Keir Starmer challenges his ministers in crucial government meeting, divided over his future as 'premier'

LondonBritish Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces, in the coming hours of this Tuesday, a decisive meeting of his government, after at least two of his ministers asked him to resign from office. According to various reports in the British press, at least the head of the Interior Ministry, Shabana Mahmood, and the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, have made him see the impossibility of sustaining his leadership. The Justice Minister and number two of the executive, David Lammy, and the Defence Minister, John Healey, would also have spoken of his future. In one way or another, the four have thus joined the revolt of the more than seventy second-tier parliamentarians who yesterday, Monday, asked him to step aside and establish a timetable for an orderly departure from Downing Street. The situation has already caused, this morning, the first resignation within the government, in this case, of the Secretary of State for Communities, Miatta Fahnbulleh. The timing of Fahnbulleh's announcement, minutes before the start of the cabinet meeting, is designed to cause the greatest possible impact.

But according to information released shortly after by the Prime Minister's office, Starmer has very explicitly challenged his critics at the start of the government meeting. And he said: "The Labour Party has a process for questioning its leader, and that process has not been triggered. The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and that is what we have to do."

The new political spectacle that Westminster is experiencing takes place less than twenty-four hours after Keir Starmer attempted to rekindle his leadership with a speech in central London, in which he assured, as he has done this morning, that he would under no circumstances abandon office to plunge the country into chaos. But both his leadership and his authority seem, at this point, mortally wounded, following the electoral disaster of last week, in the local elections in England and the regional elections in Wales and Scotland. The faces of the ministers continuing to arrive at Number 10 Downing Street for the crucial meeting say it all. Meanwhile, on the most famous street in the world, only the shouts of journalists, cameras, and photographers can be heard, asking the members of the executive if they support the party leader.

Starmer's closest allies had defined the premier's decisive intervention yesterday as a reset of his government's action. But far from what they expected, his trusted men, the head of government's words were met with coolness by a significant number of deputies who, throughout yesterday, unleashed a continuous trickle of calls for resignation or an orderly departure.

Throughout this morning, it will be possible to see if the revolt has succeeded or not. In any case, Starmer is already a burnt-out leader. Beyond the names circulating to take over from him, the big debate the Labour Party must face is about policies. Policies that correct the enormous inequalities that continue to affect large sectors of the British population, who believed in the change that Starmer promised two years ago and which led him to win the elections

in July 2024.

Otherwise, with Starmer or any other premier

, Labour runs the risk of handing over the keys to power to Nigel Farage and the far-right in 2029. "If we don't do things right, our country will take a very dark path," the prime minister himself acknowledged in his failed speech.

The situation facing the government, and especially the prime minister, is completely absurd, given that tomorrow, Wednesday, the State Opening of Parliament (the King's Speech) is scheduled, the annual ceremony in which the monarch reads the outlines of the laws that the executive commits to carrying out over the next 365 days. If Keir Starmer survives this Tuesday, when tomorrow Charles III says the ritual words –"my government will do or promote..."–, many in Parliament will wonder which government he is talking about.