𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

The 43-year-old MP has reportedly got the numbers to mount a challenge and there have been several comments from supporters and allies of the mutinous minister suggesting he could launch the coup as soon as this week.

But should Sir Keir sack Wes Streeting to show he’s in charge? Express readers can have their say in our poll below.

It comes after several ministers stepped aside from their posts yesterday and called on Sir Keir to leave No 10.

This morning, Zubir Ahmed, one of the resignees, said Sir Keir’s authority had “irretrievably ebbed away” following last week’s election results.

More than 1,500 Labour councillors lost their seats in the last set of council elections, which have been referred to as a ‘bloodbath’ for the party.

The NHS transplant surgeon told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We, in Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, had a devastating set of election results and we were simply unable to articulate our offering, or indeed critique, of the SNP Government because of the noise created at the centre.

“Therefore, we became, and the Prime Minister became, the inadvertent midwife of a fifth-term SNP Government. And that scenario you saw then, people waiting for a speech to try and articulate his new direction, a strategy, and it simply was not forthcoming.

“And you saw thereafter, a spontaneous outpouring of frustration by colleagues in the PLP.”

He added: “In that scenario, someone like me, as a minister, and his Government, has a responsibility to reflect upon whether this is sustainable, and as you see I made the diagnosis that it was not, and the Prime Minister’s authority has irretrievably ebbed away, and I think, therefore, for the stability of the country, and for the urgency that’s been called upon for us to act upon, and in an urgent way, with the public, he must set out a timetable for his departure, an orderly, expedient transition.”

When challenged over whether the reaction among Labour MPs had been “spontaneous”, he went on: “This is not one faction of the Labour Party. This is about the Labour Party articulating, I think, now a commonly-held view that this is unsustainable and unstable.”