British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, appeared to have staved off an immediate challenge to his leadership following a high-stakes cabinet meeting at 10 Downing Street, but he remained in dire political straits as a rising number of his party’s lawmakers and at least three junior ministers demanded that he announce a plan to resign.
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At the cabinet meeting, Mr. Starmer dared his critics to formally challenge him if they had the support to do so, telling ministers, “The country expects us to get on with governing,” according to a statement from his office. He further declared: “The Labour Party has a process for challenging a leader and that has not been triggered. That is what I am doing and what we must do as a Cabinet.”
Mr. Starmer has been facing a fast-moving rebellion within his party after it suffered major losses in last week’s local elections in England, and in parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales. Labour lost more than 1,400 council seats, shedding support to the left-wing Green Party, the Liberal Democrats and the right-wing populist Reform U.K. party led by Nigel Farage. The party was also heavily defeated in Wales after decades in power there. Dozens of Labour Party lawmakers have publicly urged him to set out a timetable for his resignation to allow a contest to find his successor.
According to the BBC, at least 80 Labour Party lawmakers about one-fifth of its members of Parliament have called on Mr. Starmer to step down or set up a timeline for his resignation.
The political crisis deepened on Tuesday morning when Miatta Fahnbulleh, the minister for communities, became the first minister in Mr. Starmer’s government to resign. In her resignation letter posted on social media, she wrote: “We have not acted with the vision, pace and ambition that our mandate for change demands of us. Nor have we governed as a Labour Party clear about our values and strong in our convictions.”
She was swiftly followed by Jess Phillips, a junior minister in the Home Office and a well-known campaigner against violence against women and girls, who accused the government of timidity in her resignation letter, stating: “The desire not to have an argument means we rarely make an argument.” She described the Prime Minister as “a good man fundamentally” but an ineffectual leader unwilling to fight for the things the Labour Party believes in.
A third minister, Alex Davies-Jones, who represents Pontypridd in Wales in Parliament, also quit her position in the justice ministry, citing the “catastrophic” scale of the electoral defeats in the Welsh Parliament elections — where Labour was evicted from power last week — as well as across the rest of Britain. She called on Mr. Starmer to set out a timetable for his departure, saying: “The country has spoken and we must listen.”
Despite the resignations, more than 100 Labour lawmakers signed a letter opposing a leadership contest. The letter described last week’s election results as “devastatingly tough” and acknowledged “a hard job ahead to win back trust from the electorate,” adding: “That job needs to start today — with all of us working together to deliver the change the country needs. We must focus on that. This is no time for a leadership contest.” The letter was signed by backbench lawmakers, though some signatories were unpaid parliamentary aides to ministers.
Attention now shifts to Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who has made no secret of his desire to challenge Mr. Starmer and is widely believed to have been “on maneuvers” for months. However, he would need the backing of at least 81 Labour lawmakers — 20 percent of the total — to formally trigger a leadership contest. Unlike the Conservative Party system, where lawmakers sign anonymous letters of no confidence in their leader and a contest is triggered when a threshold is reached, Labour’s rules require 81 lawmakers to support a single, alternative candidate. While around that number of MPs have called on Mr. Starmer to step down, they have not rallied around one potential successor.
Mr. Streeting, who has support on the right of the party and is recognised as one of the government’s most effective communicators, has been damaged by links to Peter Mandelson, who was fired as Britain’s ambassador to Washington when the depth of his friendship with the convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, was revealed.
Other possible challengers include Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who appears to have political momentum behind him and is the only senior Labour figure who seems significantly more popular with voters than Mr. Starmer, according to opinion polls. However, Mr. Burnham would need to win a seat in Parliament first in a special election before mounting a challenge, as only a lawmaker can be Labour leader — a process that would take weeks if not months. He attempted to do so earlier in the year but was blocked by a party committee controlled by Mr. Starmer’s allies.
Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, who resigned last year over an unresolved tax imbroglio, is probably the favoured candidate of the left of the party in Mr. Burnham’s absence. On Sunday, Ms. Rayner increased the pressure on Mr. Starmer by issuing a statement criticising a “toxic culture of cronyism” within Labour, warning that the party may be on its “last chance.” She also described the decision by party bosses to prevent Mr. Burnham from running in a special election for Parliament as “a mistake.”
Reacting to the turmoil, Ed Davey, the leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats Party, said in a statement on Tuesday: “The jig is up for Keir Starmer. He can hold out for a bit longer or he can hold on to a bit of dignity and go today. If moderates want to beat populists they have to govern effectively. From Labour under Starmer it has been a shambles from day one.”
