Sir Keir Starmer has been dealt a hammer blow after a new poll showed support for some of his main rivals has surged among grassroots Labour members and around one-in-three back ousting him from No10 ahead of the next General Election.
In a Survation survey of party members for Labour List, Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband emerged as the most liked member of the Cabinet.
Miliband, who led Labour to defeat in the 2015 General Election, secured a net favourability rating of 68.6 per cent, putting him just over five per cent ahead of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner.
Starmer ended up ranking in 17th place, well-behind Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds.
The Prime Minister only managed to secure a net rating of 13.83 per cent, leaving Environment Secretary Steve Reed, Scottish Secretary Ian Murray, Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Attorney General Lord Hermer, Work & Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall and Chancellor Rachel Reeves behind him.
Reeves, who will deliver her spring statement next week, was handed the lowest net favourability rating at -11.19 per cent.
A staggering 31 per cent of Labour members also want to replace Starmer as leader before the next General Election.
However, the Prime Minister’s place looks secure for now, with 52 per cent wanting to keep Starmer at the helm.
Survation also found that Labour members consider Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as the biggest threat to Starmer’s party.
Seven-in-10 Labour members named the populist party at the greatest political threat, with just 16.2 per cent believing Kemi Badenoch’s Tories will wreak the most havoc.
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Britons to ‘pay the price’ as Reeves’s borrowing soars to £10.7bn and growth plan stumbles
UK Government borrowing rose to £10.7billion last month, exceeding forecasts and marking the fourth-highest February figure on record.
With public finances “operating on increasingly fine margins” experts have explained tax rises in the autumn are “inevitable”.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that public sector net borrowing was £100million more than in February 2024.
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‘We’re up to the fight!’ Miliband takes on net zero sceptics after accusing Farage of ‘betraying’ future generations
Ed Miliband
PA
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has taken the fight to net zero sceptics after accusing Nigel Farage’s Reform UK of “betraying” future generations.
Miliband said that Sir Keir Starmer’s Government is “absolutely up for the fight” over net zero, adding that the Conservatives and Reform have opted for “a total desertion and betrayal” of future generations by failing to tackle the climate crisis.
‘It’s not austerity!’ Labour fires back against Tory 2.0 claims ahead of cost-cutting spring statement
A Labour Treasury Minister has denied Sir Keir Starmer’s returning to UK to a Conservative-style era of austerity.
In a Q&A at the Institute for Government think tank, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones said: “Just factually, it would be incorrect to say that we are doing what the Conservatives did after 2010.
“The numbers will be published next Wednesday, but as you saw at the budget last year, we are increasing public spending, and we’ve increased it quite a lot.
“The fact is that we’ve got to do this modernisation and reform agenda. But we’re not, factually, taking an approach that is just blindly cutting spending because we think we should just reduce spending without a plan for how to get there. So I wouldn’t recognise that kind of definition of what’s taking place.”
NHS banned from changing children’s gender on records after Streeting declares it ‘completely wrong’
A general view of staff on a NHS hospital wardPA
The NHS has been banned from changing children’s gender on their medical records after Wes Streeting slammed it for being “completely wrong”.
Ahead of the ban, there was no minimum age for a child’s sex to be changed on their official records, a review found.
In response, the Health Secretary declared the situation “completely wrong” and urged that “children’s safety must come first” after a Government report pointed out “serious safeguarding concerns”.
The Sullivan Review discovered that, in one case, NHS authorities allowed one mother to change their baby’s sex at just a few weeks old “and the GP had complied”.
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