Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has refused to go quietly, as some within the UK’s Labour government had clearly hoped, and has defied the rebels to openly challenge him.
After months of talk about Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer being set up to take the fall for the May local elections, now that the moment has arrived, it appears possible his greatest strength is a simple-minded disinclination to pay attention to his critics whatsoever.
At Monday’s ‘reset’ speech — only the latest of his leadership so far, the cloyingly earnest tones now a familiar part of the rhythm of British political life — Starmer vowed to ignore the public mood and laid into the British right, who he defined as including those who notice the country’s problems and who diagnose mass migration as a contributing factor. Today, he doubled down again, taking the initiative in a crunch cabinet meeting with his most senior colleagues where he was expected to be delivered an ultimatum to start the resignation process.
After the cabinet broke up, it was claimed that Starmer instead refused to give others an opportunity to speak, outlined his determination to remain in post, and delivered an ultimatum of his own. In traditional British political parlance, the message to the plotters is to “put up or shut up“: make the challenge formal or go away.
The Guardian reports that he told those sitting around the government’s cabinet table:
As I said yesterday, I take responsibility for these election results and I take responsibility for delivering the change we promised… The past 48 hours have been destabilising for government and that has a real economic cost for our country and for families. The Labour party has a process for challenging a leader and that has not been triggered.
The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a cabinet.
Per The Daily Telegraph, citing a ‘cabinet source’, after delivering his speech, Starmer moved the meeting directly to the regular business of government, giving no opportunity for reply.
And indeed, while there has been much excitement over the number of Labour rebels inside Parliament hitting the symbolic number of 81 letters, this has yet to turn into a formal leadership challenge, and until it does, Starmer is under no obligation to resign unless he wants to.
Under Labour party rules, a leadership challenge can be triggered by 20 per cent of its Parliamentary seat-holding members signalling their dissent and backing a single alternative candidate. As things stand, while the 81 number has been passed — and at the time of publication stands at 85 — they have not yet backed a single candidate.
Who could be the next Prime Minister?
Sir Keir Starmer —
Should the rebels rise to the Prime Minister’s challenge and actually trigger a leadership competition, Sir Keir will automatically have a place on the ballot as the sitting leader. But let’s be clear, if it gets to that point, the chances of Starmer clinging on will be minimal. However, at the moment, the cost to Labour parliamentarians for rebelling could be reasonably high. Once the leadership ballot is underway, they’re merely engaging with party procedure and the chance to ingratiate themselves with a new leader beckons.
So Starmer’s best chance is to scare the plotters off before it reaches that point. That’s what today’s bullish challenge is all about, and Starmer still has several factors in his favour. The plotters are split between rival camps and can’t even agree whether now is the right time to move against the Prime Minister. Starmer still has control of the party and could make life difficult for rebels, and has a notable track record of purging his enemies.
Starmer also has the nuclear option. The popularity of the Labour Party is at rock bottom, and it increasingly looks like there isn’t a single safe seat for them left in the country. That’s hundreds of Labour MPs, many of them relatively young and with little life experience outside of politics, who stand to lose their well-paid jobs at the next election, and Starmer has the executive power to call an election at any time he chooses. Stick with me, or it’s the dole queue for you. Seems unlikely? This is a man with a notoriously difficult relationship with normal human emotion and a total determination to cling to power. Don’t rule anything out.
Wes Streeting —
Britain’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting leaves Number 10 Downing Street after attending a cabinet meeting in central London on May 12, 2026. (Photo by Brook Mitchell / AFP via Getty Images)
Could we call Streeting continuity Starmer? Very much part of his clique, a child of the Blairite New Labour party. He’s ambitious and the (so far undeclared) head of the Labour faction that wants to trigger a leadership challenge as soon as possible, as it would benefit him best.
As Streeting’s name has been circulated amid all the leadership talk in recent days, there have been some excited comments on social media that Labour could be about to deliver Britain’s first gay Prime Minister. Almost certainly a nonsense, of course, given the rumours that former Conservative PM Ted Heath — who became party leader while homosexuality was still a criminal offence in the UK, even — was privately gay, but he could certainly be the first openly gay leader.
