Medway MP turns on Starmer
A Labour resignation, more School Streets, and another near-miss for Mark Reckless
Gillingham and Rainham MP Naushabah Khan has called for Keir Starmer to resign, marking the first major public break from the Prime Minister by one of Medway’s Labour MPs. Further down, we also look at the latest expansion of Medway’s School Streets scheme and another unsuccessful election outing for Mark Reckless.
Medway MP turns on Starmer
Keir Starmer came to Medway in 2023 and stood alongside Naushabah Khan, then Labour’s candidate for Gillingham and Rainham, as the party tried to turn a long period of Conservative dominance into something else.
At the time, the direction of travel looked obvious. Labour was ahead nationally, the Conservatives were exhausted, and seats like Gillingham and Rainham were exactly the kind of places Starmer needed to win if he was going to form a government. Labour took control of Medway Council a month later and swept all three parliamentary constituencies in July 2024.
Now, she is calling for him to resign as Prime Minister.
Khan has stepped down as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Cabinet Office, saying the message from last week’s elections was clear and that Starmer has “lost the confidence of the public.”
It is a striking intervention from one of Medway’s three Labour MPs, not least because Khan entered Parliament in July 2024 on the same Labour landslide that put Starmer in Downing Street. Less than two years later, she has resigned from the lower rungs of his government and told him to go.
Gillingham and Rainham was one of Labour’s key Kent gains at the general election. Khan took the seat from the Conservatives, becoming part of a new Medway Labour group of MPs alongside Tristan Osborne in Chatham and Aylesford, and Lauren Edwards in Rochester and Strood.
That made Medway go red in Westminster for the first time since 2010. It also tied the area’s new MPs closely to Starmer’s project. Khan’s resignation now pulls one of them firmly away from it.
In a statement published today, Khan said: “After a great deal of reflection, I have taken the decision to resign from my role as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Cabinet Office. This is not a step I have taken lightly, but I believe that putting the interests of my constituents and our country first must come before any position in government.”
She added, “The message from last week’s elections was clear: the Prime Minister has lost the confidence of the public. For me, this has confirmed that the Labour Party needs a clear change of direction if we are to rebuild trust and deliver the change people voted for.”
Khan said she was “proud” of what Labour had achieved in government, but warned that the party was now failing to meet the moment.
“I entered politics because I believe in public service, in fairness, and in the power of Labour governments to change lives. I did not enter politics to stand by while we fail.”
She went on to call for “new leadership” and said Labour needed to “reset, reconnect with the public, and start delivering on the promise of change.”
A Parliamentary Private Secretary is not a ministerial role, but it is one of the first rungs on the government ladder.
PPS roles are usually given to MPs considered loyal and reliable enough to sit close to ministers, support the government, and act as a link between departments and the wider parliamentary party. They do not have the power or profile of ministers, but they are part of the extended government operation.
That makes resigning from one different from a backbencher firing off a gloomy post on social media. It is a public break from the government machine by someone who had been inside its lower ranks.
Khan had been serving as PPS to Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister. Jones is one of the Labour figures being discussed in relation to the party’s future, though no formal challenger has yet emerged.
Khan has also been publicly supportive of Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, who is widely seen as one of the most likely leadership contenders if Labour’s crisis turns into a contest.
Starmer is fighting to stay in Downing Street after a disastrous set of elections for Labour last week. The party lost almost 1,500 councillors in England, was pushed out of power in Wales, and recorded its worst ever result at a Scottish Parliament election.
The elections had been billed as a key test of Starmer’s leadership after months of poor polling and frustration inside Labour over the direction of the government. Instead, they have produced the first serious attempt by Labour MPs to force him out.
Three members of the government, including Home Office minister Jess Phillips, have resigned. More than 80 Labour MPs have called for Starmer to resign immediately or set out a timetable for departure.
At cabinet today, Starmer told ministers that he did not intend to quit, and challenged any potential rivals to formally move against him. Under Labour rules, a leadership challenge would require the backing of 20% of Labour MPs, currently 81 MPs.
No MP has yet launched a formal challenge. That leaves Labour in the odd position of having enough public dissatisfaction to create a crisis, but not yet enough organised movement to resolve it.
For Medway, Khan’s decision leaves her in a different position from the area’s two other Labour MPs.
Tristan Osborne has not called for Starmer to go, instead sharing the live stream of the Prime Minister’s speech yesterday on social media. Rochester and Strood MP Lauren Edwards has made no public comment on the leadership calls.
That may change. At the current pace of Westminster, almost everything may change between us hitting publish on this edition and making a cup of tea. The number of Labour MPs calling for Starmer to quit has already been rising, and the question now is whether those calls turn into a formal challenge or remain a very loud queue of people asking someone else to go first.
In 2023, Starmer came to Medway as the man Labour candidates wanted by their side. Khan is now one of the MPs telling Labour it needs to move on without him.
Medway’s School Streets expand again
Medway’s School Streets scheme is expanding again, with two new zones due to launch next month around schools in Rochester and the Davis Estate.
