LONDON (Dispatches) - Pressure is piling on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer after Andy Burnham stormed to victory in the Makerfield by-election, with the number of Labour members of parliament (MPs) who have called for him to set out plans to quit reaching 100.
Calls for Starmer to go have been building since Labour took a hammering in May’s local elections, and now marks around a quarter of the party’s 403 MPs.
The prime minister has repeatedly vowed to fight any leadership challenge, insisting he will not “walk away.”
But Burnham’s by-election victory has prompted more backbenchers and Labour grandees to call for Starmer to stand down.
Some MPs who had signed a statement rejecting calls for a leadership election last month have now reversed their position, while former home secretary Alan Johnson told LBC his message to the prime minister would be: “It’s over, Keir.”
Starmer is understood to have spoken to a number of Cabinet ministers, some of whom are reported to have told him he should set out a timetable for his departure.
Some in Westminster believe a contest could begin as early as next week, but allies of Burnham favor a longer wait to allow them to prepare for government.
Adding to the pressure on Starmer, U.S. President Donald Trump predicted on his Truth Social platform that “Keir Starmer will resign as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom”.
Trump then repeated his view that Starmer had “failed badly” on cutting immigration and boosting North Sea oil output.
Starmer’s unpopularity was laid bare by Labour’s heavy losses in local elections in May, and polls of party members indicate Burnham would win a formal leadership contest.
Should Burnham take the helm, he would become Britain’s seventh prime minister in the past 10 years.
Sky News reported that it understood foreign minister Yvette Cooper had called on Starmer to stand down in a private conservation over the weekend. Her spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Her apparent appeal, alongside other ministers and dozens of lawmakers, increased the sense that it is now a ‌case of when, rather than if, Starmer would step aside.
Starmer said only a few days ago that he would stand in any formal Labour leadership contest that sought to replace him.
While Starmer’s team believes his landslide national election win in 2024 gives him the mandate to stay in post until 2029, business minister Peter Kyle said the prime minister was reflecting on the “the political challenges that he faces in this moment”.
Kyle said he had spoken to Starmer on Friday and had found a man who was questioning what “the country expected of him”. The conversation showed Starmer was in “very difficult circumstances”, the business minister said.
“So I’m not going to deny the political challenges that he faces in this moment, but what I’m also not going to do is say there is ever anything inevitable about the days ahead,” Kyle told LBC radio.
Starmer’s position is precarious.
Burnham’s thumping win over the populist Reform UK party to take a parliamentary seat in Makerfield prompted more lawmakers and ministers to press the prime minister to set a timetable for his departure to avoid what could be a divisive leadership race.
The team supporting Burnham, a 56-year-old career politician, had said they were giving Starmer the weekend to consider his position in the hope that he would set out an orderly transfer of power.
As yet, there was no indication the two had spoken.
Former minister Jess Phillips - who is a supporter of health secretary Wes Streeting, another potential challenger to Starmer - told the BBC that “it feels like we’ve come to the end of the road” and that it would be best for Starmer’s departure to be “as dignified as possible”.