Probably not something most people really, truly care about in Britain these days. But some might. Thinking of which…
There’s something very 2026 about Streeting’s potential candidacy, which is whether he could reasonably expect to be a Member of Parliament in the future at all, never mind Prime Minister. An ongoing theme amid Labour’s woes is the mass defection of its long-relied-upon voter bloc in migrant communities to alternative parties or independent candidates that, rather than pandering to — for instance — Muslim interests, simply represent them organically.
We’ve written about that if you want a clearer picture of how and where that’s happening. But it is clearly happening in Streeting’s home constituency, and we now know it is something he has privately expressed panic about. After text messages between Streeting and disgraced Labour grandee Peter Mandelson were made public, it showed the two men had discussed the threat of Muslim voting patterns changing to the electoral prospects of candidates standing in diverse areas.
In a March 2025 text, Streeting told Mandelson: “I fear we’re in big trouble here – and I am toast at the next election. We just lost our safest ward in Redbridge (51% Muslim, Ilford S) to a Gaza independent. At this rate I don’t think we’ll hold either of the two Ilford seats.”
Would Labour elect a leader despite privately believing he has no electoral future beyond the next general election? In 2025, out of over 46,000 votes cast in Streeting’s Ilford North constituency, he pulled ahead of the ‘British-Palestinian activist’ independent candidate by just 528 votes. “Toast” indeed.
Andy Burnham —
MOSTON, ENGLAND – MAY 8: Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham arrives at FC United for a charity football match at Broadhurst Park on May 8, 2026 in Moston, England. Andy Burnham is seen by some in the Labour Party as a possible successor to leader Keir Starmer. (Photo by Ryan Jenkinson/Getty Images)
The ‘King in the North’. Presently, the mayor of Britain’s de facto second city, Manchester, Burnham has already stood twice for Labour leader, in 2010 and 2015, and been turned down by Labour members both times. Not a good omen, you might think, but the people who get a say — Labour parliamentarians, not the public — don’t seem to care. As previously noted:
Labour insiders think he’s popular, has a proven track record, will resonate with the public, and will address voters’ yearning for proper left-wing politics. You make up your own mind if that’s really where most Britons’ heads are right now or if that’s pure cope. But nevertheless, there seems to be a consensus in the party that Burnham’s the man for the job.
The only problem is that Burnham’s present job as mayor means he isn’t a member of Parliament. Labour rules mean their party leader has to be a member of the House of Commons, so to be in with a chance, the Labour leadership campaign has to go sufficiently long — months — to give Burnham time to find a safe seat with an incumbent Labour MP willing to step aside for him, fight an election campaign, win it, and be sworn in before decision day. All sounds so simple, doesn’t it? Yet:
The problem is, Labour performed so apocalyptically badly at this week’s elections, it looks like there isn’t a single safe seat left in the country. Nigel Farage’s Reform has disembowelled the party, taking ward after ward, full councils, Welsh seats, in areas that have been unassailably Labour for over a century.
All of a sudden, Andy Burnham, attempting a leapfrog to Parliament, risks surrendering his agreeable job for nothing. Not to mention the very real possibility that if he were to seek a gig in Westminster, Burnham’s successor may lose Manchester to a Reform rival in the ensuing mayoral by-election.
The funniest outcome by far is Burnham surrendering his mayoral office for a parliamentary by-election, only to be defeated by a Faragist candidate. And does that seem so far-fetched?
The rest —
While Labour may be screaming out for talent, it is drowning in ambition. There’s no shortage of would-be candidates. Ambitious Angela Rayner has the advantage of actually being a Member of Parliament, making her leadership chances seem even with Burnham’s, despite her tax irregularities.
Then there’s frightening eco-zealot Ed Miliband, who once stabbed his own brother (metaphorically) in the back to become Labour leader back in 2010, only to struggle with being too bizarre for the general public to get along with. Perhaps he feels he’s matured since and has taken etiquette lessons on how to eat in public without causing a minor scandal. Maybe not. But one thing is certain, there’s no limit to British jobs he wouldn’t gladly see evaporate in the rush to decarbonise.
This story is developing, more follows.