Politics
The House Article | Local leaders need more power to deliver change for residents
The voter turnout for the English local elections last week was 31.5 per cent (Alamy)
3 min read
The higher-than-expected turnout in these local elections showed voters were ready to demand change. Local leaders need more political and fiscal autonomy than ever to deliver for their residents.
England’s local political map has been transformed. But beyond the sweeping changes in local political control, one notable feature of last week’s local elections in England was that, in many areas, turnout tended to be above the usual low levels associated with local contests.
In my home council area of Calderdale turnout was 45 per cent, up by almost 11 per cent on the last local elections held here in 2024. The pattern was similar elsewhere.
While still not generally ‘high’ by any stretch (there’s much more to be done to improve electoral turnout both locally and nationally), higher than normal turnout is perhaps indicative of current public sentiment.
At first glance, higher turnout seems counterintuitive. Public trust in politics remains exceptionally low, and dissatisfaction with institutions is widespread. But increased turnout may indicate that many voters are increasingly willing to participate when they feel sufficiently motivated to register frustration or demand change.
The causes of voters’ discontent appear both national and local.
Undoubtedly, there’s dissatisfaction with the pace of change nationally, and growing impatience with stagnant living standards, stretched public services and the continuing cost-of-living crisis.
The message to the government in Westminster is clear: it must radically transform what it’s doing if it’s going to succeed. There is a growing demand for visible improvement in people’s everyday lives, particularly in communities that feel economically overlooked.
But interpreting these elections purely as a referendum on the government would miss a crucial part of the story. Beneath the national political turbulence lies a more localised crisis in confidence about the ability of councils themselves to deliver.
After more than a decade of cuts, many local authorities are operating under severe financial pressure, with local spending power much lower than it was in 2010, pre-austerity.
While the current government have provided additional financial support, councils across England remain constrained by a system that leaves them struggling to meet their statutory obligations and adequately fund other services. In many places, residents have seen libraries closing, parks deteriorating, roads going unrepaired, and their high streets declining.
These are the types of things that shape people’s daily experience of government most directly. For many voters, local government no longer seems capable of improving the places where they live. People feel they’re paying more council tax every year while getting less back in return.
As a result, there appears to have been a growing willingness to “roll the dice” electorally and replace incumbent administrations with alternatives promising disruption or change.
Beyond the introspection at the national level, therefore, another key takeaway from these elections should be that local leaders need more political and fiscal autonomy to deliver for their residents.
There’s a growing need to fundamentally reform local government finances so councils can act. This should mean radically reforming the council tax system, fixing social care provision, and delivering bold fiscal devolution.
This should go hand in hand with the government building on the progress it’s made on devolution and going further and faster on decentralising power so that local areas have greater control over things like economic development, transport, housing and public services.
This not only matters for delivery but also for enhancing local democratic engagement. International evidence shows that when local government has the power to genuinely change things, people are more likely to turn out to vote regularly and engage with it positively, enhancing local turnout over the longer term.
Rebuilding confidence in local government, empowering councils to deliver visible change and sustaining higher levels of democratic participation will be essential if trust in local and national politics is to be renewed.
Ryan Swift is Research Fellow at IPPR North, writing on devolution, local democracy, ‘levelling up’, and regional identity
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In a critical speech delivered today, Keir Starmer addressed the massive losses Labour sustained in the English local, Scottish Parliament, and Welsh Senedd elections. As the PM is now facing calls to quit not just from opponents but within his own party, his response may prove critical to his political future.
Somehow, he managed more two-faced, half-truths than what we’ve come to expect. The PM kicked off with an acknowledgement that his party lost hard in the elections:
The election results last week were tough. Very tough. We lost some brilliant labour representatives. That hurts. And it should hurt. I get it. I feel it. And I take responsibility. […]
This hurts not just because Labour has done badly, but because if we don’t get this right, our country will go down a very dark path.
So just as I take responsibility for the results, I also take responsibility for delivering the change that we promised for a stronger and fairer Britain that we must build. I take responsibility for navigating through a world that is more dangerous than at any time in my life. And I take responsibility for not walking away, not plunging our country into chaos, as the Tories did, time and again, chaos, but did lasting damage to this country.
