This came just a day after his chief of staff resigned in the aftermath of the scandal.?

Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, which faces a national parliament election in the next few months, called on Starmer to quit at a press conference. This was just a few days after he had said that a man he called a "friend" should stay in his post.??

"I have a genuine friendship with Keir Starmer. But my first priority and my first loyalty is to my country, Scotland," Sarwar said. "That's why the distraction needs to end, and the leadership in Downing Street needs to change."

Sarwar made no secret of his gaze being fixed on May elections to the Scottish parliament at Holyrood, where?Labour is struggling in the polls against the Scottish National Party (SNP) that has led Scottish governments for years now.?

"In three months we have an election that must be about one thing and one thing only, Scotland. That is my duty. That is my priority. That is my loyalty. And that is Scotland's choice," Sarwar said at the conclusion of his prepared remarks.?

He said he had spoken with Starmer before his press conference and that the two of them had "disagreed."?

"I have to be honest about failure wherever I see it. The situation in Downing Street is not good enough. There have been too many mistakes. They promised they were going to be different, but too much has happened," said Sarwar, who himself visited Mandelson in Washington last April.

The Scottish leader offered few details on what proved the tipping point for him?—?whether it was the current scandal pertaining to US financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his ties to Labour party grandee Peter Mandelson, or Labour's faltering governance more generally since a landslide UK election win 19 months ago.?

Asked "what's changed" between Thursday, when he said he thought Starmer should stay in his job, and Monday, Sarwar offered only non-explicit examples.

"The issues are much broader now," he said.?"There have been too many incidences where the wrong judgment calls have been made. There have been too many mistakes. And that is distracting from the wider work of government."?

Earlier on Monday, a second top aide to the British prime minister?offered his resignation in as many days.?

Communications chief Tim Allan quit?just two months after taking up the role, following on the heels of Starmer's more prominent chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who resigned on Sunday saying it was the upshot of him advising Starmer to make the contentious decision to appoint Mandelson as US ambassador in 2024.?

Starmer has had several communications directors during his roughly 19 months at the helm, which have been characterized by several communications gaffes and policy U-turns or alterations, denting his popularity.?

The prime minister's office said on Monday after news of Allan's resignation that Starmer was concentrating on the job in hand and had no plans to leave his post.

Several senior Cabinet colleagues commented in Stamer's?defense on Monday.?

"We should let nothing distract us from our mission to change Britain?and we support the Prime Minister in doing that," Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said.?

"At this crucial time for the world, we need his leadership not just at home but on the global stage," Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper wrote, while Treasury chief Rachel Reeves said "we are turning the country around" with Starmer as PM.?

Labour holds almost two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons, 404 out of 650.

This means that Starmer's exit via a vote of no confidence or early elections is highly unlikely unless Labour itself decides it wants to trigger one or both of these processes.

Far more likely, should a change in prime minister come to pass, would be an internal leadership battle. And in that event, there are few obvious candidates with clear support across the party's more centrist and left-wing factions.?

Peter Mandelson has been a senior figure in and around the Labour Party since the 1980s and particularly the era when Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown?were prime minister, between 1997 and 2010.?

A former strategist and communications specialist, he was a senior "fixer" in various backroom and ministerial roles for years. His known connections to the US super-rich, including but not limited to Jeffrey Epstein, and his contacts to people close to the Trump administration led to his appointment as US ambassador.?

But he had a checkered history of twice resigning amid scandals pertaining to improper relations with wealthy acquaintances, and was already a known associate of Epstein.?

His?appointment as US ambassador in 2024 therefore raised eyebrows as a risk at the time. He was sacked last September when an earlier tranche of information showing deeper ties to Epstein than were previously known came to light. But the latest releases seem to point to potential examples of abuse of power, and a British police investigation has been launched.

The 72-year-old,?who is in a same sex marriage, is not suspected of any sexual misconduct.

Edited by: Wesley Dockery?