The Clock May Be Ticking for British PM Keir Starmer
“Keir Starmer is in trouble. Behind the Prime Minister’s back in the Parliamentary Labour Party, there is now widespread mockery, sarcasm, name-calling and the darkest of gallows humour.”
On July 5, 2024, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer won a landslide victory. Sixteen months later, he is fighting off challenges to his leadership, with some critics calling him the most unpopular prime minister in British history.
Rumors that Starmer may have only “days left” began circulating on social media over the past couple of days and, on Wednesday, major British media outlets reported that all is not well at 10 Downing Street.
🚨BREAKING: Keirs Starmer's government is completely falling apart behind the scenes tonight, per Bloomberg
Starmer has days left… pic.twitter.com/2Q0XgJWXHh
— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) November 11, 2025
This was all predictable. Unchecked immigration and the government’s prioritization of immigrants over long-standing citizens, the creeping censorship and marginalization of those who challenge the government’s misguided policies, an overly aggressive climate agenda, and consideration of another tax increase have fueled a sense of instability and an erosion of confidence throughout the U.K. While these problems existed long before Starmer came to power, his governance has only intensified them.
Dissatisfaction with Starmer and his party is showing up in the polls, which have grown increasingly “bleak” in recent months. His Labour Party placed fourth in a recent YouGov survey, securing just 17% support — behind Reform UK, the Conservatives, and the Greens. The Telegraph noted that this marked Labour’s worst result in the pollster’s history.
According to BBC chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman:
[Labour Party] Health Secretary Wes Streeting, the government’s designated interviewee on the early media round, variously accused those at the top of government of a “toxic culture” of sexism, and called for unnamed officials in Downing Street to be sacked.
He was responding to briefings from allies of Sir Keir that the prime minister would fight any challenge to his leadership, with Streeting’s name mentioned as a potential challenger.
There is no doubt that Sir Keir himself is the main problem: polling shows him to be among the most unpopular prime ministers ever.
— Laurence Fox (@LozzaFox) November 12, 2025
Local elections are set for next May and the next general election must be called by August 2029. But Zeffman reported that “there have been mutterings that Starmer might be challenged sooner rather than later.”
Labour Party MPs are said to be growing anxious about their own political futures, with one recently telling him, “It’s all very well to say wait for the locals, but that’s my activist base I’m sending into the gunfire. I can’t lose all my councillors.”
Zeffman explained that allies of the prime minister have launched an unusually aggressive media operation — briefing the BBC and others — because they fear a leadership crisis may be imminent. By signaling that Starmer would fiercely resist any attempt to remove him, they hope to warn Labour MPs about the political and financial chaos a leadership contest would unleash.
According to Zeffman, publicly revealing that Wes Streeting is seen as eyeing the premiership was a particularly explosive move: admitting such vulnerabilities is rare in politics. And it’s not just Streeting causing anxiety. People close to Starmer are also uneasy about the ambitions of radical new Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, whose rise I reported on in September, Energy Secretary and former leader Ed Miliband, and Labour’s newly elected deputy leader Lucy Powell — whose victory itself was seen as a rebuke to Starmer.
Hot Air’s David Strom, who follows U.K. politics closely, noted that potential replacements for Starmer (from within his party) are unpopular. “Polling shows that his competitors are all on a path to lose their seats in the next elections,” he wrote. “You love to see Ed Miliband so unpopular, at least. He is the guy who is pushing the most insane Net Zero policies in the world.”
The Telegraph reported:
No 10 has tried reset after reset, including a wholesale reshuffle in September, but none has shifted the dial.
…
Many of the failings come straight from the top: the Prime Minister’s reliance on delegation, which means he can never get to grips with the detail of policies or spot potential mistakes coming down the track.
He also has poor relations with his MPs, who complain they are left out of decision-making.
Ailbhe Rea, the political editor of The New Statesman, offered a detailed analysis of the challenges currently facing Starmer.
Keir Starmer is in trouble. Behind the Prime Minister’s back in the Parliamentary Labour Party, there is now widespread mockery, sarcasm, name-calling and the darkest of gallows humour. As one despairing MP put it to me, if this is a marriage, the two sides have reached the “staying together for the kids” stage.
Labour MPs are worn down by 16 months of unpopular policies and unforced errors, from winter fuel to the welfare debacle. … Some are nervous and embarrassed to admit they are Labour MPs when out socially.
