Keir Starmer challenges Rishi Sunak to call a general election next week

14 March 2024 , 16:26

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The Labour leader told the PM: 'Allow this to go to a general election on May the second, we're ready' (Image: Getty Images)

Keir Starmer has challenged Rishi Sunak to call an election next week as pressure ramps up on the Tories to hold a vote in May.

The Labour leader said: “I say to the Prime Minister, call it. Have the backbone to call it. Allow this to go to a general election on May the second, we're ready." He said the country "overwhelmingly wants change" and to be given a chance to put an end to 14 years of Tory "chaos, division and decline" at the ballot box.

His comments to LBC came after the prominent Tory peer and businessman Lord Stuart Rose also urged the under-fire PM to get on with and call an immediate election. The chairman of supermarket giant Asda said the "sooner we call an election the better" and even suggested he could endorse Labour.

He said the Tories needed to reinvent themselves after 14 years in office, but asked: "Can you reinvent yourself while you're in power? I'm afraid I don't believe that's the case."

Speaking to ITV's Peston programme, the Tory peer Lord Rose said: “I would call an election, frankly now. I am a Conservative, I still believe in conservative values. I don't frankly believe that anything is going to fundamentally change with the UK PLC economy between March and November.

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"I just think now that time is not on our side. It's not about what we do, it's about what everybody else is doing. In relative terms if our country is not growing and others are, we are going backwards." The businessman added: "I would just say let's get on with an election, let's see what the electorate say, whoever gets into power, right now you've got a mandate, get on with it."

Time is running out for Mr Sunak to call a general election that would take place on the same day as local and mayoral elections in England on May 2. In order to trigger a May vote, the PM must dissolve Parliament by March 26 - in just under two weeks - at the latest.

Mr Sunak has not explicitly ruled out a snap election in the spring but with the Tories trailing Labour in the national polls and facing the prospect of a 1997-style wipeout, he has said it is his "working assumption" the vote will be held in the second half of 2024. Mr Sunak repeated the comments on Thursday, insisting "nothing has changed".

But one right-wing Tory MP Dame Andrea Jenkyns said she believed a new leader should take over the Tories before the nation heads to the ballot box. "I personally want a new leader before the election," she told BBC's Today Podcast.

The former minister under Liz Truss said this, combined with more "more conservative policies", could win back "disaffected voters which we are seeing in the polling". But the PM dismissed her comments, claiming the Conservatives were "united" - just days after one ex-Tory MP Lee Anderson defected to the Tories.

Ashley Cowburn