Labour chief told Keir to quit over elections disaster
SIR Keir Starmer was advised to ‘step aside’ during a fractious meeting of Labour’s ruling body following the party’s humiliation in May’s local elections.
A source who attended the ninehour virtual meeting of the powerful National Executive Committee (NEC) said: ‘An NEC member directly asked the leader to consider stepping aside.’
Ann Black, who has been on the NEC since 2000, said such a demand was unheard of, adding wryly: ‘Perhaps Zoom has a disinhibiting effect.’
She admitted that she had asked Sir Keir to ‘take advice from people who could win Elections in the 2020s, not throwbacks from the 1990s’, adding: ‘While there have been discontented mutterings about other leaders, particularly during Jeremy Corbyn’s time, I can’t recall any formal meeting where an NEC member asked the leader to consider stepping aside.’
Sir Keir, who recently hired Tony Blair’s former aide Matthew Doyle to run his communications, is said to have reacted calmly, but an NEC member said: ‘People were definitely trying to tee up a challenge.’
Defending the party leader, another NEC member said Sir Keir had been subjected to ‘insulting’ attacks and that ‘NEC members have been hostile, aggressive and extremely discourteous’.
Another source claimed the criticism had come from a hard-Left faction but that Labour’s Batley and Spen by-election victory earlier this month had since strengthened Sir Keir’s position.