Keir Starmer and the Labour Leadership Crisis: What Is Happening and Why It Matters
- Since the May 2026 local elections, Labour has been in a leadership crisis. Reform UK and the Greens made major gains. Labour lost more than 1,496 seats and 38 councils.
- By mid-May 2026, 97 Labour MPs had called on Starmer to resign or set out a departure timetable. One cabinet minister and four junior ministers had resigned. Starmer has refused to go.
- The crisis has roots going back to early 2026: the Mandelson-Epstein scandal cost Starmer his chief of staff and communications director, welfare reform caused a backbench rebellion and approval ratings fell to historic lows.
- Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, entered parliament via the Makerfield by-election on 18 June 2026 with the explicit intention of triggering a Labour leadership challenge. Polls put him on approximately 49% of the vote in Makerfield.
- Starmer has insisted he will fight any leadership challenge, saying removing him would plunge the country into utter chaos. Over 110 Labour MPs signed a letter opposing a leadership challenge.
- The next general election does not need to be held until 2029. Whatever happens to the leadership, Labour still commands a parliamentary majority and the government will continue to function.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Labour leadership challenge | A formal process by which a sitting Labour leader can be challenged. Under current party rules, a challenger needs the nominations of at least 20% of the Parliamentary Labour Party (approximately 81 MPs out of 403) to trigger a contest. The incumbent leader also goes on the ballot. |
| Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) | All Labour Members of Parliament sitting in the House of Commons. It is this group, along with party members and affiliated trade unions, that votes in a leadership election. |
| By-election | An election held between general elections to fill a vacancy in a single parliamentary constituency. Makerfield became vacant when MP Josh Simons resigned specifically to allow Andy Burnham to contest it. |
| Majority government | A government with more than half the seats in the House of Commons. Labour won 412 seats in 2024 and holds a majority of around 172. A change in party leader does not require a general election. |
| Gilt yields | The interest rate the UK government pays to borrow money. Political uncertainty pushed gilt yields to multi-decade highs in May 2026, increasing government borrowing costs and affecting mortgage rates. |
| Stalking horse | A candidate who enters a leadership contest not expecting to win, but to force a vote and test the ground for other candidates. Catherine West’s brief candidacy was described in this way. |
| National Equivalent Vote (NEV) | A calculation projecting local election results onto a general election model. In the 2026 local elections, Reform UK achieved a 27% NEV, Labour 15% and the Greens 14%. |
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 2024 | Labour wins general election with 412 seats and a majority of 172. Starmer becomes Prime Minister. The party’s vote share of 33.7% was the smallest for any majority government since records began in 1830. |
| December 2024 | Starmer appoints Peter Mandelson as UK Ambassador to the United States. Mandelson had previously met Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions. |
| February 2026 | New Epstein files published. Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff and chief political strategist, resigns. Starmer’s communications director also resigns. Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar publicly calls on Starmer to resign, the first senior Labour figure to do so. |
| February 2026 | Welfare reform revolt. Over 120 Labour MPs threaten to vote down proposed disability benefit cuts. Government forces the bill through but concedes significant dilutions. 49 Labour MPs vote against. Political scientist John Curtice describes it as the worst start for any newly elected prime minister. |
| January to April 2026 | Government launches public consultation on social media ban. US trade deal announced. Gaza ceasefire collapses. Approval ratings remain at historic lows. Reform UK consolidates its poll lead. |
| 7 May 2026 | Local elections. Labour loses 1,496 seats and 38 councils. Reform UK wins 1,453 seats and 14 councils. Green Party wins 411 seats and 4 councils, including Hackney from Labour. The crisis begins in earnest. |
| 11 May 2026 | Starmer holds a press conference described by The Guardian as his final chance to save his leadership. Health Secretary Wes Streeting resigns from cabinet, writing: where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Four junior ministers and four ministerial aides also resign. |
| Mid-May 2026 | 97 Labour MPs publicly call for Starmer to resign or set a departure timetable. Over 110 backbenchers sign a letter opposing a leadership challenge. 159 Labour MPs show support for Starmer, 98 call for his departure, 146 are undecided. |
| 18 May 2026 | Josh Simons formally vacates the Makerfield seat by accepting the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, clearing the way for Burnham to stand. |
| 18 June 2026 | Makerfield by-election. Burnham standing as Labour candidate. If elected, he is expected to trigger a leadership challenge against Starmer. |
The immediate trigger was the May 2026 local election results. Losing 1,496 council seats and 38 councils in a single night was a political shock on the scale of the 1995 results that preceded Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide, but in reverse. Reform UK, a party that did not exist in its current form until 2021, won more councils than Labour. The Green Party took Hackney, ending 55 years of Labour control in one of the party’s strongest urban heartlands.
