The British prime minister has promised change as he fends off a leadership challenge.
Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer has pledged to prove his doubters wrong as he fights for his political future in the wake of last week’s disastrous local election results and growing speculation that a leadership contest may not be far off.
In a make-or-break speech speech on Monday, the leader of the ruling Labour Party said that he remains the man to deliver change and will take responsibility for fulfilling his party’s electoral promises.
Labour came to power in July 2024 in a landslide victory, following 14 years of Conservative Party rule. Since then, Starmer’s popularity has tanked while support for the anti-immigration party, Reform UK, led by Brexit figurehead Nigel Farage, has soared. In local elections last week, Labour lost more than 1,460 council seats in England – most of them won by Reform – in the worst election results suffered by a governing party in more than three decades.
It has prompted calls from MPs for Starmer to resign. So far, he has refused to consider that, describing his government as a “10-year project” while conceding that the party under his leadership has made mistakes.
Discontent with Starmer’s leadership has been increasing over the past year. That could be seen clearly last week in the heavy losses in English local elections and parliamentary votes in Scotland and Wales.
While Labour lost nearly 1,500 local council seats, Reform UK surged from fewer than 100 to around 1,450 seats under Farage.
Support for Labour evaporated, even in several of its traditional strongholds in London, in former so-called “Red Wall” industrial regions in central and northern England, and in Wales, mainly benefiting Farage’s populist party.
One major issue is what many voters view as Starmer’s failure to tackle immigration. Despite agreeing a “one-in-one-out” deal with France last year to return undocumented migrants in return for those with a clear link to the UK, only a few have been successfully sent back.
There has also been mounting pressure over Labour’s appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US in December 2024. He was sacked after embarrassing emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein were uncovered by British media last September. Since then, Mandelson has been accused of sharing sensitive financial market information with Epstein in the wake of the global financial crisis in 2006-2007. Starmer has been accused of failing to heed warnings not to appoint him as ambassador, despite knowing of his connections to the convicted sex offender.
Starmer has publicly apologised, but said he did not know how close their relationship was. “None of us knew the depth and the darkness of that relationship,” Starmer said earlier this year.
Starmer has one of the lowest approval ratings for a Western leader. The latest Ipsos Political Pulse opinion poll shows half of Britain’s electorate believes Starmer should step down, and two-thirds believe he is unlikely to win reelection. The next general election must be held by July 2029 – five years after the previous one.
Bale said local elections only confirmed what the public already knew and Labour Party members feared. “Namely, [that] the government is terribly unpopular and Starmer is even more unpopular than the government,” he said.
To trigger a leadership contest, more than 20 percent of Labour MPs – 81 of them – must support a new candidate.
“It’s a serious possibility,” Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said. “That’s a pretty low bar when there is so much discontent in the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party].”
Starmer’s former deputy prime minister, the left-leaning trade unionist Angela Rayner, has been touted as one of the most credible challengers, although she has not put herself forward. Rayner was the housing secretary but was forced to resign last year for breaking the ministerial code on her taxes.
She has reportedly called for the return of the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to parliament, suggesting she would back him in a leadership contest. Burnham is not an MP, having been blocked by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) from standing in a by-election in January.
“What we are doing isn’t working, and it needs to change. It’s no good acknowledging mistakes if they’re not put right,” Rayner said on Monday after Starmer’s speech.
Bale said Rayner would likely garner consensus within the party.
“[The] left-leaning Labour MPs feel that Starmer’s leaned too far right and the government needs a course-correction,” he told Al Jazeera.
Bale said Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who has traditionally been seen as being at the centre-right of the party but has taken a left-wing stance on some issues such as Gaza and welfare, is also a likely contender, as some MPs do not deem Rayner to be “up to the job” and rate him as a good communicator. It is thought he may have already secured the required 20 percent of Labour MPs to support a bid, some British media reported on Monday.
Streeting’s allies have pointed to election results in Redbridge, the local authority in his constituency, where Labour held on last week, as a favourable sign for a possible leadership challenge. However, he has in the past lost support because of his previous friendship with Mandelson, the UK’s Guardian newspaper reported on Monday.
Rayner or Streeting may be most likely to kick off a leadership contest, but neither is universally popular within Labour itself, say observers.
Catherine West, the little-known MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet in north London, appears to have backed down after warning she could attempt to trigger a leadership contest.
In a BBC interview on Friday, West said she would prefer to see the cabinet “reorganise themselves” to avoid a leadership election. But if no new leader was forthcoming by Monday, she would ask MPs to back her to challenge the prime minister.
Following Starmer’s speech on Monday, she criticised it as “too little too late”, but suggested she would no longer stand for the Labour leadership. Even before backing down, West acknowledged she did not have the support needed to force a contest. Her threat of triggering one herself appeared to be an attempt to force more high-profile contenders to make a move.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who ranks in opinion polls as the public’s preferred choice, is currently unable to challenge as he does not have a seat in parliament – he will need to win a by-election before he can mount a challenge.
YouGov polling has found that 34 percent of Britons think he would be a better prime minister than Starmer.
Last year, Burnham was repeatedly touted as a contender for the leadership and notably never publicly ruled it out.
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