Barrelling down a dark path
First of all, warning that the country will go “down a very dark path” is fucking rich coming from a Labour Party that’s cribbing its immigration policy from the Reform handbook. Or did Starmer think we’d forgotten about his policy to nick asylum seekers’ jewellery already?
Second, taking responsibility for delivering change is a very fancy way of saying ‘I won’t listen to leadership challenges from my own party.’
Claiming that it’s not enough merely to address the “frustration the voters feel”, he stated that:
We’re battling Reform and the Greens, but at a deeper level.
We’re battling the despair on which they prey. Despair that they exploit and amplify. And so analysis matters, but argument matters more. Evidence matters, but so, too, does emotion. Stories beat spreadsheets, people need hope.
Ah yes, the ‘Greens are just like Reform, if you don’t think about it at all’ chestnut. We also love “stories beat spreadsheets” from the guy who famously only has one story. Also, did you know Starmer’s dad was a toolmaker?
Gaslight, gatekeep, government strikes again
Anyway, speaking of despair, the PM demonstrated exactly what “taking responsibility” means to him:
Of course, like every government, we’ve made mistakes. But we got the big political choices right. I mean, if we’d listened to the advice of other parties, right now, we’d be stuck in a stand-off with Iran.
Having been dragged into a war that is not in our interest, and I will never do that. We have invested in our public services, in people, in the pride of Britain’s communities. Difficult decisions funded that. But now, NHS waiting lists are coming down.
Child poverty is coming down. Immigration is coming down. And we are rebuilding from the ground up. They were the right course and most of all we stabilised the economy.
‘Actually, we’re doing really well’..sure buddy…it’s the voters who are wrong. Also, while we’re on the subject, the UK is involved in Trump-Netanyahu’s war on Iran. We’re letting the pricks launch their bombers from our airbases.
Starmer then listed the 2008 financial crash, austerity, Brexit, Covid, and the Ukraine war, to say:
And the response is always the same. A desperate attempt to get back to the status quo. A status quo that failed working people time and again. Our response this time must be different.
Magnificent, and completely true. But what could Starmer’s vision of a “complete break” from the status quo look like?
Nationalise steel, but don’t mention the sewage
As an example of his bold new vision (har har), the Labour leader used the example of a steel plant in Scunthorpe that was on the verge of closure. Instead, Labour passed emergency legislation and “took control” in Starmer’s words. The government couldn’t negotiate a commercial sale of the plant, but the PM stated that:
I can announce that legislation will be brought forward this week to give the Government powers subject to that public interest test, to take full national ownership of British Steel.
Public ownership in the public interest. Urgent government on the side of working people, making Britain stronger with the hope of industrial renewal, that is a Labour choice.
That’s great news for the steel workers, and we’ll bear it in mind the next time we want to build a railway. However, maybe we could extend that same logic of nationalisation to the railway network itself?
Or, better yet, we could even talk about nationalising our environmentally ruinous water supply. But of course, that would involve Labour betraying its buddies in the water industry, wouldn’t it?
The other guy’s worse
The other example Starmer held up as a token of his ‘new politics’ is a plan to renew the country’s relationship with Europe. Of course, this quickly devolved into the standard Labour tactic of bashing political enemies:
I want to remind you what Nigel Farage said about Brexit. He said it would make us richer, wrong. It made us poorer. He said it would reduce migration, wrong. Migration went through the roof. He said it would make us more secure, wrong again. It made us weaker.
He took Britain for a ride, and unlike the Tories, who actually at least had to face up to it, he just fled the scene. And now he’ll talk about almost anything other than the consequences of the one policy he actually delivered. Because he’s not just a grifter, he is a chancer.
You know what, he can have that one…all true. No notes from us.
Coming to the end (thank God) of his speech, the PM continued in the same vein, claiming that the other parties:
want more grievance politics, more division, more pointing at Britain’s problems. Looking not for solutions but for someone to blame. Now, that’s fine, if it’s me, if it’s politicians, that’s the job. But increasingly, it’s not. It’s other people in this country. And I don’t think that’s British.
That is not the decency and respect that we are known for. But it’s here. That politics is with us now. And you’ll see it again on Saturday at a march designed to confront and intimidate this diverse city and this diverse country.
That is why this labour government will block far right agitators from travelling to Britain for that event. Because we will not allow people to come to the UK and spread hate on our streets.
