British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in an aggressive tone in London on Monday that he had no intention of resigning after a massive election defeat across the country last week.
This comes amid public pressure and even some voices from within his party urging him to reconsider his position.
What did Starmer say after his defeat in the local and regional elections last week?
“The election results last week were tough. Very tough,” Starmer said. “It hurts, and it should hurt. I understand it. I feel it. And I take responsibility. But it’s not just about taking responsibility for the consequences.”
He also has a responsibility to explain how the UK government plans to do better, he said, adding that the country faces “dangerous times and dangerous adversaries”.
“If we don’t get this right we will be headed down a very dark path,” Starmer said. “And I take responsibility for not getting carried away, not for plunging our country into chaos, as the Tories have done again and again. Chaos that will do lasting damage to this country.”
He said he knows he has doubts and needs to prove them wrong, and said he will do so.
Why is Starmer under pressure?
Starmer was speaking days after his Labor party suffered heavy defeats in the English municipal elections as well as elections for national parliaments in Scotland and Wales – both historical Labor strongholds.
Labor lost more than 1,400 council seats across England, reducing the influence of both Reform UK on the populist right and the Greens on the populist left.
In the Welsh Senedd Parliament it dropped from 36.2% of the vote and 30 seats to 11.1% and nine seats, and dropped from third place to the largest party behind Welsh nationalists plaid Cymru and Reform UK.
And in the north, Labor saw the Scottish National Party re-establish its dominance over the Holyrood chamber, despite its great difficulties in recent years. Reform won as many Scottish seats as Labour; The Greens, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were all behind.
Various policy U-turns, communication problems and a protracted scandal over the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador had put Labor under pressure since its victory in the 2024 general election.
Over the weekend, Catherine West, a relatively junior MP and former low-level minister, urged her colleagues to challenge Starmer’s leadership by Monday. If they didn’t, she would consider doing it herself, West said.
Labour’s high profile former deputy leader Angela Rayner avoided breaking confidence with Starmer, but on Sunday evening she released a lengthy shopping list of achievements she felt the party needed to prioritise, and said things “must change now.”
What did Starmer say about his political rivals?
Starmer focused primarily on Labour’s English and all-UK political rivals the Conservatives, Nigel Farage’s Reform and Zac Polanski’s Greens, rather than resurgent nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales.
In particular, he was critical of the populist threat he faced from both sides.
Starmer said, “We are battling Reform and the Greens. But at a deeper level, we are battling the despair that they exploit.” “Neither Nigel Farage nor Zac Polanski provide the serious and progressive leadership this country demands at this time.”
The Prime Minister also sought to highlight his working-class roots and explain how he understood the discontent among large parts of Labour’s traditional voter base.
“My late brother Nick spent his entire adult life bouncing from one job to another. The status quo didn’t work for him,” Starmer said, also describing how her sister was a care worker who worked long and hard hours for relatively low pay.
“They did not even receive sick pay during the pandemic,” he said. “The status quo didn’t work for him.”
He said that he wanted to be the Prime Minister for those for whom the status quo was not working and wanted to show, “I am their Prime Minister and this is their government.”
“Strength through fairness, that’s my direction in this world,” he said, adding that these values will feature “largely” in Wednesday’s King’s speech, which will outline his government’s plan for the coming legislative period.
‘Britain has been struggling with crisis after crisis for two decades’
During his speech, Starmer also mentioned the economic shock amid the war in Iran.
He said he was sympathetic to voters who were asking themselves, “How can I pay the price of a war thousands of miles away that I don’t support, that doesn’t involve Britain?”
He added, “And this is nothing new, isn’t it? For two decades, Britain has been grappling with one crisis after another: the 2008 financial meltdown, the Tory austerity that followed, Brexit, COVID, the Ukraine war, it goes on and on.”
The response he gave was always an attempt to “bring back the status quo that has failed working people time and time again.”
“Our response this time must be different: full stop,” he said.
On this front, he outlined three areas of change that would potentially be left behind by this full stop: a plan to nationalize the struggling British Steel Company, a plan to move closer to the “heart of Europe” after Brexit (but stopping short of major steps like rejoining the Single Market and the Cutstems Union), and trying to provide more employment and training opportunities for young people.
Edited by: Elizabeth Schumacher