Keir Starmer's future. Can someone explain please?

[CompetitionMyArse]

So the leader of Scottish Labour has held a press conference calling for KS's resignation. No official word from Wes Streeting, Angela Rayner or Ed Milliband yet but the rest of the cabinet seem to be coming out of the woodwork one by one to rally round KS.

If KS did resign this week would there have to be a general election? I thought I heard a journalist say earlier that there would, but I'm not sure if I caught him correctly. And I'm not sure I understand why/how that would be the case, but I think it's something to do with the timing re: by-elections? Can someone enlighten me please?

Is this why the cabinet are largely coming out in support of Starmer? And why Starmer is hanging on for dear life? Because they know they'll be absolute toast if a GE is triggered?

If he resigned and it didn't need to trigger a general election, do you think we'd hearing different things from people like Lammy and Yvette Cooper?

Owen Jones is a Green now, he hasn't Labour for years. He hates Starmer, as does The Guardian.

Whilst Owen Jones is no longer a Labour Party member which I fully recognise @PandoraSocks my point is he can hardly be classified as part of the right wing media.

I don't understand why everyone is suddenly obsessed with KS - why are we are not talking about the powerful, white men who committed awful atrocities? Farage has been named in the Ep files but doesn't seem to getting much of an airing ( for once?)
This country is startingly right wing these days. Bloody terrifying.

It's driven by the MPs who smell blood. Few politicians ever get the chance to become prime minister so when a leader is wounded and there is a chance to seize power, those interested will be stampeding like wildebeast.

Then all the rest of them see the opportunity for advancement. If you back your buddy to become PM and you pick the right horse, you could be the next home secretary.

This trickles down. If your buddy is going to be the next home secretary, they could give you your first ministerial appointment or special adviser role or whatever

This creates a febrile atmosphere that sends the MPs insane. This then rubs off on the Westminster journalists who are sucked into the maelstrom of madness and get excited about having the latest scoop about who is defecting, announcing a bid, kicking Starmer in a speech and so on.

That is all they will focus on so anything else just gets chucked out the media window. The media won't be reporting on the powerful male abusers because no one is paying attention to anything else other than Starmer's future.

It sends people in politics into a state of madness when they sniff advancement and if affects the reporters.

This is literally like reading a Labour comms release with all the exact same astroturfing buzzwords they use. It's just missing the bit about grown-ups.

We've been invaded? 😮Who by? When?

It won’t be forgotten next week anyway as pp claims as the Mandelson files will be released.

The calls for KS to go have been coming from the left and the right almost since he took office. Within a month there was glasses gate, Arsenal/Taylor Swift tickets. Choose your crisis and they will whip it into a frenzy. There are a lot of us supporters in the middle like a silent majority who just want him to be given a break to get on with it.

Well if he didnt want the criticism he shouldn’t have taken the freebies etc.

Well well

Posted too soon. He’s an intelligent man, surrounded by advisers. He just thought he could get away with it. Admittedly there are worse offences but this is the sort of scrutiny that people in government come under. It’s no secret.

There’s one of these threads daily at the moment and I’m afraid I’m struggling with the bona fides. Posters who ostensibly know nothing about how GE’s work but seem to know everything else about the popularity or otherwise of the PM or state with confidence the public mood.

But in case it’s a genuine enquiry then no even if Starmer went there won’t be a GE. And if you’re really interested then you could have a read of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act 2011.

BBC.

"One Labour MP, who is often critical of the prime minister, texts from inside: “If we could bottle this Keir and show it to the country we’ll walk [the next general election]."
There are several noisy rounds of applause we can hear. No signs for now at least of any jeopardy for the prime minister tonight."

If those MPs can be trusted though. If I were Kier I’d be sleeping with one eye open.

To be fair, FTP Act has been repealed. But I agree with the rest of your post.

I'm sure he's big enough to take the criticism and move on. It is the ridiculous hyperbole of demanding his resignation at every turn.

Really? Would have thought he’d be feeling the strain immensely. It must be awful.

You would hope this would put to bed the ridiculous and tedious criticism of him being weak. It would be a lot easier for him to walk away at this point and I do believe he is staying as a result of a sense of public service. The party needs to get behind him now and the journalists need to stop treating it as entertainment and start investigating Farage properly.

Bang on @sirquintusI didn't even bother watching the 6 o clock news earlier as I'm so fed up if the media speculating. Even Jeremy Vine on R2 has had it as his main story for 3 days. The media cares more then the public.

Let's have a bit of stability, the press need to get their act together and report of Farage's dealings and the wars still raging elsewhere. I'm starting to dislike Chris Mason on the BBC, he's revelling in all the westminster gossip and reporting as fact.

The 24 news cycle journos are always salivating over a bit of political division. I think news quality was much better when the output was about 2 hours a day. They haven't got the bandwidth to report on policy as they are obsessing over politicians. They have to reduce it to a soap opera. 'Who's toast, who will be gone by Christmas, Who's on manoeuvres'? It was boring when the did it with the Tories and its embarrassing now.

This constant carping about press criticism is tiresome.
Labour are getting no more of a hard time than the Tories did when they were in power.
Seeing Labour's last few supporters grappling to find justifications for behaviour they would NEVER accept from the Tories has been good fun today.
Thank goodness the grown-ups are in charge and we've got breakfast clubs😂

I completely agree. In particular I'm becoming increasingly pissed off at how 'X says Starmer must resign', where 'X' is somebody from another political party, or one of the usual suspect Labour MPs, is now literally treated as headline news. You may as well lead with 'Butchers say it's time to buy meat'. The Guardian are particularly bad for this at the moment. The bottom line us that Labour have still got over 400 MPs, even with 30 or 40 malcontents they've still got a working majority, nobody looks likely to challenge Starmer (probably because nobody in their right mind would want the job right now), and for all his faults he does seem good at ignoring general press hysteria. So there doesn't seem much likelihood of him going, but that won't stop the press screeching on about it for a good few days yet.

Agree it’s the Leftie Labourites that are opposing every policy and forcing u turns and basically stabbing KS in the back. In 2029 when they are out of office they’ll all be blaming him too. Disagree the Tories did it less though. They tore themselves apart for Europe for decades.

Liz Truss had a wildly different manifesto but there was no general election either after she took over or after she resigned and Sunak took over.

To be fair Truss was only in power for about 5 minutes. There wouldn't have been time to call a general election. When Cameron switched to May there was a GE. Same after Johnson and Sunak. OK they didn't call GEs on account of there being a democratic deficit. Nonetheless, as elections were held, it can't be said they had no mandate.