Several of Mr. Starmer’s backers, however, rallied to his defence. Steve Reed, the housing secretary, told reporters as he walked out of Downing Street that the Prime Minister had his full support and that there was a process for rivals to challenge Mr. Starmer if they wanted to do so. He further wrote on social media: “This is not a game. This instability has consequences for people’s lives. The people who will be hurt most will be those that elected us less than two years ago. We must unite behind the Prime Minister.”
John Healey, the defence secretary, also backed the Prime Minister, writing on social media: “People are worried about current conflicts and looming global crises. More instability is not in Britain’s interest. Our full focus now must be on dealing with immediate economic and security challenges.”
Darren Jones, the Prime Minister’s chief secretary, told the BBC on Tuesday morning: “I would just say to my colleagues, it’d be better to have that conversation internally as opposed to in public, because it detracts from our work as a government.”
The fragility of Mr. Starmer’s position was not received well in financial markets on Tuesday. The pound fell 0.5 percent against the dollar to $1.35, while yields on British government bonds (which move inversely to prices) jumped as markets opened. The benchmark 10-year yield climbed to 5.12 percent, up from 5 percent on Monday evening, briefly surging to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis.
Andrew Wishart, an economist at the bank Berenberg, in an analyst note, observed: “Because it is unclear who is most likely to succeed Starmer and the policies that they would pursue, investors are likely to attach a risk premium to U.K. assets until the uncertainty is resolved.” He warned that members of the Labour party, if given the chance, would be more likely to choose a more left-leaning successor, adding that pursuit of a further-left policy agenda risks measures that could push the economy closer to slower growth, higher interest rates and even an exodus of capital from the British economy.
Andrew Goodwin, the chief U.K. economist for Oxford Economics, similarly noted: “Markets clearly perceive the UK has a bigger inflation problem and that tighter monetary policy will be needed to limit second-round effects from the energy shock, while political uncertainty has added to pressures at the long end.”
Analysts at Capital Economics concluded that an ouster of Mr. Starmer and his top financial official, Rachel Reeves, would lead to higher yields on British government bonds, known as gilts, and overall interest rates. “We doubt a new leadership would be any more successful at boosting medium-term economic growth either, not least because the current fiscal constraints would remain. For the gilt market, though, the war in Iran matters more,” they noted.
The Starmer leadership crisis is awkwardly timed, as King Charles III is scheduled to open the new session of Parliament on Wednesday and read out a speech laying out the Prime Minister’s legislative agenda. The official “readout” of Tuesday’s cabinet meeting revealed the topics of discussion: the Iran war’s impact on Britain, the need to provide support for people who use heating oil, getting the Strait of Hormuz open, and the upcoming King’s Speech. Nothing was mentioned about Mr. Starmer’s future or how he dared his critics to challenge his leadership.
Recent polling from YouGov, conducted on Monday, found that 50 percent of people surveyed believe that Mr. Starmer should stand down and be replaced by a new Labour prime minister. A separate favourability tracker from YouGov showed that by the end of last month, some 70 percent of people surveyed felt that Mr. Starmer was doing badly as Prime Minister, compared with 43 percent disapproval when he first became leader in July 2024.
Commentators have drawn parallels between the current crisis and the ouster of former Conservative Prime Minister, Liz Truss, in October 2022, who became the shortest-serving leader in the country’s history. Like the Conservative Party then, Labour Party lawmakers now hold a huge parliamentary majority that they fear could be obliterated at the next general election without a change in leadership.
Luke Sullivan, who served as Mr. Starmer’s political director before he was Prime Minister, predicted: “Keir Starmer will not just walk away with two wars raging, but I suspect he’ll get to the place of accepting and announcing a timetable for his departure in the coming hours — or he will be forced out. Sadly, for a prime minister and party elected on a promise to end the chaos, I fear the U.K. is in for more days and weeks of political instability whilst the party focuses not on the country but itself.”
James Lyons, who served as Mr. Starmer’s director of strategic communications for his first year in office, said the Prime Minister is likely “furious at this turn of events. He will feel that only he is the right person to lead the country and the party through the kind of omni-crisis that we face due to war in Europe and the Middle East. And he will feel that the party are not being serious in going down this route.”
Mr. Starmer’s position has been eroding for months as he has struggled to confront a sagging economy, anger about illegal immigration and the perception that he is weak and indecisive. From 2016 to 2024, five Conservative prime ministers cycled through 10 Downing Street, and the Labour Party’s promise in the last general election was one of stability — which could now be under threat.
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