PRIME MINISTER Keir Starmer faced another setback on Saturday after minister Josh Simons resigned from his government.
The resignation comes days after Labour finished third in a by-election on Thursday in a former heartland seat. The result has increased pressure on Starmer.
The departure also follows calls earlier this month from within Labour for Starmer to resign after policy U-turns and missteps.
One of those issues involved the appointment of Peter Mandelson, who had longstanding links to the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as Britain's ambassador in Washington.
Starmer removed him months into the role after new details about the extent of Mandelson's friendship with Epstein emerged. The issue led to criticism in the UK.
In the latest controversy, Labour MP Josh Simons said he had resigned as a minister in the Cabinet Office, which helps deliver the government's agenda, because he had "become a distraction" from that work.
Simons had faced weeks of calls to quit over claims that a Labour-supporting think tank he headed from 2022 to 2024 had paid a PR firm to investigate the backgrounds of at least two prominent journalists.
In a letter to Starmer, Simons said he had been unaware of those probes "until a few weeks ago" and added that the prime minister's ethics czar had cleared him of breaching ministerial rules.
In his reply, Starmer said he had accepted his resignation "with sadness".
It is the latest resignation from a government that has trailed in the polls behind Nigel Farage's Reform UK for over a year. Labour also faces pressure from the rise of the Green Party.
The Greens won Thursday's by-election for a Manchester parliamentary seat, ahead of Reform. Labour, which had won the seat in 2024, finished third.
Earlier this month, Starmer's former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney resigned following the Mandelson issue. Last year, Angela Rayner stepped down as deputy prime minister after a separate controversy.
Voters across parts of Britain will head to the polls for local elections on May 7.
