Senior minister refuses to take bet on whether Starmer will still be in charge by Christmas
The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister has defended Keir Starmer to LBC amid a leadership crisis saying he's "very clear he's not walking away".
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At least 70 Labour MPs have called for Sir Keir to step aside - following last week's devastating local election results.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is among a minority of senior ministers calling for Sir Keir to quit, it is understood.
However, Darren Jones MP told Breakfast with Nick Ferrari it's business as usual this morning.
Yet, the MP for Bristol North West declined to take a £100 bet with Ferarri on air on whether Starmer would last until Christmas.
Read more: How can Starmer be toppled and who could take over?
Mr Jones admitted the local election results were "devastating".
"Obviously we need to have an internal conversation in the Labour Party about our strategy for rebuilding from that set of results so that we can secure a second term at the next Election in 2020.
He went on: "But there's a difference between an internal Labour Party discussion about electoral strategy and the business of government."
When probed by Ferrari, he explained the PM's position.
"The Prime Minister has been very clear that he's not walking away.
"I recognise that colleagues will be worried off the back of the local elections last week, in particular those colleagues who represent those communities.
"It's important that the Prime Minister engages with them and that we learn any lessons that we need to learn from our first two years in government to improve that electorally over the next three years."
He minimised the number of Labour MPs calling for him to go, among the 400 in the House of Commons.
"I don't belittle the 70 MPs who have come out in public, who rightly have questions that we need to answer together as the Labour Party.
"But the vast majority of my colleagues are behind the government getting on with the job and that's what we're doing."
'Very clear'
He went on: "The Prime Minister has been very clear that he's not walking away. We've got the King's Speech tomorrow, which is the polls that we've set out for the second session of this government.
"It's important that we get on in delivering change to people across the country, because these internal party political debates should happen internally, not in public in the way that they're currently happening."
When quizzed on the language used to describe Reform UK leader Nigel Farage yesterday by the PM, Mr Jones defended him once again.
In his speech, he described Farage as a "chancer" and a grifter".
"I think what he was doing in his speech was saying that Nigel Farage is someone that promised many people in this country that voting for Brexit would improve their lives and the strength of our economy, and that just turned out to be completely false.
"The latest allegations about these kind of crypto donations for overseas, that Nigel Farage is not declared. We don't know the source of them or what he's spending the money on.
He added Farage has "legitimate questions" he needs to answer - as well as the leader of the Greens.
"Zack Polanski also has had to fess up that he dodged paying council tax for years when he lived on a boat in east London. And it's right that we hold political leaders to account for these issues."