Sir Keir Starmer is fighting for his political survival after a desperate attempt to relaunch his premiership failed to stop a full-scale Labour rebellion, with dozens of his own left-wing MPs now calling for him to stand down, in addition to several resignations from the government.
The prime minister’s position deteriorated sharply on Monday after a speech intended to draw a line under Labour’s disastrous local election results instead appeared to deepen the sense inside the party that his time is up.
By Monday evening, LabourList put the number of Labour MPs calling for Starmer’s resignation at 77, while dozens of lawmakers have reportedly backed Labour backbencher Catherine West’s letter calling for him to set out a timetable for his departure.
Labour’s current working majority in the House of Commons is 165, meaning the rebellion is theoretically nearly at a point where it could wipe out the government’s majority, raising serious questions about whether Starmer can continue to govern with authority.
The revolt was triggered by Labour’s local election humiliation last Thursday, but accelerated after Starmer’s Monday speech, which had been billed as a chance to show that he understood the scale of the party’s crisis. Instead, he stood in front of the cameras reading from an autocue, delivering what critics say was another lifeless performance that seemed to encapsulate the criticism long levelled at him: dreary, procedural, and incapable of meeting a political emergency with either charisma or conviction.
Even sympathetic outlets described the speech as a last-chance saloon for Starmer that failed to land. Late on Monday, The Guardian and The Times both reported that senior cabinet ministers, including Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, had urged him to consider an orderly transition of power.
EXCLUSIVE:
Sir Keir Starmer has been told by Shabana Mahmood and other senior Cabinet ministers to consider setting out a timeline for his depature from Number 10
The Times has been told that Mahmood, the home secretary, is one of at least three cabinet ministers to suggest…
— Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford) May 11, 2026
Earlier in the day, several parliamentary private secretaries, MPs who assist government ministers, resigned from the government after backing calls for Starmer to go, prompting Downing Street to rush through several late-night replacement appointments.
Starmer had hoped to present himself as the man who could halt the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and rebuild Labour’s connection with working-class voters. Yet one of the headline messages from the speech was a pledge to build a closer relationship with the European Union, including what he called a “new direction” at the next EU summit. Such a move is unlikely to reassure many voters who have abandoned Labour for Reform UK, the party that grew out of the Brexit Party and has now become Labour’s most dangerous challenger in many of its former heartlands.
The speech also contained a sharp law-and-order message aimed at Saturday’s “Unite the Kingdom” demonstration in London, organized by Tommy Robinson. Starmer said the government would block what he called “far-right agitators” from travelling to Britain for the event, with the Home Office already barring seven people from entering the UK.
Nationalists recently banned from Britain include Dutch influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek and Spanish political commentator Ada Lluch. The move contradicts the prime minister’s insistence during U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest visit to Britain, in which Starmer insisted that his government remained a champion of free speech.
They just cancelled my ETA to the United Kingdom.
What a coincidence it happened a couple of days after I privately confirmed with @TRobinsonNewEra I would attend the UTK rally on May 16th.
Call me crazy, but it certainly looks like they are trying to sabotage his rally. pic.twitter.com/KPd9P7NvMJ
— Ada Lluch (@AdaLluch) May 6, 2026
The immediate backdrop to the crisis is Labour’s collapse in the local elections. The party lost 1,496 council seats and control of 38 councils in England, while Reform UK won 1,453 councillors and gained control of 14 councils. The Liberal Democrats gained 155 seats and one council, while the Greens gained 411 seats and five councils, underlining how Labour is being squeezed from several directions at once.
Labour also lost control of the Welsh Parliament, the Senedd, in devastating fashion, with Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru and Reform UK now the two largest parties, and Labour reduced to single figures. It is the first time since the parliament’s founding in 1999 that Labour has not held a majority.
Starmer has just admitted he banned me and other commentators from traveling to the UK because we would “set back communities.” Yet mass third-world migration doesn’t bother him as it only sets back the one community he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about: the White native population. pic.twitter.com/oIBdDdORD5
— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) May 11, 2026
Reform emerged as the main beneficiary of Labour’s losses in many Brexit-voting and working-class areas, while the Greens advanced on Labour’s left, particularly among Muslim voters.
For now, Starmer appears set to dig in. He told the country on Monday, “I take responsibility for not walking away, not plunging our country into chaos, as the Tories did time and again, chaos that did lasting damage to this country. A Labour government would never be forgiven for inflicting that on our country again,” he said.
“I know that people are frustrated by the state of Britain, frustrated by politics, and some people are frustrated with me. I know I have my doubters, and I know I need to prove them wrong, and I will.”
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