Under chilly blue skies Tuesday, Westminster was rife with speculation about who may attempt to move against their own leader.
Any member of Parliament would need the support of 20% of their colleagues to spark a leadership contest.
“That has not been triggered,” Starmer told Cabinet, effectively challenging any contenders to make their move.
He echoed the remaining loyalists who say a leadership contest would be distracting at a time when the country needs real solutions to its economic stagnation. “The past 48 hours have been destabilizing for government and that has a real economic cost for our country and for families,” Starmer said.
This is a remarkable turnaround for a leader who in June 2024 was elected in a historic landslide, casting himself as a sensible technocrat who would end years of exhausting chaos under the long-ruling Conservative Party.
The Tories, as they are known, had descended into a political psychodrama, an internecine carousel that had delivered four leaders in as many years.
Starmer was supposed to be the adult in the room, a staid but eminently competent former chief prosecutor who could not only end the personality politics of Britain’s governing class but also address its crumbling public services and sense of wider societal malaise.
On paper, Starmer’s position is still strong.
He does not have to call a general election until at least 2029, and his Labour Party still holds a commanding 406 of the 650 lawmakers in the Houses of Commons.
But his personal and party polls are dismal, crippled by what critics and independent analysts say — and even many Labour figures admit — has been a series of unforced errors. That includes more than a dozen U-turns, most damagingly on welfare reform.
The hope is that another leader — perhaps popular Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham or the former deputy leader, Angela Rayner — would present a clean slate for a widely jaded electorate.
Among the figures calling for Starmer to step down was Miatta Fahnbulleh, who stepped down as a junior government minister while telling the prime minister to “to do the right thing for the country” and set a timetable for a leadership transition.
She said the party had “not acted with the vision, pace and ambition that our mandate for change demands of us.”
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