Labour MP Sean Woodcock has said the country will ask what mandate the government has now following the resignation of Sir Keir Starmer.
Speaking to GB News, he said: “My clear preference has always been that we maintain Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, because he was elected not even two years ago with a mandate to govern and change the country, and that is what I would prefer.
“Now, clearly, that’s no longer possible, and so I think it is legitimate for people to question whether we do need some sort of contest so that ideas can be put out there about how the country is governed.
“I think there will be questions asked about what mandate we have going forward.
“But as I said, my preference has been to retain the Prime Minister, and frankly, I think people have had enough of instability and chaos, which we’ve now added to with this resignation by Keir Starmer, and actually just want someone to get on with governing the country and trying to fix the problems that we inherited after 14 years.
“I think the legacy of Keir Starmer is extremely positive, and he will be looked back on really favourably. I’ve just come out of a debate in Westminster Hall about a really crude and I would say, obnoxious, motion on the influence of Israel on our politics.
“Now I’ve been a member of Labour Party since 2007 and by far the darkest days of my membership as a councillor were in 2018, 2019 – a time when the Labour Party had subsequently been found to have harassed Jewish people.
“What I personally have taken from his leadership is that he made me proud to be Labour again, which I wasn’t then.
“He brought us into government with a huge majority, and there have clearly been errors in judgment, because all governments make errors of judgment.
“But I’m extremely proud of somebody who used to work in the housing sector, of things like the Renters Rights Act, of the changes that we’ve made to employment rights, of bringing half a million people out of poverty, and the fact that things are going the right direction on things like NHS waiting lists, the economy prior to Iran, and the conflict there, of migration figures, all sorts of things we are delivering on.
“People at the moment feel under strain from various directions. They feel the country is broken, whether it’s potholes in the road, whether it’s the fact that the NHS was at such a high rate in terms of waiting lists when we came in.
“People don’t feel particularly well off, and the war in Iran has certainly made that worse, and so a party is never going to be popular in those circumstances.
“I think that what he and Rachel Reeves have done is laid the foundations for whoever the next Prime Minister is to actually deliver some proper benefits to the country that people start feeling, which I think was the biggest issue.
“People didn’t feel that they were benefiting from a Labour government.
“What I don’t think we should do is jettison everything and pretend that we didn’t do anything good, because we certainly did.”