‘We should stick with Starmer’ and ‘PM isn’t cutting through’ – more Labour MPs have their saypublished at 08:15 BST
Two Labour MPs – with opposing views about what the PM should do – just had a conversation on Radio 4’s Today programme. Here’s a snippet.
Patrick Hurley, the MP for Southport, says Starmer “shouldn’t be resigning anytime soon” and that a lot of the issues voters are angry about – defence spending, economic growth – will not change “just by having a new prime minister”.
“Destabilising your own government just tends to drive bond yields even higher – no prime minister’s going to be able to change that. I think we should stick with Keir Starmer,” Hurley tells the programme, adding that the focus of MPs and government should be to improve the UK’s economic performance “in order to better fund our public services”.
Meanwhile, Tonia Antoniazzi, Gower’s MP, says Starmer is a “very, very genuine, integral man… but we’ve got to a point where the toxicity in Parliament, in our politics – he’s just not cutting through”.
Antoniazzi goes on to mention the “disaster” of last week’s elections in Wales, Scotland and England, and says the PM’s speech yesterday shows why “he doesn’t cut through on the doorstep”.
“We’ve got to be pragmatic… because the people that are cutting through are people like [Nigel] Farage”, she says, adding: “We just need a leader to stand up and move forward”.
