LATIKA M BOURKE: Australian-born Labor MP launches push to remove Keir Starmer as UK Prime Minister

The Australian-born Labour MP who has launched a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer says she has been inundated with support for her willingness to be brutal.

Catherine West said she would launch a leadership challenge if the Cabinet did not announce a process to select a new leader by Tuesday morning Australian-time.

Speaking exclusively to The Nightly in her only Australian media interview, Ms West said someone needed to be held to account for Labour’s devastating losses in the council, Welsh and Scottish elections held on Thursday.

Labour lost 1496 council seats, while Reform gained 1452. The Greens gained 440.

In Wales, Labour lost power for the first time in a century, reduced to nine seats, while the independence party Plaid Cymru won 20 and Reform gained 34. In the Scottish parliament, which is dominated by the Scottish National Party, Labour and Reform now hold the same number of seats.

“We were expecting some losses, but the losses were colossal,” Ms West told The Nightly in her only Australian media interview.

“I don’t think it’s correct just to sort of allow a big loss like that to happen and not to hold the leadership to account.

“This is not about him as an individual or anything like that. I’m not cross about anything.

“I just feel that, on the evidence that we saw on Thursday evening, if we continue this way, we will end up with very, very few members of parliament in the next Parliament.”

She said the party needed to stocktake and tool up.

“To really develop a strategy that will work to combat some of the challenges from Reform, where people may have voted Labour before, but they’re now voting Reform,” she said.

“And I know that’s also a problem in Australia, where a seat has gone from the Liberals to One Nation.”

She said she had been inundated with gratitude for her brutal approach.

“I’ve had the most unbelievable number of messages saying thank you. Interestingly, not necessarily from a lot of Party, people more from friends or people in the general public,” she said.

“They seem to like that somebody who’s clearly of a party can take such a dispassionate but quite brutal approach to a colleague.”

British Labour MPs have been complaining about Sir Keir’s leadership since almost as soon as he became Prime Minister, following a series of unforced errors that included accepting free suits from a Labour donor and slashing a heating allowance granted to pensioners with no warning.

But unlike its sister party in Australia, UK Labour does not have a culture of knifing sitting prime ministers. Any successful challenge motion would require the support of 20 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party, which is 81 MPs.

Around 40 MPs have called for Sir Keir to resign, but many of those have been his constant critics and factional enemies.

Sir Keir told The Observer on the weekend that he wants to seek a second term and serve 10 years in Number 10. He will give a speech on Monday in an attempt to reset his agenda and on Wednesday, the King will deliver his speech to Parliament, which lays out the government’s agenda for the next year.

The prime minister’s backers say he was elected with a mandate and should not be replaced, pointing to the chaos that it caused in the Conservatives when the party switched prime ministers five times in less than a decade.

Ms West said she had also watched the prime ministerial knifings that had taken place in the Australian Labour Party last decade but decided calling for Sir Keir to stand aside was still worth the costs.

“And it didn’t help the Conservatives much,” she said. “But I also think that he has actually had six years (as leader), and I think the challenge now is different.”

“You need an enormous amount of energy and a slightly different plan for taking on Reform, and I do think we need a fresh approach.

“I’m just calling to see how many MPs agree with me, and I’ll discuss that with the party chair and see if we can work towards a timetable. So it’s not going to be rushed. It’s not this thing that oh we’re throwing people away.”

She said it was her preferred option that the Cabinet sort it out and allocate Sir Keir a new role in international affairs.

Former Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appointed Tory predecessor David Cameron to the House of Lords in 2023 and made him Foreign Secretary.

Ms West said a similar arrangement would be a better fit for Sir Keir.

“Exactly, something like that, he’s very well respected abroad, and also I think a lot of the Reform challenge is domestic policy,” she said.

She denied she was acting out of revenge for having been sacked as Indo-Pacific Minister.

“No, no. I consider myself to be a senior MP with quite a deal of experience now, both nationally and locally. And I’m not taking a view on who the candidates are. I am keen to try and get us to think,” she said.

Cabinet Minister Wes Streeting, who comes from the right wing of the party, is one likely leadership candidate, as is Angela Rayner, the brash but scandal-prone northern MP who was forced to resign as deputy prime minister after she underpaid her taxes.

A popular alternative to both is the Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who has the backing of the soft-left, but he is not in parliament, and Labour’s executive body has blocked his attempts to stand in a previous byelection, fearing him as a competitor to Sir Keir.

Catherine West is gently spoken and does not have a reputation for indulging in political machinations or factional politics.

George Brandis, who served as High Commissioner for Australia to the UK between 2018 and 2022 worked with Catherine West regularly.

“Catherine West is to Starmer what Sir Anthony Meyer was to Margaret Thatcher in 1989 - the backbencher nobody had ever heard of who, by mounting a leadership challenge he had no hope of winning, opened the door for others and got the ball rolling,” Mr Brandis said.

Her wildcard intervention came as a complete shock to UK Labour MPs and to her family. Both her brothers work in the Australian media sector.

Marcus West said he could not believe the news about his sister when it first came through.

“A friend messaged me saying, ‘Good on Cath!’ And I was like: ‘

‘What are you talking about? He told me to check the news. And yes - it was a big shock to all of us! Cath is a very measured person, so we were taken aback!” Mr West told The Nightly.

“I’m sure she’s thought long and hard about it. She wouldn’t have done something this ‘big’ without significant reflection.”

Asked why she, out of the 403 Labour MPs, chose to lob the grenade, she agreed that she had not lost the Australian in her.

“No, I haven’t really. So why me? I don’t know. I suppose I do feel quite strongly about it. I think you don’t really, you just stop caring as much, not what people think of you, because I do care about what people think of me, but you want to do the right thing.”

She said she had not spoken to Sir Keir since calling for him to be replaced as UK Prime Minister, but that she would take his call anytime and that they were friends.

She said it was possible he could stay on and outlast her attempt to challenge.

Born in country Victoria, Ms West has served in the House of Commons since 2015 as the MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet.

A dual citizen, she graduated from Sydney University, was a social worker and teacher, speaks five languages, including Mandarin and moved to the UK in 1998, where she has two children with her husband Colin.

Ms West started in politics working for the prominent Labour MP David Lammy, then became a local councillor before entering the House of Commons for her north London constituency.