This comes from a Labour Party that actively fought to get racist, Islamophobic Maccabees fans into the country. It’s like they think the public suffers from amnesia.
He concluded his speech with the following remarks:
This is nothing less than a battle for the soul of our nation. And I want to be crystal clear about how we will win it. Because we cannot win as a weaker version of Reform or the Greens, we can only win as a stronger version of Labour, a mainstream party of power, not protest.
‘We must become the best damn Centrists we can be’ — what a fucking vision this man has. God help us all.
Featured image via the Canary
In the run-up to the local elections, the silence finally shattered: suddenly it was acceptable to talk about the problem of men without proper vetting crossing international borders. That v-word that working-class communities are so severely reprimanded for using was on the lips of every Westminster hack. Across SW1, manicured hands were wrung over the scandal of an unscreened bloke getting a cushy house and government money in a country that isn’t his own. Of course, none of this chatter was about the men from distant, regressive lands who rock up on England’s shores every day – it was about Peter Mandelson.
Rarely has the moral gulf between the elites and the people been so strikingly on display. In their cloistered palaces of power, they gabbed endlessly about the horror show of Mandelson’s botched vetting for the position of UK ambassador to America. How did this friend of a notorious sex criminal end up as our man in Washington, they wondered, referencing Mandy’s old cosines with Jeffrey Epstein. Meanwhile, ordinary Brits were asking how hundreds of men who’ve had no vetting at all, not even of the shambolic kind, can sail into England every week and instantly receive four-star lodgings and three meals a day. Some of whom aren’t just mates with sexual abusers – they are sexual abusers. There’s been a surge in horrific assaults on women and girls by these men from countries awash with misogyny.
I looked it up: in the week when the Mandelson story broke in mid-April, more than a thousand people, mostly young men, arrived on small boats on England’s shores. Maybe some of them are now in the hotel in your town. Perhaps some will one day show up in those jaw-dropping stats where foreign nationals now account for one in seven convictions for sexual crimes. If any of your non-British friends asks why Labour got such a drubbing in the local elections, tell them this – that this is a government whose luminaries, functionaries and court reporters fret more over backroom bungling in Whitehall than they do over the systematic dismantling of our national frontiers by the cult of globalism they all bow to.
This is the divide now: between a chattering class that obsesses over the reputation of the regime and ordinary people more worried about the safety of the realm. Between the walled-off high priests of consensus opinion whose life’s ambition is to fine-tune the bureaucracy and your average Brit who longs to repair the nation itself. Labour’s diagnosis of its calamitous performance in the elections is laughably oblivious. It’s because we didn’t do enough to fix the cost-of-living crisis, says Angela Rayner. We need to offer ‘more hope and optimism’, says Keir Starmer, as if Brits were a traumatised blob in need of a therapist’s hug. All of them ignore the central grievance of working-class Britain – nationhood itself, and its steady erosion under a ruling class more interested in buffing its own virtue than policing our borders.
It is plain as day why Reform UK – with its promise to detain and deport illegal immigrants and to abolish indefinite leave to remain – swept aside the Labour Party in town halls across working-class England. Of course the go-to explanation of the credentialled classes is that these voters are pig-ignorant, as befits their ‘gammon’ hue, having never darkened the door of a university and had their eyes prised open to the wonders of diversity and genderfluidity and Gazology. In truth, our broken borders are frequently cited as the No1 topic of concern by voters – in a YouGov poll last year, 58 per cent of Brits picked immigration as one of their big worries, compared with 51 per cent for the economy and 22 per cent for crime. And it’s not because they’re racist – it’s because they know that the nation that is blasé about the pouring of hundreds of men over its borders every week is a nation in name only. They know that such reckless indifference to the sanctity and security of the nation endangers not only women but Britishness itself. They know that the thing they cherish above all else – their identity as Britons – will be entirely emptied of meaning if Britain cannot even define and defend its boundaries.
