In your briefing today:

📣 Sir Keir Starmer’s time as Prime Minister appears near its end. His cabinet is split ahead of its regular weekly meeting, due to take place this morning, with at least one senior minister - Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood - calling for him to set out a timetable for his resignation. Others - including foreign secretary Yvette Cooper - are likely to follow, according to the Guardian.

The demands came after a speech intended to save his Premiership, following Labour’s devastating election results last week, fell flat.

Six ministerial aides, on the lowest rung of government, resigned yesterday while making the same demand, and there are now 72 Labour MPs who want him to resign now, or set out a timetable for his departure.

The split in cabinet is most politically problematic for the PM: he would be expected to demand the resignation of dissenting ministers, or bow to their demands. But reports this morning also insist he’s determined to stay in his role. (BBC)

📣 Donald Trump says the Iran ceasefire is on “life support” after he rejected Tehran’s latest counteroffer, which officials said had included concessions on nuclear research. Asked if the ceasefire was still in place, Trump said “I would call it the weakest right now after reading that piece of garbage they sent us,” Trump added. “I didn’t even finish reading it.” (AP)

📣 Scottish Greens are unhappy that a fringe party called Independent Green Voice, founded by a former UKIP organiser, cost them votes - and maybe even a seat - in last week’s Scottish elections. (BBC)

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📣 School pupils are calling for a “transparent” review of this year’s Higher Maths exam, calling it “confusing, ambiguous, and inconsistent with past papers.” More than 11,000 people have now signed a petition about the test. (Scotsman)

📣 Short-term holiday letting could face tighter controls in parts of the Highlands in an attempt to regulate a boom in Airbnb-style accommodation. (Scotsman)

📣 Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken is stepping down after nine years in the role. (BBC)

📣 Edinburgh Airport is hiking its pick-up and drop-off fees to £8.50, blaming soaring business rates. (Daily Record)

📣 Green Party leader Zach Polanski has apologised for failing to pay council tax on his London houseboat. (Sky News)

📣 The last passengers have left the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, as authorities confirmed there are three new cases linked to the outbreak. (BBC)

📣 Students need better protection if a University in England goes bust, MPs say. Twenty-four institutions are at risk of insolvency within the next 12 months. (BBC)

📣 It’s being called “the world’s most surprising capitalist makeover”: Sweden is lowering government spending, spurring innovation… and not leaving everyone happy. (WSJ)

⚽️ The agony for Spurs goes on: the relegation-haunted London club could only manage a 1-1 draw against Leeds, with Mathys Tel scoring with a brilliant strike… and then giving away a penalty at the other end. Spurs are now only two points clear of West Ham, who occupy the last relegation spot: both have two games left to play. (BBC report & highlights)

⚽️ The hype is starting to build for tomorrow night’s Premiership fixtures where it’s possible Hearts could win the league… or see the tussle go down to the final day on Saturday, and Celtic v Hearts in Glasgow. Former Rangers striker Kris Boyd thinks Celtic will win it, if it goes to the final day. (Sun)

⚽️ Staggeringly, 22 players have left Rangers this season: Graham Falk has looked to see how they’ve fared since leaving Ibrox. (Scotsman)

🗣️ Less than two years after taking office, the UK has another Prime Minister fighting for his political life. The consensus among commentators this morning is that Keir Starmer is toast after last week’s election results: that his do-or-die speech yesterday morning wasn’t good enough, that pretenders are waiting in the wings, with at least one (Andy Burnham) formulating policy, ready for a big moment.

“When the herd moves, it moves. So said Boris Johnson in July 2022 as he reflected on the unstoppable momentum of the Tory MPs who went over the top and ended his premiership,” writes Steven Swinford in the Times, who’s seen it all before.
“The herd is moving and Keir Starmer can’t keep running,” he says.

“The events of the past few days have been strikingly familiar,” he adds. “What began after Thursday’s devastating election results has spread to all wings of the Labour Party and taken on a life and velocity all of its own.”

He’s “hanging by a thread”, writes Chris Mason of the BBC. With his cabinet now split, Starmer has some decisions to make: either sack the dissenters or resign himself. Where Boris Johnson saw a herd, Mason sees a dam - and it burst after Starmer’s speech yesterday morning.

“‘Just so devastatingly crap’ was the pithy and rather brutal view of one Labour MP in touch with me. It was a prescient review given the torrent of public criticism from his own colleagues that was about to begin,” he writes.

Not all observers agreed - Sean O’Grady, writing in the Independent, admits his is an unfashionable view when he says: “I thought Starmer was quietly impressive.”

Not too impressive, mind you: “When he raises his voice he can approach mediocrity as an orator.” And, adds O’Grady, his minders should have found him a better venue. “Perhaps left the autocue outside. It’s a shame we never see him, nor the privately witty man those closer to him claim he is.

“Yet for all his known shortcomings as a performer, he was feisty.”

What comes after all this? Beyond the personalities, Geraldine Scott in the Times has some intel on what the pretenders would like to do with power: she sees “the powerful soft-left Tribune group” proposing to strip the Treasury of responsibility for economic growth and to scrap stamp duty.

The Tribune group is seen as supportive of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester who’s known to fancy the top job. Louise Haigh, who leads the group, is expected to say today that “Britain’s economic institutions were no longer capable of raising living standards and that the Treasury and the Office for Budget Responsibility had entrenched a culture of short-termism through a reliance on five-year forecasts and narrow ‘headroom’ calculations,” according to Scott.

“She said fiscal bodies had been dominated by a tension between ‘having to prove our credibility to the financial markets who lend us money and delivering change to the electorate that put their trust in us in 2024’.”

That echos a controversial statement made by Burnham last year, when he said Britain is “in hock to the bond markets”. At the time the comments were used against him, as evidence of a desire to break Labour’s fiscal rules and borrow a lot more money for large projects.

In the weeks ahead, he’s expected to endorse a policy pamphlet, being published by another Labour-aligned group called Mainstream, called “The Productive State: A Framework for Manchesterism”.

Sources “close” to Burnham have told the Telegraph that the document will set out how Burnham’s policy ideas in Greater Manchester could be rolled out across the UK, including increased control of public services. Burnham has called for the nationalisation of water, energy and transport assets.

Burnham continues to try and make the running from his northern stronghold: the question is, will his path to Downing Street - the most difficult of any potential candidate to replace Keir Starmer - be navigable safely, and in time?

The intrigue looks likely to last well beyond any decision by the PM to stand down.

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