Tensions have clearly reached a fever pitch. But, by most accounts, Starmer’s replacement by another member of his liberal cabinet will do nothing to bring about the change that is so desperately needed in the U.K.
To accomplish that, they would need to turn to Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, a right-wing movement known for its hard-line stance on immigration.
A September poll showed the party’s support at 30%, and according to The New Yorker, Reform UK has topped the polls for six months.
What comes next for the UK is uncertain. But for now, the world will be watching closely as the political drama unfolds.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
Whether Starmer survives or not is irrelevant. Britain is already a conquered country.
Spain was a conquered country for 700 years before the Moors were kicked out. I’d submit a UK *Reconquista” under UK Reform leadership will take far less time.
Unless the peelers arrest them all.
Sad but true.
Starmer needs to go, but then again, the support and thinking that enabled his political rise will likely remain. Rather than realize and understand the devastation liberal policies create, the left of center in the UK will blame Starmer himself for the country’s troubles.
Labour’s landslide victory last year was not the result of an increase in its popularity. It barely got more votes last year than it did the previous time when it lost by a landslide.
The difference was Reform. In the previous election Reform had stayed out of Tory seats, so as not to risk a Corbyn government. Last year Reform contested Tory seats, thus splitting the right-wing vote and handing victory to Labour.
It did so deliberately, because it had sadly reached the conclusion that the UK would be better off in the long term suffering five years of Starmer, followed by the possibility of a Reform-led government that would be able to fix the damage, than it would with yet another Tory government that would just be Labour Lite. The Tories had shown that they couldn’t be reformed from the inside, so they would have to be reformed from the outside.
It was aided in this decision by the fact that Labour had retreated from the brink, replacing the total lunatic Corbyn with the lefty-but-not-a-total-lunatic Starmer, so the damage it could be expected to do in five years was more limited than it had been at the previous election.
This is not a criticism. I think it was the right decision to make, and if I were a UK voter I would have voted Reform. But I would have done so knowing full well that this meant a vote for five years of Labour. It just had to be done. Waiting for a Tory government to do the right thing had turned out to be a mug’s game.
So they’re bringing in Bashar al-Assad as a replacement?
No. Ilhan Omar, She said she could live anywhere.
Heaven knows why she couldn’t have picked anywhere ELSE.
At least she would be with her brother/husband.
The path to their political future is clear, going by how this kind of thing is dealt with in Europe these days. It’s time to make ReformUK an illegal organization, and bar it from the elections.
(I think this might be sarcasm, but I can’t be sure.)
Starmer himself may be in trouble, but Labour has a massive majority, and no need to call an election until mid-2029. So if it dumps Starmer it will obviously replace him with another Labour member, who will probably be to Starmer’s left.
It doesn’t matter how popular Reform gets, it has no chance of achieving anything significant on the national level until the next election, nearly four years away. That’s just how it works.
Assuming there actually is an election in four years…
The only potential paths to an early election:
1) Labour loses a vote of confidence (e.g., on the budgetA) in the House. With the majority they have currently, not likely to happen.
2) King Charles dissolves Parliament. Not likely as he’s pretty socialist himself, and if he did he’d provoke a constitutional crisis that he doesn’t want.
So yep, 2029 it is.
I don’t think the KIng even can dissolve Parliament without the Prime MInister’s advice to do so. And Starmer (or whichever Labour leader replaces him) is obviously not going to advise an early election that he doesn’t think he’s sure to win.
He is drowning in his own sin As he is involved up to the eyeballs in covering up the rape of poor white girls by Pakistani gangs.
Add into the mix is the introduction of digital ID. Very unpopular and viewed as turning UK into China bringing a social credit system.
to be fair
he isnt muslim enough
Labour won’t all an early election because they know if they did Reform would walk right in with a potential historic majority that would actually be put to use, unlike what the Tories did with their massive majority.
One of the very few good things to come out of Boris’s time in Parliament was removing the legislation that fixed the term Governments had in power! Until that point there was no ability to call an early election.
So basically we are fooked for another 3 and a bit years!
God help them. 3 more years of the invasion will do them in (if they aren’t already done). It’s good to see there’s fight left in many of them. But seriously, what can be done if/when Reform gets in power? It won’t be pretty, but it will be necessary.