Working-class Britain has had a gutful of the fashionable national shame of the elites. They see this establishment shrug its shoulders over our territorial integrity, and dry-heave at the sight of a St George’s flag, and spout on a loop that soulless tripe about how ‘Britain is all about diversity’, which is another way of saying Britain stands for nothing, and it makes them sick. They know Starmer is far happier in Davos talking platitudinous bollocks with the gold-collared superclass than he is in Darlington, with its pesky Reform voters and its nurses who’d rather not see a cock in their changing rooms. And they know the burning contempt that both Labour grandees and the pink-haired upstarts of the Green Party feel for them, and their communities, and their flags, and their longing to take pride, once more, in Britain. They know these people look down on them as pig meat (‘gammon’) who can be swayed this way and that by the demagogic trickery of populists. Their voting in the local elections was less a plea for better bin collections than a stirring ballot-box revolt against a morally apathetic regime that has overseen the scandalous withering of the nation.
Anyone who is shocked by the working class’s rejection of Labour has not been paying attention. It is a revolt completely without mystery. This is what happens when you demean entire communities as flag-shagging bigots, and call them racist for not wanting a thousand men from fuck knows where in the hotel at the end of their street, and tell them that the rape of girls in their communities by gangs of mostly Muslim men is just a ‘far-right dogwhistle’ that they should shut the hell up about. This is what happens when you strip a people of their flag and their sense of national identity and their means of social solidarity and then mock them as racist trash when they push back. Starmer’s legacy will be as the gravedigger of two-party politics.
The extent to which Starmer doesn’t understand any of this is staggering. Indeed, his very first response to his drubbing at the ballot box was to drag poor old Gordon Brown out as his new special envoy on global finance. Brown! This is the man who, as PM in 2010, damned Gillian Duffy as a ‘bigoted woman’ after she challenged him on the economy and immigration. They really don’t get it. And they never will. The withering of this class of ostentatiously ashamed preeners cannot come soon enough. Not only the security of the nation but also of women and Jews requires the removal of these fools who sold off our sovereignty for a pittance.
Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.
The civil liberties charity Statewatch has said current UK community policing strategy is just a copy-and-paste version of colonial tactics. The so-called ‘clear, hold, build’ (CHB) approach is yet another example of how methods refined in military occupations are being imposed on communities at home. And the main losers are already marginalised communities.
The colonial boomerang
The London-based Statewatch produce and promote:
critical research, policy analysis and investigative journalism to inform debates, movements and campaigns on civil liberties, human rights and democratic standards.
The group’s 11 May analysis piece seeks to explain how centuries of colonial policing have informed current tactics – often under treacly-sounding names like ‘Project Unity’, ‘Respect Rhymney’ and ‘Happy Hopeful Hindpool’!
On the face of it, the three-step approach sounds like fairly standard police work. First, it tells officers to ‘clear’ through:
interventions (arrests and relentless disruption) that target organised crime group members, their networks, business interests, criminality and spheres of influence. The police use all powers and levers to impede their ability to operate. This creates safer spaces to begin restoring community confidence.
Then it moves into the ‘hold’ phase:
interventions, counter-measures and contingency plans to consolidate and stabilise the initial clear phase. This stops remaining or other organised crime group members from capitalising on the vacuum created. It improves community confidence by ensuring spaces remain safe. Visible neighbourhood policing in hotspot areas provides continuing reassurance that police are still present.
Before finally starting to ‘build’:
a single, whole-system approach to delivering community-empowered interventions that tackle drivers of crime, exploitation of vulnerabilities and geographic places where crime occurs. This improves living, working and recreational environment in the community for residents. It empowers them to work with stakeholders to generate resilience and build a safer community.
In reality, Statewatch argues, these processes are direct products of French, British and US empire…
Mowing the lawn
Statewatch said the CHB approach was developed by a former cop-turned-Home Office official named Shane Roberts:
The brutal military origins of CHB are no secret. Official bodies acknowledge that its roots lie in “a three-phase military operating model.” In a February 2024 meeting with a Northampton community group,
Its transfer from the military to the police appears to have been facilitated by a former detective turned Home Office policymaker, Shane Roberts. Roberts describes himself as the “creator” of CHB, responsible for its design, development and implementation as a local policing scheme.
The policy draws on lessons from as far afield as Malaya and Iraq, but also from US figures like Iraq-era General David Petraeus – and there is even major crossover with Israeli tactics deployed against Palestinians:
Anyone familiar with the Israeli occupation of Palestine will likely have heard this terminology of “mowing the lawn” before.
It is therefore unsurprising that CHB has also reportedly been used as the basis of Israeli military operations against Palestinian people in Gaza, with Petraeus himself pitching his exploits in Iraq to Israeli officials.
