Sir Keir Starmer has been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom only since July 2024. Yet already his own MPs are sharpening their knives for his back. Starmer has the worst approval rating of any Prime Minister ever. Labour won 34% of the vote in the 2024 General Election. Opinion polls now have voting intention for Labour at 17%.
A backbench far-left Labour MP, Clive Lewis, became the first to state publicly that Starmer must go. There is much muttering in the ranks. The Health Secretary Wes Streeting has been forced to deny public rumours that he is plotting to launch a cabinet coup against the PM.
It is an open secret that prominent Labour politicians are plotting against him. His Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, resigned in disgrace in September 2025 because it emerged she had evaded GBP 40,000 in tax and lied about it. There is a story going around Labour that she was hard done by: she was only forced out because she is a woman and grew up working class. Rayner is plotting to kick Starmer out and become PM herself. The Health Secretary Wes Streeting is also conspiring to kick Starmer out and become Prime Minister. Streeting is a 40-year-old openly gay man who has a sob story that Labour loves: he grew up with a single mother and on benefits.
At the Labour Conference in October 2025, Starmer faced near mutiny. He was able to calm the situation down by reuniting the party with a bravura oration on a topic all Labour Party members agree on: savaging the Reform UK Party. Starmer tore into Reform UK, saying that the party is divisive and racist. Labour often gratingly asserts its anti-racialist credentials. It was a speech delivered with uncharacteristic oomph. One of Labour’s only convincing lines is that only Labour can stop Reform UK.
The 62-year-old Sir Keir Starmer is uncharismatic, but he seemed a safe pair of hands and had a very distinguished career before he entered politics. He was Director of the Crown Prosecution Service. That is why he was knighted by the late Elizabeth II.
The Labour Government is seen to be failing on multiple fronts: scandal, the economy, the health service, illegal immigration, education, defence, Palestine and the environment.
Labour has made many missteps. It said there was a GBP 30 billion black hole in the public finance left by the last Conservative Government. Conservatives dispute this and say all financial figures are shared with the opposition parties as mandated by law. Labour talked down the economy before their budget in 2024. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the markets went south. The Pound sank. The Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves took away the winter fuel allowance from pensioners. Since the 1990s people over 67 get extra money November to March to help them pay for the cost of heating. taking away this allowance was very unpopular. Note that people over 67 are 20% of the UK electorate but of those who actually vote they are 30% and growing. They will punish Labour at the ballot box.
Labour maintained the two-child cap on benefits. Parents get an extra £10 a day roughly for the first child they bring into the world and another £10 for the second child. If they have a third or subsequent child, the amount goes down. Some say this is inequitable and cruel to children. Other say it encourages people to be responsible and not create more children than they can provide for.
Labour is caught between fiscal responsibility and the need to fund left wing policies. For the Conservatives and the markets Labour cannot be prudent enough. For left wingers Labour should be spending like a drunken sailor.
Economic growth is sluggish. The government has increased the National Insurance contributions that employers must pay towards their workers welfare. This makes it costlier to employ people. Unemployment is therefore going up to 5%. Inflation is 4%: not higher but higher than it was.
A budget will come out in late November 2025. Labour has trailed that it will break an election pledge and increase income tax. There is no alternative. The cost of borrowing has gone up.
20% of working aged people are on disability benefits. Some of them work and get the personal independence payment (PIP) to enable them to get around so they can afford wheelchairs or walking sticks etc… Some are genuinely disabled as in blind, deaf or have only one leg. Some claim to have anxiety or depression. The Health Secretary said these conditions are over diagnosed.
A generation ago, there were far fewer people in real and absolute terms who were disabled. Think back a few generations when most jobs were physically demanding on factories, farms, building sites, shipyards and down mines. Yet people were very seldom disabled. Now work is usually deskbound, but people are too ‘disabled’ to do it.
Labour increased doctors’ and nurses’ salaries appreciably in 2024. The healthcare staff declared a one-year moratorium on strikes. That time limit is now over. They are now demanding a pay hike or else they will down tools. The National Health Service (NHS) has very long waiting lists. Strikes make it even worse. NHS staff are telling Wes Streeting his plans to speed up the delivery of healthcare are unworkable.
Labour promised to stop illegal immigration, but it has increased. The government’s policy is to concentrate on catching criminals who organise people smuggling. It has a slogan ‘smash the gangs’ as though this has never been tried before.
