By Andrew MacAskill
LONDON, May 10 (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to fight on, describing his government as a “10-year project” despite mounting calls for him to quit after his party’s drubbing in local elections earlier this week.
Starmer’s Labour Party suffered the worst local election losses for a governing party in more than three decades, while the populist Reform UK party made significant gains – prompting a growing number of Labour lawmakers to call for his removal.
A former minister in Starmer’s government, Catherine West, threatened to seek the backing of lawmakers to trigger a leadership contest unless his cabinet took steps to remove him by Monday.
Under party rules, it would take 20% of the parliamentary party, or 81 lawmakers, to trigger a leadership challenge. About 30 members of parliament have so far publicly voiced opposition to his leadership.
Asked by the Observer newspaper in an interview published on Sunday whether he would lead Labour into the next general election and serve a full second term, Starmer replied: “Yes, I will.”
He added: “I’m not going to walk away from the job I was elected to do in July 2024. I’m not going to plunge the country into chaos.”
If Starmer were removed in the coming weeks, Britain would end up with its seventh prime minister in the past decade.
‘A REAL KICKING’
So far, Starmer’s cabinet has stayed loyal, despite Thursday’s losses.
Education minister Bridget Phillipson said she was confident he could turn things around, telling Sky News on Sunday that Starmer would set out a “fresh direction” for Britain in a speech on Monday.
“We got a real kicking from the voters, there’s no escaping that,” she said. “We have to reflect seriously on that.”
West, who served as a junior foreign minister until Starmer sacked her last year, said she would listen to Starmer’s speech on Monday before making a final decision about whether to launch a leadership challenge.
Asked whether she could secure the numbers, West told the BBC: “We will find out.”
However, some left-wing Labour MPs — often critical of Starmer — urged colleagues not to back her plan.
John McDonnell, a Labour lawmaker who was the party’s finance chief under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, suggested that people in the “shadows” were trying to exploit West’s concerns to force an early contest. Another lawmaker, Ian Byrne, warned against a rushed leadership bid, saying it could be “manipulated into a coronation by a party clique.”
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, seen as a potential left-wing contender, is not currently an MP and would therefore be ineligible to stand in a contest held soon.
Starmer must call the next national election by 2029. If he remained in office through a second full term, he would become the third-longest continuously serving British leader in the past two centuries, after Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskillEditing by Christina Fincher and Ros Russell)
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