United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer suffered another major blow to his credibility early on Friday morning when his Labour Party lost a formerly safe parliamentary seat in a special election. Not only did Labour lose, but it lost half of its vote share on its last result in this seat in 2024, and came third behind the far-left Green Party and Nigel Farage’s populist-right Reform Party.
Following the result in the constituency of Gorton and Denton, Starmer’s political rivals in Labour are unsheathing their political knives. Angel Rayner, widely seen as a top potential challenger to Starmer, stated, “This result must be a wake-up call. It’s time to really listen and to reflect. Voters want the change that we promised and they voted for. If we want to unrig the system, if we want to make the change we were sent into Government to make, we have to be braver.”
Starmer has a big problem.
Farage’s Reform Party has a sustained 6-point+ lead in the opinion polls. And while Starmer has time on paper — he must hold a new election by Aug. 15, 2029 — the political winds are firmly against him. The prime minister’s personal approval rating is net -47%.
Starmer’s key problem is that he’s seen as a failed leader. The prime minister took heavy criticism following the recent removal of former U.K. ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson over Mandelson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein. But the U.K. economy is also struggling, and Starmer has embraced a far-left tax-and-spend policy of a kind unprecedented since the Second World War. Public disenchantment, especially important for the Reform Party’s support, is also growing as the government continues to crack down on free speech. This reflects a broader European governing tendency to treat true free speech as anathema to civil society.
And most important of all, Britons believe illegal immigration rates are far too high and that Starmer has failed to get a grip on this priority concern. Immigration takes on a special concern in the U.K. due to pressures on the country’s socialized healthcare, welfare, and housing systems.
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Starmer’s broader challenge is the perception that he is weak. He has repeatedly made political U-turns following limited rebellions by Labour’s far-left. This has made the prime minister an effective lame duck. Nor does Starmer find much sympathy from the Right, spending insufficiently on defense while simultaneously kowtowing to China.
The question, then, is how long Starmer can keep hanging on for. The Labour Left is ascendant, and although their preferred policies would undoubtedly worsen rather than improve the U.K.’s economic position, a left-wing candidate will likely triumph in any internal leadership contest to replace Starmer (under the U.K. parliamentary system, the majority party can select the new prime minister without having to hold a new election).
The prime minister’s days in power are numbered.