Downing Street insists it is all part of the plan as five members of PM’s team quit

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Rats are jumping ship. At the time of writing, five members of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street team have quit. Policy chief Munira Mirza resigned yesterday evening, after working alongside the Prime Minister for 14 years, citing his dead-cat accusation that Keir Starmer failed to prosecute Jimmy Savile. No 10 director of communications Jack Doyle followed shortly after, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. Chief of staff Dan Rosenfield and private secretary Martin Reynolds – sender of the infamous BYOB party invite – also announced they were leaving. Policy unit member Elena Narozanski quit this morning.

Downing Street is insisting the resignations are all part of Johnson’s plan for a reset after the Prime Minister said on Monday that he would make changes to how No 10 runs. Ed Miliband likened this to a “captain trying to throw the crewmates overboard to stop the ship sinking”. Commenting this morning, the opposition frontbencher reiterated Labour’s call for Johnson to resign, saying: “I wish he would go, but I don’t think he is going to go voluntarily. I do think it’s in the interests of the country – this goes beyond right and left, this is about right and wrong. It’s in the interest of the country for him to go.”

The formation of a ‘New Left’ collective in parliament has prompted accusations of a “splinter group” and raised concerns from some on the Labour left that divisions among MPs in the Socialist Campaign Group are deepening, LabourList revealed yesterday. The group includes backbenchers Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Clive Lewis, Nadia Whittome, Rachael Maskell, Dawn Butler and Kim Johnson, and frontbenchers Sam Tarry and Olivia Blake. An initial strategy document from last year obtained by LabourList said the group would take inspiration from ‘The Squad’ in the US, left Democrats who have “put pressure on President Biden to take more progressive stances on a number of issues”. And even those who haven’t joined the group have concerns about how left MPs are organised. Read Sienna’s full write-up here.

Writing exclusively for LabourList this morning, Sadiq Khan warns of the dangers of the government fanning anti-London sentiment. “This is both reckless and wrong. A family growing up in poverty in Barking and Dagenham is just as deserving and in need of support as families in the same situation living in Blackburn or Darlington,” the Labour mayor of London argues. And LabourList has plenty more for readers to get their teeth into from the week, including: why we should push ahead with clean air zones, why the Pen Farthing scandal should have brought Johnson down and how arcane parliamentary rules serve the establishment, plus a dispute between a Labour council and Unite, Lisa Nandy on levelling up, Keir Starmer on the creative industries and Barry Gardiner on the UK-Australia trade deal. Happy Friday.

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