Is the U.K.'s PM on the brink of resignation? | Power & Politics

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]UK Prime Minister Kirst is currently facing intense pressure and calls for his resignation from within his own party.

[00:00:08]>> I know that people are frustrated by the state of Britain, frustrated by politics and some people frustrated with me.

[00:00:22]I know I have my doubters and I know I need to prove them wrong and I will.

[00:00:29]>> Labor faced historic losses after the UK's most recent local elections, losing more than 1,200 seats in England alone.

[00:00:38]So far, more than 70 MPs have publicly called for Kier to stand down. Aubrey Allegreti is chief political correspondent for the Times and he joins us now from London, England. Uh Aubrey, less than two years since a landslide general election victory and the these terrible losses for the party. Uh not just Labor, conservatives, the all the traditional parties being rejected. What what does this tell us about what's happening in UK politics and the Labor government in particular?

[00:01:08]Well, the UK has survived for decades now on a century of two-party politics where the sort of leftwing and right-wing blocks coales around two main political parties and that's being challenged in unprecedented ways here after, as you spoke about the significant and historic losses for both Labour and the Conservative Party. In fact, this is the second year running in history where neither of them have achieved the highest number in terms of the top two parties in vote share or number of seats won. They are being outflanked by largely quite populist parties on both the left and the right.

[00:01:44]Reform UK led by Nigel Farage who was of course the big champion of Brexit in that heyday about a decade ago and then an eco- populist leading the Green Party named Zack Palansky. K Star Dmer obviously had a significant majority, the biggest in nearly two decades when he won the election in July 2024. But since that time, he's been viewed as a technocrat who is too much of a sort of apologist for and defender of the status quo in what many voters in the UK feel like is a broken system. And so he's come under the greatest political pressure of his career so far from many in his own party. You know, it's hard to judge it from all the way over here, but you almost never see him kind of sort of speaking with force and command and confidence like you you typically see from a leader in a real secure position.

[00:02:32]And now 70 plus MPs calling for him to go. I I mean, how much trouble is his premiership as his prime ministership in in the UK right now?

[00:02:43]>> Certainly. I mean, so to give you a sense of scale, there are currently 403 Labor MPs. So the number of those that have called for him to go is 75. That makes up over a quarter of all of his backbenches. There have been five or six resignations from the front bench tonight. Now they're only at the most junior level. They're kind of ministerial aids, but they are expected to sort of tow the party line and they have had to resign their positions. And so it's presenting a great threat to the prime minister's authority. tomorrow morning, uh, as happens every week at 9:00 a.m., he's supposed to be chairing cabinet with his top ministers, but already we've seen two, three, four of them go into number 10 tonight.

[00:03:23]Incredibly tense behind uh closed doors scenes as they encourage the prime minister to set out a timet for his departure. It's all very chaotic and there is a bit of a war between various factions in the Labour party to try and either delay or expedite this contest depending on uh which sort of side of the equation you're on.

[00:03:44]>> Well, we saw there obviously in the clip that we played from Prime Minister Starmer that he thinks he's still the right person. He intends to stay. Of course, no leader can say anything different because the minute you open the door, you may as well go through it because you're done. I I mean, what's your sense of his ability to calm things here, to steady things here and survive and push through?

[00:04:06]>> I mean, it's really interesting. I went to that press conference this morning that you were playing some clips of. I asked him a question along with about a dozen other journalists and I think you could feel in the room that there just wasn't the kind of energy, the reaching to within his soul that some Labour MPs thought that he would have to do in order to survive a challenge today. Um it's certainly happening very quickly and that means that the momentum is against number 10. They don't seem to have been in much of a mood to fight today. But even if there is an official contest, Kisama himself is eligible to run. So I think the big question going into tomorrow is if he's challenged, will he will he sort of drag this out?

[00:04:44]When Boris Johnson was being uh deposed by Conservative MPs, what is it now four or five years ago? He struggled not because MPs were expressing no confidence in him, but because he eventually ended up in a situation where he couldn't even form a government.

[00:04:58]There are around 100 roles that have to be given to MPs, administerial roles levels to carry those jobs out. Karma isn't in that position yet, but it seems as though he could be very quickly.

[00:05:09]>> So, I I know that that they sort of blocked the candidacy of Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, that area to run in a bi-election because there there's some suggestion he was seen as maybe a threat or a rival uh to Kierst Starmer for the leadership. So, obviously not being in the caucus and in the parliament, that's not someone who can challenge Kierstar at this moment in time. Who are the people who are there who could be seen as a as a as an option to replace him if he does decide to go?

[00:05:37]>> Of course, I appreciate these uh people will not be sort of big names to your viewers. Uh but the leading contenders from the sort of right or moderate wing of the left-wing Labour party and the health secretary West Streeting. Friends of his say that effectively he thinks if he doesn't become prime minister, he thinks his whole life will have been a failure. They say it's been building to this point for for years and in fact that his allies behind the scenes have been agitating against the prime minister and building up a plan for government for at least the last few months. Um his leading rival on the sort of left side of the Labour party is a woman called Angela Raina. Now she was forced to resign as the deputy prime minister last September after it was revealed that she didn't pay about £40,000 worth in tax on a property that she bought. That issue still isn't resolved. She's working it out with the tax man. And so it means that she's significantly hamstrung. Meanwhile, you have other contenders on the left of the Labour Party like Andy Bernham who's a mayor in Greater Manchester, but he doesn't have a seat in parliament, which means he can't run. He's been trying for months to get back, but Kistam has effectively been blocking him from standing. And then there are some sort of curveball wildcard candidates. Those who represent the new intake of MPs from 2024 onwards and think that effectively all of these sort of old school style politicians are to blame for Labour's failures and they want to wipe the slate clean with a completely fresh face. So it's really quite chaotic. So look as a final point Aubrey before we let you go Nigel Farage uh you know UKIP uh EU parliament now reform and just has caught this wave right the the the surge in the last national elections and certainly in these local elections what does it say because when you look at reform and Nigel Farage from over here there there's some things they say and do that are that are you know uh a bit extreme or inaccurate. What does it say that there's people are so willing to embrace Nigel Farage uh and his party in elections like this?

[00:07:33]>> Yeah, I think it demonstrates the fact that there is such a lack of appeal, appetite, and trust in the main political parties. I mean, Reform UK, which is Nigel Faraj's party, has done relatively well in terms of building momentum and success from a pretty fledgling a party that didn't exist about 5 years ago to being able to break through the two-party system and secure these big uh sort of footholds in town halls. But that also means that they have so far escaped quite a lot of scrutiny and they haven't been tested or challenged in positions of power. that it remains the case still largely at sort of national level in that they didn't win in the Welsh and Scottish sort of devolved administration elections but they are taking on more and more senior roles in councils across England and that presents a big challenge for Nigel Farage because the more he promises voters the more that they'll have a chance to measure what he says against how they deliver in local government.

[00:08:29]>> That is a very good point because it's easy to offer things when you don't have to actually deliver them. Uh Aubrey Allegretti, you always deliver when we have you on. This the chief political correspondent for the Times. Thank you so much, sir.

[00:08:40]>> Thank you for having me. Cheers, David.