Roberts even cites French colonial administrator General Herbert Lyautey, who helped ‘pacify’ Morocco:
Roberts describes Lyautey’s career of colonial enforcement for the French empire as “a track record of helping harmonize communities,” noting his ability to work in “challenging social conditions
Roberts adds:
…as Lyautey commented, if these follow-through steps were not taken, efforts would be in vain as simply clipping weeds results in only a temporary illusion of progress: what mattered was addressing the root.
Statewatch argued Lyautey’s words were “a little more brutal”.
and were arguably precursors to the modern-day phraseology of “mowing the lawn.” The marshal argued that “after the plough has passed, the conquered land must be isolated and enclosed so that the good seed that is resistant to the bad can be sown.”
The NGO added:
Despite this language of conquest and domination, Roberts “believed these principles had wider utility and could potentially be replicated in a community-based response to tackle SOC [serious and organised crime].”
Statewatch also noted:
The Home Office concluded that overall CHB can be an “effective approach for reducing crime.”
The ‘new spirit’ of British policing?
Statewatch said the increased mixing of colonial tactics with domestic security measures reflected a “new spirit” in British policing:
This repurposed imperial doctrine represents an introduction of colonial military methods which were originally created to dominate, rather than uplift, local communities.
It provides disturbing insight into the mindset of both government and police institutions which see these tactics as suitable for safeguarding local neighbourhoods.
The group said the policy was part of an “invisible militarisation” of local police:
UK police forces adopting the equipment and appearance of the military have long been a point of focus. However, this strategy transforms community policing into a military process in a way which is both more invasive and harder to spot.
Police have already used CHB to clear out unhoused people in London’s Tower Hamlets:
After clearing an area of tents in which people had been living, the Metropolitan Police published a statement stating that CHB “creates a space that can be used by everyone”.
Police forces across the west were always a martial force. They exist primarily to protect property and the capitalist status quo, victimising the exploited and racialised classes on behalf of the wealthy. And colonising powers like Britain have always used their vassal states as a violent laboratory, sharpening techniques and technologies of oppression for use at home.
The military honed these methods further in recent episodes of violent occupation like Iraq and Palestine. UK police are now deploying them against domestic communities. And the first victims will be the most marginalised.
Featured image via the Canary
By Joe Glenton
Keir Starmer’s premiership is hanging by a thread following Labour’s disastrous performance in the local elections.
A growing body of MPs are calling for the prime minister to resign, less than two years into the role, but Starmer is digging in.
With no clear successor putting their head above the parapet for the mutinous party to rally behind, MPs are in limbo.
So what might happen next? Here’s what you need to know.
How Did We Get To This Point?
Starmer became prime minister in July 2024 after Labour won a landslide victory in the general election.
But within weeks, his government was plunged into crisis by the decision to scrap winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners and a row over free clothes and hospitality accepted by Starmer and other senior Labour figures.
A series of messy U-turns on things like the two-child benefit cap, digital ID and the farmers’ inheritance tax also led to the prime minister’s approval rating plummeting.
The controversy over his decision to make Peter Mandelson the UK’s ambassador to Washington also helped push the PM’s unpopularity to new depths.
In Labour’s biggest electoral test since the 2024 election last week, voters overwhelmingly rejected the party in England, Scotland and Wales – triggering further anger towards the PM from the party’s MPs.
More than 50 of then have called on Starmer to stand down following the devastating bloodbath.
What Might Happen Next?
It’s incredibly hard to predict exactly what happens next, especially Labour Party makes it difficult to oust the party’s leader.
But here are the options MPs are considering, as of Monday…
A Labour MP Challenges Starmer
Under the party’s rules, a challenger needs the backing of at least 20% of Labour MPs to trigger a leadership contest. That currently works out to 81 MPs.
Even then, the sitting leader would automatically be put on the ballot paper.
Former Foreign Office minister Catherine West stunned Westminster on Saturday by announcing she would challenge the PM if the cabinet did not choose someone to replace Starmer.
But by Monday she had backed down, instead calling for MPs to sign a letter urging Starmer to set out a timetable to allow him to be replaced by September.
Among others thought to be weighing up a leadership bid are former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and health secretary Wes Streeting.
A Labour MP Stands Aside For Andy Burnham
Starmer’s other major opponent is the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.
