PNN – As UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces a sharp drop in public approval, many lawmakers within the ruling Labour Party are now considering removing him from the party leadership.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, Starmer is under growing pressure. Dozens of Labour MPs are reportedly examining plans to oust him as party leader.
This week, Starmer and his ministers unveiled a series of positive announcements aimed at improving their standing. These ranged from a slight reduction in the NHS’s extremely long waiting lists, to the dismissal of underperforming regional police commissioners, and the selection of sites for new small nuclear reactors intended to support the country’s future energy mix. Yet these announcements gained little traction in the London media.
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Instead, two major government missteps dominated the headlines. The first was Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s decision to schedule the national budget for the final week of November, which sparked weeks of speculation about how she plans to raise additional revenue amid rising costs. As a result, consumers are anxious and businesses uncertain about investing in the near future.
Last week, Reeves further fuelled concern by suggesting the government may abandon a key election pledge and raise income tax, a proposal that triggered strong backlash from both MPs and the public.
Then, on Thursday evening, the Financial Times stunned Westminster with an apparently well-sourced exclusive report claiming that Starmer and Reeves had finally backed down from breaking their election promise. Why they kept the country waiting in suspense for ten days remains an unanswered question from the pair.
In this atmosphere, dozens of Labour’s 405 MPs are said to be sharpening their knives against a leader who appears unaware of the scale of the crisis.
The Labour-aligned New Statesman magazine ran the headline: “Does the Prime Minister even realise how much trouble he’s in?” Unlike the Conservatives, who have recently been almost prone to coups, the social democrats have never removed a sitting prime minister. Will they abandon that tradition in Starmer’s case?
The Times wrote that the prime minister has spent nearly one-sixth of his 16-month term on 37 trips to 44 countries. These trips have largely focused on coordinating Europe’s support for Ukraine and containing Donald Trump, the unpredictable US president — both of which are undoubtedly central goals of Britain’s foreign policy.
Luke Tryl of the market research firm More in Common reports that voters do not care that the prime minister often performs well on these trips. People see it as a zero-sum game: in their view, when Starmer is abroad, he is not paying attention to domestic problems such as the rising cost of living.