Starmer vows to stay on despite calls to quit

By Andrew MacAskill

London — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to fight on and said his government was a “10-year project” despite calls to quit after his party’s drubbing in local elections earlier this week.

Starmer’s Labour Party recorded the worst losses of a governing party in local elections in more than three decades, prompting a growing number of legislators to call for his removal.

A former minister in Starmer’s government said she would seek the backing of other legislators to trigger a leadership contest unless his cabinet took steps to remove him by Monday.

Asked by the Observer newspaper in an interview published on Sunday whether he would lead his Labour Party into the next general election and serve a full second term, Starmer responded: “Yes, I will.”

He added, I’m not going to walk away from the job I was elected to do in July 2024. I’m not going to plunge the country into chaos.”

If Starmer is removed in the coming weeks, Britain would end up with its seventh prime minister in the past decade.

’Fresh direction’

So far, Starmer’s cabinet has stayed loyal to the prime minister, despite Thursday’s election losses.

Bridget Phillipson, the education minister, said she was confident the prime minister could turn things around, telling Sky News on Sunday that Starmer would set out a “fresh direction” for Britain in a speech on Monday.

“We got a real kicking from the voters, there’s no escaping that,” she said of Labour’s performance in the elections. “We have to reflect seriously on that.”

Catherine West, who served as a junior foreign minister until Starmer sacked her last year, said she would listen to the prime minister’s speech on Monday before making a final decision about whether to seek the backing of the 81 members of parliament needed to trigger a leadership contest.

Asked on Sunday if she was likely to get the numbers, West told the BBC: “We will find out.”

However, some left-wing Labour MPs — often critical of Starmer — urged colleagues not to back her plan.

John McDonnell, a Labour legislator who was the party’s finance chief under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, suggested that people in the “shadows” were trying to exploit West’s concerns to force an early contest. Another legislator, Ian Byrne, warned against a rushed leadership bid, saying it could be “manipulated into a coronation by a party clique.”

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, seen as a potential left-wing contender, is not an MP and would therefore be ineligible to stand in a contest held soon.

Global financial crisis

Starmer must call Britain’s next national election by 2029 at the latest.

If he were still in office at the end of a second five-year term, he would be the third-longest-serving continuous leader in Britain in the last two centuries after Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

On Saturday, Starmer named former premier Gordon Brown as his envoy on global finance, turning to a man credited with shoring up banks during the global financial crisis to help bolster his own support after a crushing local elections defeat.

Starmer is on the back foot after his Labour Party recorded the worst losses of a governing party in municipal polls since 1995, prompting a growing number of his own legislators to call on him to quit.

Aiming to reset his leadership and win back party support, Starmer’s office announced the appointment of two Labour grandees to his team as advisers.

Brown, 75, will join as an adviser on global finance and cooperation, while former Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman, 75, was appointed to the role of the prime minister’s adviser on women and girls.