Keir Starmer facing growing calls to resign as British prime minister

Labour leader facing growing calls from MPs to step down following catastrophic results in local, regional elections

Published May 11, 2026  •  2 minute read

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Photo by Carl Court

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing growing calls from his fellow Labour MPs to step down following catastrophic results for his party in local and regional elections.

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More than 60 of Labour’s 403 MPs have asked him to step down after the party lost nearly 1,500 councillors in local elections, was wiped out in Wales after 27 years and failed to dislodge the Scottish National Party in Scotland’s parliament. Starmer, fighting for his political life, insisted that he’s not going anywhere in a speech on Monday warning his fellow Labour members that British voters don’t want to switch leaders.

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“Like every government, we’ve made mistakes … but we got the big political choices right,” he said.

MP wants ‘ordered and dignified’ departure

Labour MP David Smith said Starmer should leave in an “ordered and dignified” way, while an anonymous Labour backbencher told politico.eu that Starmer looked “out of his depth.

“I watched that, thinking of all my constituents who told me on their doorsteps in the last few weeks that he has to go and they won’t vote Labour until he does,” they said. “There was nothing there for them.”

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Growing mood against Starmer

Britons are increasingly angry with the prime minister, who promised “stability and moderation” after winning a general election in a landslide in 2024, ending 14 years of Conservative rule. Starmer pledged to cut waiting times in the health-care system, a pivot to clean energy, improved safety and secure borders.

British voters are particularly angry about what they perceive as Labour’s unwillingness to tackle migrant crime and a two-tier justice system that applies different standards depending on ethnicity — one that is lenient on newcomers charged with violent, heinous crimes and another that harshly cracks down on native Britons for publicly criticizing the government. The issue has citizens pejoratively calling the prime minister “Two-tier Kier.”

The growing anger has pushed voters to Nigel Farage and his Reform Party, who were the big winners in the recent elections. Reform has pledged a freeze on non-essential immigration, mass deportation of illegal migrants and abolishing net-zero targets.

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