Downing Street spokesman said: “Keir Starmer is one of only four Labour leaders ever to have won a general election.
“He has a clear five-year mandate from the British people to deliver change, and that is what he will do.”
The Prime Minister’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and communications chief Tim Allan have already quit in the wake of the Lord Peter Mandelson scandal.
Documents released by the US government last week appeared to show Lord Mandelson sending sensitive financial government information to Epstein while he was a minister in Gordon Brown's Labour government.
Mandelson, who has denied criminality, is now at the centre of a police investigation into alleged public misconduct.
Read More:
- Starmer will not quit and is upbeat, No 10 says after communications chief quits
- What does Mandelson scandal mean for Scottish politics?
- Tim Allan quits as Keir Starmer’s director of communications
- Senior Scottish Labour figures urge Starmer to quit
Downing Street insisted on Monday that Sir Keir would not resign and was “concentrating on the job in hand”.
Before news of Mr Sarwar’s intervention, the Prime Minister was said to be “upbeat” and “confident” as he gave an address to No 10 staff amid the fallout over the Mandelson affair.
Sir Keir is due to face Labour MPs later on Monday amid anger over his appointment of Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the US despite knowing that the peer’s links with Jeffrey Epstein continued after the financier’s conviction for child sex offences.
Labour has 37 MPs in Scotland who will now face having to decide whether to back Mr Sarwar or stay loyal to Sir Keir.
Asked if Sir Keir was going to resign today, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “No.”
He added: “The Prime Minister is concentrating on the job in hand. He is getting on with the job of delivering change across the country.”
Pressed about reports going into the weekend that Sir Keir had been remorseful and wavering over his political future, he said: “That is not the Prime Minister who appeared in front of staff this morning.
“It is very clear that he remains determined to tackle the job in hand.”
The Prime Minister is confident he has the unanimous support of the Cabinet, the spokesman said.
Sir Keir told staff at Downing Street on Monday morning that they must “go forward from here” and prove that politics can be a “force for good”.
That address, in which the Prime Minister paid tribute to Mr McSweeney as a “colleague and a friend”, came before Mr Allan’s resignation was announced.
Speaking to his team about Lord Mandelson, Sir Keir said: “The thing that makes me most angry is the undermining of the belief that politics can be a force for good and can change lives.”
Downing Street communications chief Mr Allan said he was standing down to allow “a new No 10 team to be built”.
Mr Allan, who like Lord Mandelson is a “New Labour” veteran, only joined the media operation in September.
Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said Sir Keir deserved support from backbenchers before his address to them at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) on Monday evening.
He told the Press Association: “I think he will acknowledge what’s gone wrong.
“He’ll take responsibility for the decision, but he’ll say the Government still has a lot of important work to do, and he wants to lead that work, and I believe he deserves the support of the parliamentary party in doing that.”
Several Labour MPs on the left of the party, including Brian Leishman, Ian Byrne and Kim Johnson, suggested Sir Keir should consider following Mr McSweeney out the door.
Two unnamed Cabinet ministers were quoted by The Times as saying Sir Keir was “weaker” and “could stand down at any moment”, a claim No 10 said was “categorically untrue”.
The pressure on his premiership looks unlikely to ease as the government prepares for the lengthy process of releasing tens of thousands of emails, messages and documents relating to Lord Mandelson’s appointment.
Sir Keir believes the files will prove the former Labour grandee lied about the extent of his ties to the notorious paedophile during his vetting.
He and Mr McSweeney have pinned blame on vetting by the security services for failing to disprove Lord Mandelson’s claims that he barely knew the late financier, which were later dramatically debunked by disclosures in the so-called Epstein files.
Officials have been tasked with examining that process as a priority.
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