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UK transport minister’s resignation deals fresh blow to Prime Minister Starmer | Real Time Headlines

UK Transport Secretary Louise Haigh will arrive in London on Wednesday 30 October 2024 for a pre-budget cabinet meeting.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

British Transport Secretary Louise Haigh resigned after pleading guilty years ago to misleading police over her work mobile phone, in another blow to Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Her resignation is the first among Starmer’s senior ministerial team since his landslide election victory in July, following media reports that she was convicted and conditionally discharged in 2014 over what she called “mistakes”.

In a letter to Starmer on Thursday, November 28, Haigh said she had told police she had lost a mobile phone during a “horrendous” robbery during a night out in 2013 and later discovered it was still with her. Home.

In her resignation letter shared by Starmer’s office earlier on Friday, Hague said she resigned because the issue “will inevitably distract us from delivering the work of this government and the policies to which we have committed”.

“I remain fully committed to our political project, but I now believe that I will be best served by the support I receive from outside government,” she said.

Starmer thanked Hague for her work and all she has done “to deliver this government’s ambitious transport agenda”.

The opposition Conservatives said Hague “did the right thing” but asked Starmer why he appointed her when he apparently knew she had been convicted.

A Conservative Party spokesman said in a statement: “Keir Starmer now has a duty to explain this clear error of judgment to the British public.”

Hague’s resignation is another blow for the Labor leader, who has seen his party’s support plummet since July.

The Labor government was criticized almost immediately after winning power for restricting fuel payments to the elderly and accepting donations for clothing and hospitality.

Since then, his government has angered farmers over changes to inheritance tax rules and many businesses have cried foul over Labour’s first budget, in which the finance minister raised taxes mainly on businesses and the wealthy.

Hague, who was first elected in 2015 and held senior posts under Starmer and left-wing former Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, said the mobile phone incident was a “genuine mistake” that she “did not derive no benefit from it”.

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