However Burnham left Westminster in 2017 and would have to become an MP again in order to stand.
Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC), blocked him from running as the party’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February – at the behest of Starmer.
Burnham is believed to have approached several northern Labour MPs about standing down to trigger a by-election, but so far none have done so.
Even if someone is willing to resign, and the NEC does not block him again, there are no guarantees Burnham would win the subsequent by-election.
His decision to stand would also trigger a mayoral contest in Greater Manchester – which could give rival parties another chance to hammer Labour at the ballot box.
Starmer Agrees To Step Down As MP Backlash Mounts
As the number of MPs calling on him to resign rises, the PM could decide he doesn’t need the hassle and announce he is quitting.
However, he has insisted he “won’t walk away” from the job, and in an interview with The Observer insisted he still planned to be prime minister for 10 years.
Starmer Clings On
With the PM’s opponents apparently racked with indecision about what to do next, there is a world in which he rides out his latest leadership crisis.
In his make-or-break speech on Monday setting out how he plans to turn around Labour’s fortunes, Starmer said: “I know that people are frustrated by the state of Britain, frustrated by politics, and some people – frustrated with me.
“I know I have my doubters and I know I need to prove them wrong, and I will.”
Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.
Labour politicians have been calling for Keir Starmer to step down since the party’s disastrous local election results. Starmer hoped to turn the tide with yet another refresh followed by yet another speech, but the revolt is only growing:
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) — Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) May 11, 2026
IN FULL: The list of 51 Labour MPs currently calling for Keir Starmer to resign
David Baines (St Helens North)
Paula Barker (Liverpool Wavertree)
Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse)
Clive Betts (Sheffield South East)
Olivia Blake…
And growing:
Catherine McKinnell and Alan Gemmell have both made statements in the last few minutes — Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) May 11, 2026
UPDATE: The number of Labour MPs calling for Keir Starmer to resign has now risen to 54
Labour is revolting
On 8 May, Canary journalist HG reported on the MPs who’d called for Starmer to go, with the list including Ian Lavery, Ed Miliband, and Jonathan Brash (not to mention several union leaders). On 10 May, things took a surprising turn, with Josh Simons calling for Starmer to go. We say ‘surprise’ because Simons was a member of Labour Together, which is the faction that maneuvered Starmer into power.
The backlash isn’t limited to MPs, either. On 9 May, over one hundred former Labour councillors demanded that Starmer go (the reason they’re ‘former’ councillors is because they lost their seats under Starmer). Their letter read:
It is with sadness and deep regret that we, the undersigned former and present Labour councillors, Members of the Senedd, Members of the Scottish Parliament and 7th May candidates from across the UK, write to encourage you to take full responsibility for our party’s electoral defeats this week, announce a timetable for your departure, and allow an orderly transition to new leadership for the country.
Obviously, Starmer has to take sitting MPs more seriously than former councillors. He also has to take ministers more seriously than MPs, which is something we could shortly see. As Dan Hodges reported:
Multiple sources within the major camps:
* The dam has now collapsed. We will see MPs across the PLP signing up to the “Timetable” strategy.
* Will effectively be a No Confidence motion.
* When the “magic number” of 81 names is reached multiple cabinet ministers will tell Starmer he has to set out a timetable.
* I’m told some of those messages from the cabinet may already be being sent.
It’s usually the case that MPs stagger calls for the leader to go to ensure the maximum impact. As such, it’s possible the threshold of 81 has already been met, and we’re just waiting for the declarations to come out.
Hodges also said:
* Fight will now come down to whether Starmer can be persuaded to set out a short timetable (favoured by Wes Streeting) or the September timetable (favoured by Andy Burnham).
Starmer seems to be more ideologically aligned with Streeting. At the same time, Streeting has been angling to replace the Labour leader despite the PM making him health secretary, so you can possibly assume some resentment on Starmer’s part.
Other reports suggest MPs lack any confidence in there being an orderly transition:
Thoughts from a Labour MP:
“We have to face up to the fact every single one of them is fucking useless. Andy’s strategy has been a disaster. Angela bottled it. Ed clearly a hiding to nothing. Wes AWOL. God knows what Catherine West is doing. Not quite sure how we ended up here.”
