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Energy secretary Ed Miliband has told his cabinet colleagues to “just get on” and “focus on the country” in the wake of a botched attempt to oust Sir Keir Starmer from Downing Street.
Miliband’s comments on Tuesday came after allies of the embattled prime minister claimed that a call by Anas Sarwar, Labour leader in Scotland, for Starmer to resign was co-ordinated with health secretary Wes Streeting.
Asked about the claim and Streeting’s denial, the energy secretary said: “Move on dot org. I mean, let’s just get on. Let’s just move past all this.”
“I’m saying to our colleagues — don’t focus on yourselves, focus on the country. That’s what Keir’s message was last night and he’s dead right,” the former Labour leader told Sky News.
Starmer, who took office in July 2024, rallied MPs at a boisterous meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Monday evening.
“After having fought so hard for the chance to change our country, I’m not prepared to walk away from my mandate and my responsibility to my country,” he told the meeting.
In separate comments to the BBC, Miliband acknowledged that Starmer had faced a “moment of peril” on Monday.
He urged the prime minister to embrace a “moment of change” after the scandal over Lord Peter Mandelson’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and show greater clarity of purpose and focus on voters.
“For 20 years, this country has been run for the wealthy and powerful, not ordinary working people. And the manifestation of that is this long-term cost of living crisis. We exist to change that,” Miliband said.
Starmer has moved in recent days to stem the fallout from the Mandelson scandal, with Morgan McSweeney quitting as his chief of staff on Sunday and Tim Allan leaving as Number 10 director of communications on Monday morning.
The prime minister is also poised to replace Sir Chris Wormald as cabinet secretary and Britain’s top civil servant. Wormald was only appointed to the role in December but his approach has since been criticised by government figures.
McSweeney, widely regarded as the architect of Labour’s 2024 landslide election win, said in his resignation statement that he took full responsibility for advising Starmer to appoint Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US, despite the peer’s known links to the sex offender Epstein. Mandelson was sacked from the role in September last year.
The Metropolitan Police is now investigating Epstein’s financial payments to Mandelson and the peer’s leaking of sensitive government information to the financier while he was business secretary and de facto deputy prime minister in 2009 and 2010.
As Labour braces itself for poor results in May elections in Scotland, Wales and parts of England, Starmer is facing calls from the left of his party to try to win back voters tempted by the Greens and Liberal Democrats, rather than compete with the rightwing Reform UK.
Starmer has described the next general election, which must take place by summer 2029, as a battle between Labour and Reform for the “soul of the country”. McSweeney had been one of the key figures in Downing Street arguing against a shift to the left.
Miliband slammed Number 10 for giving the role of US envoy to Mandelson, who was twice sacked from government roles under Sir Tony Blair over scandals involving wealthy people.
“I want to be very clear: Peter Mandelson should never have been appointed to this post,” Miliband said. “We are a government whose central purpose, I believe, is to stand up for the powerless, not the powerful, and it undermines that.”