UK’s Starmer defiant as calls for his resignation grow and several ministers quit

U.K. Prime Min­is­ter Keir Starmer in­sist­ed Tues­day that he has no in­ten­tion of re­sign­ing as calls grew loud­er with­in his Labour Par­ty for him to step down and some ju­nior mem­bers of his gov­ern­ment quit in protest.

A day be­fore the state open­ing of Par­lia­ment when the gov­ern­ment will present its leg­isla­tive pro­gram for the com­ing year, Starmer tried to shore up sup­port with­in his Cab­i­net.

Starmer’s fu­ture has be­come a hot top­ic over the past few fever­ish days fol­low­ing his­toric loss­es for the Labour Par­ty in lo­cal elec­tions last week, which if re­peat­ed in a na­tion­al elec­tion that has to be held by 2029, would see it over­whelm­ing­ly eject­ed from pow­er.

Though no Cab­i­net mem­ber has quit or pub­licly stat­ed the prime min­is­ter should step aside for a change in leader, there’s grow­ing spec­u­la­tion that the am­bi­tious health sec­re­tary, Wes Street­ing, will in­form Starmer that his days are num­bered when they meet on Wednes­day.

Street­ing has many sup­port­ers with­in the par­lia­men­tary par­ty, in­clud­ing some of those who re­signed from Starmer’s gov­ern­ment on Tues­day, which stoked spec­u­la­tion that Starmer could suf­fer the fate of Boris John­son in 2022 when dozens of min­is­ters quit en masse and forced his de­par­ture.

While more than 100 mem­bers of Par­lia­ment signed a let­ter say­ing it was “no time for a lead­er­ship con­test,” about 90 oth­ers said Starmer should stand down or at least set out a timetable for his de­par­ture.

That’s not enough to trig­ger a lead­er­ship con­test, though, as no can­di­date has is­sued a chal­lenge to the prime min­is­ter. Un­der Labour par­ty rules, a fifth of its law­mak­ers in the House of Com­mons, or 81 mem­bers, must pub­licly give their back­ing to a sin­gle can­di­date for a lead­er­ship elec­tion to take place.

First res­ig­na­tions

On Tues­day, sev­er­al ju­nior min­is­ters, some of whom were elect­ed for the first time in Labour’s land­slide elec­tion vic­to­ry in Ju­ly 2024, re­signed and urged Starmer to do the same.

Mi­at­ta Fahn­bulleh, min­is­ter of hous­ing, com­mu­ni­ties and lo­cal gov­ern­ment, was the first to quit, urg­ing Starmer “to do the right thing for the coun­try.”

She was fol­lowed by Jess Phillips, the safe­guard­ing min­is­ter and a promi­nent mem­ber of the Labour Par­ty. In her res­ig­na­tion let­ter, she de­scribed Starmer as a “good man fun­da­men­tal­ly” but un­able to make bold changes.

“I know you care deeply, but deeds, not words are what mat­ter,” Phillips said. “I’m not sure we are grasp­ing this rare op­por­tu­ni­ty with the gus­to that’s need­ed and I can­not keep wait­ing around for a cri­sis to push for faster progress.”

De­spite the par­ty’s dom­i­nant win dri­ving out the Con­ser­v­a­tives af­ter 14 years in pow­er, Labour’s pop­u­lar­i­ty has plunged and Starmer is get­ting much of the blame.

The rea­sons in­clude a se­ries of pol­i­cy mis­steps, a per­ceived lack of vi­sion on the prime min­is­ter’s part, a strug­gling British econ­o­my and ques­tions over his judg­ment. Starmer’s choice of Pe­ter Man­del­son as U.K. am­bas­sador to Wash­ing­ton de­spite ties to the con­vict­ed sex of­fend­er Jef­frey Ep­stein has con­tin­ued to haunt him.

Starmer de­fi­ant

At the start of the week­ly Cab­i­net meet­ing on Tues­day, Starmer said he took re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the loss­es in last week’s elec­tions but would fight on.

Labour was squeezed from the right and the left, los­ing votes to both an­ti-im­mi­grant Re­form UK and the Green Par­ty, as well as na­tion­al­ist par­ties in Scot­land and Wales. The re­sult re­flects the in­creas­ing frag­men­ta­tion of U.K. pol­i­tics, long dom­i­nat­ed by Labour and the Con­ser­v­a­tives.

Starmer told his Cab­i­net that there’s a process to oust a leader and it hadn’t been trig­gered.

“The coun­try ex­pects us to get on with gov­ern­ing,” Starmer said. “The past 48 hours have been desta­bi­liz­ing for gov­ern­ment and that has a re­al eco­nom­ic cost for our coun­try and for fam­i­lies.”

That cost was ev­i­dent in fi­nan­cial mar­kets on Tues­day, with the in­ter­est rate charged on British gov­ern­ment bonds up by more than those of com­pa­ra­ble na­tions. That shows in­vestors think it’s in­creas­ing­ly risky to hold British gov­ern­ment debt.

Em­bat­tled PM wins sup­port

As Cab­i­net mem­bers left 10 Down­ing Street, some voiced their sup­port for the em­bat­tled prime min­is­ter.

Works and Pen­sions Sec­re­tary Pat Mc­Fad­den said no­body pub­licly chal­lenged Starmer at the meet­ing, while Busi­ness Sec­re­tary Pe­ter Kyle said the prime min­is­ter was show­ing “re­al­ly stead­fast lead­er­ship.”

Lat­er, Starmer’s deputy David Lam­my warned Labour law­mak­ers that the on­ly ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the par­ty’s “navel-gaz­ing” is the pop­ulist right and the leader of Re­form UK, Nigel Farage, in par­tic­u­lar.

“He has my full sup­port, and what I say to col­leagues is, look, let’s just step back,” he said. “Take a breath.”

Po­ten­tial can­di­dates

Health Sec­re­tary Wes Street­ing, long be­lieved to be prepar­ing for a lead­er­ship chal­lenge against Starmer, was among se­nior min­is­ters who dodged a bar­rage of shout­ed ques­tions from a gag­gle of re­porters out­side.

“Wes Street­ing, do you want the job, or not?” a man yelled from across the street. “Are you mea­sur­ing the cur­tains?”

Street­ing is ex­pect­ed to meet Starmer ear­ly on Wednes­day, be­fore King Charles III out­lines the gov­ern­ment’s pro­gram, to dis­cuss the fu­ture.

The oth­er two names of­ten tout­ed as pos­si­ble suc­ces­sors are An­gela Rayn­er, the for­mer deputy prime min­is­ter who had to quit last year over an un­paid tax bill. She has long set her­self apart as a dif­fer­ent kind of politi­cian with a com­pelling per­son­al sto­ry, brought up in so­cial hous­ing and leav­ing school at 16 as a teen moth­er.

Andy Burn­ham, the pop­u­lar may­or of Greater Man­ches­ter, is wide­ly per­ceived to be one of the strongest can­di­dates but is not cur­rent­ly el­i­gi­ble be­cause he’s not in Par­lia­ment. To get in the race, he’ll have to find a seat where he can be elect­ed.

That may in­volve a close al­ly of Burn­ham’s in the north­west of Eng­land va­cat­ing their seat for him to stand for elec­tion. How­ev­er, he may be blocked as was the case ear­li­er this year or could even lose, if last week’s re­sults are any guide. —LON­DON (AP)

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Sto­ry by BRI­AN MEL­LEY and PAN PY­LAS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Dan­i­ca Kir­ka and Sylvia Hui in Lon­don con­tributed to this re­port.