Oust me if you can: Britain’s Starmer challenges mutinous party

LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer dug his heels in Tuesday and defied widespread calls to resign.

Teetering under pressure from a Trump ally, British voters — and now senior members of his own party — Starmer vowed to keep fighting for his political life in the wake of a damaging electoral thumping.

A series of errors and U-turns have left Starmer polling as the most unpopular British leader on record, less than two years after he led his Labour Party to a landslide victory. Dismay with his rule reached a crescendo last week after Labour was humiliated in the country’s midterms-style elections, with many voters saying they were specifically punishing Starmer himself.

By Tuesday morning, more than 80 lawmakers with Starmer’s Labour Party had called for him to go, including several members of his own government. They fear inaction will lead to Labour being smashed by hard-right Reform UK, led by Trump ally Nigel Farage, at the next national election.

But in a crunch meeting with ministers inside No. 10 Downing St. early Tuesday, Starmer faced down the growing mutiny.

“I take responsibility for these election results and I take responsibility for delivering the change we promised,” Starmer said, according to his office “ The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a Cabinet.”

Under chilly blue skies Tuesday, Westminster was rife with speculation about who may attempt to move against their own leader.

Any member of Parliament would need the support of 20% of their colleagues to spark a leadership contest.

“That has not been triggered,” Starmer told Cabinet, effectively challenging any contenders to make their move.

He echoed the remaining loyalists who say a leadership contest would be distracting at a time when the country needs real solutions to its economic stagnation. “The past 48 hours have been destabilizing for government and that has a real economic cost for our country and for families,” Starmer said.

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This is a remarkable turnaround for a leader who in June 2024 was elected in a historic landslide, casting himself as a sensible technocrat who would end years of exhausting chaos under the long-ruling Conservative Party.

The Tories, as they are known, had descended into a political psychodrama, an internecine carousel that had delivered four leaders in as many years.

Starmer was supposed to be the adult in the room, a staid but eminently competent former chief prosecutor who could not only end the personality politics of Britain’s governing class but also address its crumbling public services and sense of wider societal malaise.

On paper, Starmer’s position is still strong.

He does not have to call a general election until at least 2029, and his Labour Party still holds a commanding 406 of the 650 lawmakers in the Houses of Commons.

But his personal and party polls are dismal, crippled by what critics and independent analysts say — and even many Labour figures admit — has been a series of unforced errors. That includes more than a dozen U-turns, most damagingly on welfare reform.

The hope is that another leader — perhaps popular Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham or the former deputy leader, Angela Rayner — would present a clean slate for a widely jaded electorate.

Among the figures calling for Starmer to step down was Miatta Fahnbulleh, who stepped down as a junior government minister while telling the prime minister to “to do the right thing for the country” and set a timetable for a leadership transition.

She said the party had “not acted with the vision, pace and ambition that our mandate for change demands of us.”