Shabana Mahmood unveiled a policy to deter people claiming asylum. Many people who do so lie about their nationality. They come from safe countries and pretend to be from unsafe countries to increase the chance of their asylum claim being granted. Others who are well over 18 claim to be minors to get softer treatment. Miss Mahmood says those who arrive with jewellery shall have it confiscated to defray the cost of housing them, feeding them, providing them with healthcare and the legal costs of processing their claims. She also said in future those granted asylum will not be eligible to apply for indefinite leave to remain (i.e. the right to reside in the UK permanently) after 5 years. It will be only after 20 years. If someone comes from an unsafe country and the situation improves in their home country, then they will be deported.
The Labour left is aghast at these plans to rationalise asylum. Any attempt to reduce illegal immigration is cruel and racist. Any effort to lower the burden the taxpayer outrages these people.
The left is outraged that the United Kingdom sold weapons to Israel knowing these would be used in the Gaza Gencoide. The Royal Air Force (RAF) flew surveillance flights over Gaza to abet Israel. The President of Israeli was even invited to London to meet Starmer. Recognition of Palestine comes because leftist MPs demanded it.
Many of these problems started under the Conservatives but have aggravated under Labour. The Labour Party keeps laying the blame at the door of the Conservatives (Tories) and saying there was ‘14 years of Tory chaos.’ The longer Labour is in office the less traction this argument has. Admittedly there is a limit to how much Labour could accomplished in 18 months.
In May 2026 Labour faces three major tests: elections for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Parliament and the English local authorities. Labour is set to lose all three. Labour won everything for a century in Wales. Now it looks like Plaid Cymru (the Welsh independence movement) will win. The Scottish National Party (SNP) was due to lose Holyrood (Scottish Parliament) in the polls earlier in 2025. But Labour is doing so badly it looks like the SNP will win a record fifth election in a row there.
Reform UK is now ahead in the polls. It will likely be the biggest party at the next UK General Election which must be held by the end of August 2029.
Starmer says he will lead Labour into the next General Election. There is no way that is going to happen.
If not Starmer then who will be Labour leader and therefore Prime Minister?
David Lammy is the Deputy PM as well as being Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice. 50-year-old Lammy is a black Briton born in the UK to Jamaican parents. He is married to a white woman and has two children. Lammy is notorious for his racist outbursts and ignorance. He is a member of Labour Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Palestine showing just how two-faced he is. He won a scholarship to Harvard and was a barrister before entering politics.
Shabana Mahmood is the Home Secretary. She is a British Pakistani and a Muslim. Miss Mahmood was a barrister before entering public life. She knew Rishi Sunak at Oxford where they got on well. Mahmood has referred to ‘Indian occupied Kashmir’ which will impair relations with India. Miss Mahmood is married and has kids.
Yvette Cooper is Foreign Secretary. 54 year old Cooper may be seen as too middle class. She has been an MP since 1997, and her husband was a cabinet minister. She has two children. She is also seen as too moderate. She is an Oxonian.
Angela Rayner was Deputy PM until she resigned in disgrace. It is likely she will be back in the Cabinet in a year. It is known she is plotting to oust Starmer. She still has not paid the GBP 40,000 in tax that she owes. She is 45, married and has three children. She has no higher education.
Rachel Reeves has been a disastrous Chancellor (i.e. Finance Minister). She may well be sacked soon. She has little following in the party. Despite her senior post it is improbable that she will even contest the leadership. She was a Bank of England officials before being elected to Parliament. She is 47 married and has children. She is an Oxford graduate.
Wes Streeting is the darling of the Labour right. But the left is in the ascendant. He is a gay version of Starmer only one with more panache. Mr Streeting is married to a man and has no children. He is an Oxonian.
Ed Miliband led the Labour Party from 2010 to 2015. Labour lost an election under him. He is Energy Minister. Miliband is trying to bring the UK to net zero carbon emissions. The United Kingdom has made serious progress but the economic cost has been painful. He is very detailed about policy and even the Conservatives have adopted his policies. Miliband is aspergic and as he failed in one election why would Labour pick him? He is a 55 year old Oxford graduate. He is a straight, white male: i.e. exactly what Labour wants to avoid.
Labour does not want another white male as leader. It has never been led by a woman or a non-white person. Labour says it is the party of diversity. It is intensely embarrassing for Labour that the Conservatives have had 4 women as leaders and 2 non-whites.