From Monday 8 June, roads around Crest Infant School and Delce Academy in Rochester, and Horsted Primary School in Chatham, will become pedestrian and cycle-only areas during school drop-off and pick-up times.
The idea is simple enough. For a short window each morning and afternoon, non-exempt vehicles are kept out of the roads around the school gates, making the school run a little less like a daily stress test for everyone involved.
Around Crest Infant School and Delce Academy, the new zone will a raft of roads, including The Tideway, Crest Road, and Fleet Road. It will operate from 8am to 9am, and from 3pm to 3.45pm.
Around Horsted Primary School, the zone will cover Barberry Avenue and Binland Grove. It will operate from 8am to 8.45am, and from 2.45pm to 3.30pm.
The Horsted scheme is a mildly interesting one for anyone who has been following this saga longer than is strictly healthy. When the second wave of School Streets was first consulted on in 2024, the proposal appeared to cover Barberry Avenue outside Horsted Junior School while leaving Binland Grove, outside Horsted Infant School, out of the main restriction. The final version now includes both.
Medway Council says School Streets are designed to reduce congestion, cut parking problems for residents, improve air quality, and create a safer environment for children and parents travelling to school. The programme has been backed by £486,000 from the government’s Active Travel Fund.
Enforcement will be carried out using Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras. Medway says new School Streets will have a six-month warning period, with first-time offenders receiving a warning notice before fines begin. Vehicles entering during operating hours without an exemption may then receive a penalty charge notice.
That detail matters because School Streets in Medway have never been quite as calm as the roads they are meant to create.
Local Authority reported last year that 16,950 fines were issued across the first seven School Streets in their first year, with the penalties carrying a face value of £1.1m before discounts, appeals and unpaid fines. Burnt Oak Primary School in Gillingham accounted for 7,604 of them alone, helped by the fact that Richmond Road is less a quiet school-side lane and more the kind of road plenty of drivers were already using to get somewhere else.
Ed Jennings
The same Richmond Road site later became the subject of an overturned fine after an independent tribunal found signage there was inadequate. That ruling did not automatically invalidate other fines, but it did underline one of the recurring questions around the scheme. If a camera is catching a large number of drivers, is that proof of terrible driving, weak signage, poor design, or a very Medway combination of all three?
Medway has also had to wrestle with traffic displacement. Recent council papers accepted that some schemes had pushed vehicles onto nearby roads, with the impact varying by site. In some places, the road outside the school gate got calmer while neighbouring roads picked up the pressure.
Medway is still considering when to introduce a School Street around St William of Perth Roman Catholic Primary School in Rochester. The proposed zone would cover Canon Close, with additional safety measures along Maidstone Road. Feedback from the statutory consultation suggested the afternoon operating period should be changed, so Medway says it will update the Traffic Regulation Order before the scheme is introduced.
The most politically awkward proposal remains The King’s Pre-Preparatory School and Nursery in Rochester, where Medway is still considering comments and has not decided whether to implement the scheme.
That proposal covers Lockington Grove, King Edward Road, and St Margaret’s Street, but also includes wider changes around St Margaret’s Street and Roebuck Road. That is where School Streets stop being a small intervention. Unsurprisingly, that is also where the arguments become louder.
Ed Jennings
School Streets can make the road outside the gate safer and calmer. What happens one street over is where the policy can get messy.
Pour one out for Mark Reckless
Spare a thought this week for Mark Reckless, the former Rochester and Strood MP whose latest attempt to return to elected office has ended in disappointment.
Reckless, one of Medway politics’ more durable exports, was standing for Reform in Caerdydd Penarth in last week’s Senedd election. Reform had a decent enough night there, winning 15,525 votes and taking one of the constituency’s six seats. Sadly for Reckless, he was second on the party’s list, which meant the seat went to Joseph Martin instead.
It is another twist in a political career that has now taken Reckless from Conservative MP for Rochester and Strood, to UKIP MP for Rochester and Strood, to UKIP member of the Welsh Assembly, to Welsh Conservative, to Brexit Party member, to member of the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party, to Reform candidate for the Senedd. Less a political journey than a pub crawl through every available vehicle on the right.
This latest vehicle was not without its own difficulties. In the final days before polling, Nation.Cymru reported that Reckless had been campaigning in Cardiff with what he described on social media as the 'Reform bus.' The 'bus' was, in fact, a white Vauxhall van covered in party messaging. According to the outlet, checks showed the van was untaxed, with its tax having expired in March, and subject to an outstanding vehicle recall. Reform said the van “doesn’t belong to Reform,” which is the sort of sentence that tells a full story while answering very little.
Still, politics is about results, and the result here was clear enough. Caerdydd Penarth returned three Plaid Cymru members, one Green, one Labour member, and one Reform member. Reckless was not that one.
For a man who has represented Rochester, Strood, UKIP, the Conservatives, Brexit, Abolish and Reform, it would be foolish to call this the end. For now, though, Medway’s most restless political export remains outside elected office, while the Reform not-bus rolls on without him.
Footnotes
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