But the roots of the crisis go back further. Starmer entered 2026 already weakened. His approval ratings were the worst of any prime minister at the equivalent stage in their tenure since polling began. The Mandelson-Epstein scandal in February removed his two most senior political advisers in days. The welfare reform revolt in the same month exposed the scale of backbench discontent. These were not individual crises. They were symptoms of a deeper problem: a government that won a historic majority but had not converted that majority into a clear political direction that its own MPs and the public could identify.
| Grievance | What MPs have said |
|---|---|
| Gaza | Labour MPs on the left of the party have consistently opposed the government’s approach to the conflict in Gaza, arguing it has been insufficiently critical of Israeli military action. Several have resigned over this. |
| Welfare reform | Cuts to disability benefits were opposed by more than 120 MPs. The government forced the bill through but conceded significant changes, weakening both the policy and Starmer’s authority. |
| No wealth tax | Labour’s refusal to introduce a wealth tax has angered the party’s left. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated this could raise tens of billions of pounds, which critics argue could fund public services without cuts to disability support. |
| Economic direction | Wes Streeting wrote on departure that where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Several MPs have argued the government lacks a coherent economic narrative that voters can connect with. |
| The Mandelson appointment | Viewed by critics as an error of judgment that cost the government dearly. McSweeney admitted in his resignation statement that the decision to appoint Mandelson was wrong. |
Makerfield is a parliamentary constituency on the outskirts of Manchester, in north-west England. It returned a Labour MP with a comfortable majority in 2024. On 18 May 2026, Josh Simons resigned the seat, accepting the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, a constitutional device used to vacate a parliamentary seat. The purpose of his resignation was explicit: to allow Andy Burnham to stand for the vacancy and return to the House of Commons.
This matters because Labour’s leadership rules require any challenger to be a member of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Burnham, as Mayor of Greater Manchester, was not an MP. Without a parliamentary seat, he could not stand against Starmer. The Makerfield by-election is, in the words of The Nation, the first time a by-election has been triggered specifically to provide a seat for a leadership challenger since the 1965 Leyton by-election.
Starmer has consistently refused to resign or set a departure timetable. In a January 2026 BBC interview he warned that removing him would plunge Britain into utter chaos and said he wanted 10 years in Number 10. He said he would stand in any leadership challenge. His office issued a statement in May saying the prime minister does not intend to quit and that the party had a process for challenging a leader which had not been triggered.
His position is supported by a significant bloc of the parliamentary party. Over 110 backbenchers signed a letter opposing a leadership challenge. The Institute for Government noted in mid-June that however weakened Starmer might be, events after the by-election could easily spiral out of his control, and that it was in his interests to act fast, either before or just after the result.
| Scenario | What it involves | Likelihood |
|---|---|---|
| Burnham wins Makerfield and triggers a formal challenge | He would need nominations from 81 Labour MPs to trigger a contest. Starmer would go on the ballot. The PLP, members and trade unions would vote. | Considered likely if Burnham wins the seat, which pre-election polling suggested was probable |
| Starmer announces a departure timetable | Sets a date by which he will leave and manages an orderly transition. Buys the government time and reduces internal pressure without a formal contest. | Possible. The Institute for Government argued this would be in his interests |
| Starmer fights on and wins | If a leadership challenge is triggered and he wins, he would remain in post with renewed mandate. Historical precedent: Harold Wilson survived a similar challenge in 1969. | Possible. Over 110 MPs signed a letter opposing a challenge |
| No formal challenge, continued instability | Burnham wins the seat but cannot assemble the 81 nominations needed to trigger a contest. Starmer remains but continues in a weakened position. | Possible. The number of MPs publicly calling for his departure (97) does not guarantee 81 will formally nominate a challenger |
Whatever happens to the Labour leadership, several things remain true. The government retains its majority in the House of Commons. A change of Labour leader does not trigger a general election. Legislation already in progress, including the social media ban, the Renters Rights Act and welfare reform, will continue through Parliament regardless of who leads the party.
The economic impact of political uncertainty is real. Gilt yields rising to multi-decade highs directly affects government borrowing costs, and this filters through to mortgage rates and business lending. Oxford Economics expects yields to remain higher for longer. The British Chambers of Commerce noted that political uncertainty has weighed heavily on business confidence at a time when the economy was already stuck in a cycle of sluggish growth.
The next general election does not need to be held until January 2029. Whoever leads Labour into that election has three years to define a direction. What that direction will be is the central unresolved question in British politics right now.
