How Long Can Keir Starmer Hang On? |
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s refusal to resign, elections in the Bahamas, and growing financial ties between Africa and France.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stubbornly clung on to his job for another day on Tuesday despite a growing chorus of voices from his own Labour Party calling for his resignation after a disastrous showing for Labour in local elections last week.
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s refusal to resign, elections in the Bahamas, and growing financial ties between Africa and France.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stubbornly clung on to his job for another day on Tuesday despite a growing chorus of voices from his own Labour Party calling for his resignation after a disastrous showing for Labour in local elections last week.
As of time of writing, roughly 90 Labour members of Parliament (MPs) had asked Starmer to step down. Four junior ministers resigned on Tuesday, including Health Innovation and Safety Minister Zubir Ahmed, who is an ally of Health Minister Wes Streeting, a potential Starmer challenger. “[T]he public across the UK has now irretrievably lost confidence in you as Prime Minister,” Ahmed wrote in his resignation letter.
Last week’s election results appeared to show as much: Labour lost 1,229 council seats across the United Kingdom, while Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform U.K. Party netted 1,372 and the left-wing Green Party also made significant gains. Labour also lost power in Wales and had its worst-ever showing in the Scottish Parliament.
That’s quite a turnaround from the general election less than two years ago, when Starmer’s party secured a 174-seat majority in the House of Commons—one of its best-ever showings—and ended 14 years of Conservative Party rule. Upon entering office, “Starmer promised to restore stability and to rule in a way that would, in his words, ‘tread more lightly’ on the lives of ordinary citizens,” Jamie Maxwell wrote for Foreign Policy shortly before the elections earlier this month. “Instead, his administration has blundered from one crisis to the next,” accelerating the decline of Britain’s Labour-Tory........