Less than two years after a landslide election victory that ended 14 years of government by the centre-right Conservative Party in Britain, Keir Starmer is hanging on by a thread.
His centre-left Labor Party lost more than half of its local council seats in elections across England last week, with the majority going to the right-wing, anti-immigration party, Reform UK. Labor also performed poorly in elections for the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments held on the same day.
Because they operate at a national level, Starmer and his fellow Members of Parliament (MPs) were not actually up for re-election. But this loss is being considered as a serious indictment of his lack of popularity. A survey this month by British pollster YouGov found that 23% of Britons had a positive opinion of Starmer, while 69% had an unfavorable opinion. He is rapidly losing support even within his own party.
Is Keir Starmer still UK Prime Minister?
For now, the 63-year-old man is still leading the country. Starmer’s 2024 victory means he is entitled to remain in power until the next general election, which must be called by August 2029. Unless he resigns, which he has ruled out so far, there are limited options to oust him during one term.
One of these is if he loses the so-called parliamentary no-confidence vote. It must be introduced by one MP and Starmer would lose his simple majority in the House of Commons. Given that Labor has 403 seats out of 650, this is unlikely. The more likely scenario is that he will lose his party’s support.
In recent days more than 90 Labor MPs have called for him to leave, with some high profile cabinet ministers resigning their posts. But, under Labor rules, 20% of Labor MPs – 81 people – must support a single candidate to challenge the incumbent. That scenario would trigger an internal party leadership election, the winner of which would become prime minister by default.
Who is the candidate to replace Keir Starmer?
The initial favorite is not currently an MP. andy burnham There is an elected Labor mayor of Greater Manchester, one of Britain’s largest cities and a traditional Labor stronghold. This would normally rule him out of a leadership challenge, but Josh Simmons, MP for Makerfield in Greater Manchester, has resigned, forcing a by-election and Burnham hopes to win if selected by the party as its candidate, giving him a seat in the House of Commons.
While Burnham has been well respected throughout her mayoral tenure, some will see her abandonment of Manchester for the bigger stage as a dereliction of duty. If he wins the by-election, Burnham will return to the national stage for the first time since 2017. He served under Tony Blair’s government and Gordon Brown’s cabinet in the first decade of the 2000s and then in opposition.
Wes StreetingThere is another candidate who resigned from the post of Health Minister on Thursday. He wrote in his resignation letter, “Where we need vision, we have emptiness. Where we need direction, we have drift.” Streeting grew up in tough conditions in London and has not yet announced a formal challenge. His status as a key Starmer cabinet member probably worked against him in the public eye.
Another candidate who has made her way to the challenge is Starmer’s former deputy, angela rainer. On Thursday, Rayner said UK tax authorities had “acquitted” him of a charge that he “deliberately tried to avoid tax” on a property he bought. She stepped down from the deputy leadership last September as a result of the allegations but now stands clear. Renner has said that she will not start the contest but declined to endorse Starmer when asked.
Is the Prime Minister of Britain elected?
The UK operates a ‘first past the post’ parliamentary system. There are 650 parliamentary constituencies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and each elects one MP in a general election. These constituencies may vary in size and population. Any party that wins the majority of seats can rule, otherwise a coalition can be formed. The leader of that party automatically becomes the Prime Minister.
However, leadership challenges or resignations from within have seen Gordon Brown, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak hold the top job alone over the last 20 years. All were elected as MPs, but were not party leaders when their party won the government.
Could Nigel Farage be Britain’s next Prime Minister?
Labour’s loss has largely been reform’s gain. The party, which replaced Farage’s Brexit Party in 2018, saw large gains in the council elections, as they did in the 2024 general election, where they won five seats but took just over 14.3% of the vote share, making them the third-largest party by that metric. Three Conservatives, including the former Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, and the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, have since defected, taking their number to eight MPs.
A key reform policy is to “remove all illegal immigrants from the UK”, with an emphasis on stopping small boat crossings across the English Channel between southern England and mainland Europe. The party wants to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act, dramatically cut foreign aid and scrap net zero targets to put the British people first, like many of its own. Policy Planning State.
However, Faraz’s popularity is more than that of his party. He had not planned to stand in 2024, preferring to help Donald Trump’s campaign in the US, before a last-minute U-turn reinstalled him as leader before winning his first House of Commons seat. He had previously been a member of the European Parliament.
It recently emerged that shortly before his change of heart, Faraz had been given a gift of £5m (€5.75 million, $6.7 million) from British crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, who is based in Thailand. Farage now faces investigation by the parliamentary standards watchdog after first arguing the money was for his security and then as a “reward” for securing Brexit. Reform has been a big policy supporter of cryptocurrencies and has called for regulation. Nevertheless, Farage’s popularity among voters is sky-high and he is certainly a contender.
What is likely to happen next in UK politics?
Farage’s popularity is unlikely to be put to the ultimate test any time soon. In such a situation, no Labor leader is likely to call an election with his party and the Green Party is also moving to its left.
The Greens won four national seats in 2024, whereas previously they had only one, more than doubling their vote share in the process. They also performed well in the recent council elections, winning 376 council seats, control of five councils and two mayoral posts. Jack Polanski, who takes over the leadership in 2025, has attracted a large following among young voters and those on the left of Starmer’s Labour.
The next important step is likely to be a by-election in Makerfield in late 2026, in which Burnham is expected to run. No firm date has been set yet, but Farage may see this as an opportunity to give Labor another bloody nose and cause even more chaos, with Labor receiving 18,202 votes last time to Reform’s 12,803.
The worrying news for Burnham is that the Greens are likely to run in Makerfield as well. The days of Britain’s two-party system are numbered, with the Conservatives struggling to recover from their 2024 defeat.
Assuming Reform and the Greens do not win, and Burnham wins, she would need to muster the 81 MPs needed to challenge Starmer, something Streeting would also be working towards doing, with Rayner waiting in the wings.
Meanwhile, with new cabinet appointments underway and the road ahead looking difficult, Starmer remains prime minister.
Edited by: Andreas Illmer