— Jessica Elgot (@jessicaelgot) May 11, 2026
West-ern intervention
Catherine West is the MP who threatened to launch a leadership challenge against Starmer if no one else did. This is what she said after the PM’s speech:
The results last Thursday show that the PM has failed to inspire hope. What is best for the party and country now is for an orderly transition.
— Catherine West (@CatherineWest1) May 11, 2026
I want to thank everyone who has been in contact over the weekend to offer good wishes. We need our best top team in place to fight the next election. We owe working people up and down the country nothing less.
— Catherine West (@CatherineWest1) May 11, 2026
Obviously, this timeline is in line with what Andy Burnham’s camp wants. Burnham still has to become an MP before he can challenge Starmer, however, which could be a problem for him:
Exclusive: Green Party sources tell me they would "throw the kitchen sink" at winning a by-election in Manchester in which Andy Burnham is allowed to stand.
Party sources told me they would plan to “hit [Burnham] very hard from his left”. @newstatesman pic.twitter.com/JpKTFcxsFL
— megan kenyon (@meganekenyon) May 11, 2026
Burnham does have an advantage other Labour figures don’t, however, which is that he’s not them:
Andy Burnham is the only senior Labour figure with a net positive poll rating amongst the British public.
He is far more popular than his own party and best placed to win over Reform and Green voters. pic.twitter.com/F2gkxRZE0M — Taj Ali (@Taj_Ali1) May 9, 2026
And reports suggest he’s ready to go:
Apparently Andy Burnham has told backers he has a plan and a seat.
But no MP resignation yet!
All eyes on this..
— Kate Ferguson (@kateferguson4) May 11, 2026
Starmer-geddon
Starmer may have lost the public; he may have lost his MPs and councillors; he may be on the verge of losing his cabinet, but he hasn’t lost Britain dullest client journalist, Beth Rigby:
ANALYSIS: Starmer clearly listening to his party. Tries to step up the emotion and the passion. But so wanting when it comes to matching his rhetoric of urgency to policy offer. Next 24 hours going to be very precarious as MPs weigh up what to do https://t.co/6sTPEiWhOe
— Beth Rigby (@BethRigby) May 11, 2026
If Starmer was “clearly listening to his party”, he would have gone months ago.
Featured image via Mukhtar
By Willem Moore
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Keir Starmer has suffered his first resignation as the calls for him to step down as prime minister grow.
Tom Rutland, a parliamentary private secretary (PPS) in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, issued a statement calling for Starmer to quit.
A PPS acts as an unpaid parliamentary assistant, providing a link between the senior frontbencher and backbench MPs. The role is widely regarded as the first step on the ministerial ladder.
Rutland said that the prime minister “has lost authority not just within the parliamentary Labour Party but across the country and that he will not be able to regain it.”
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He added: “That significantly impedes the ability of the government to deliver the change that people voted for at the general election – change that we must deliver…
“I do not have faith that the prime minister can meet this challenge. It is not compatible to hold this view and continue to serve on the frontbench, so I have resigned as a parliamentary private secretary to the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, and will continue to represent my wonderful constituents in East Worthing and Shoreham from the backbenches.”
Naushabah Khan has resigned as a PPS in the Cabinet Office.
In a statement, Khan said: “I did not enter politics to stand by while we fail. We need a clear change of direction now and no game playing. A Labour government can and will rise to meet the moment if we act now.
“I am calling for new leadership, so that we can rebuild trust and deliver the better
future that the British people voted for.”
Sally Jameson, a PPS in the Home Office, has also called for Starmer to resign.
Jameson called for the prime minister to “set out a clear timetable for his departure in September or shortly after. In addition the NEC [national executive committee] should ensure that all potential candidates have the opportunity to stand and any timetable, I hope, would reflect this.”
Joe Morris, a PPS in the Department of Health and Social Care, has also reportedly called for Starmer to step down.
Morris and Jameson have not stated that they have stepped down from their government roles.
Collectively, Rutland, Jameson, Khan and Morris are the first frontbenchers to call on Starmer to step down as prime minister, after a day in which the number of backbench MPs calling for change at the top has snowballed.
By some counts, as many as 60 MPs have now indicated their belief that Starmer should resign.
This is a breaking story. Further details will be published as they develop.
Despite the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) constantly spewing hatred about Universal Credit claimants stealing taxpayer money, disabled campaigners are reporting that some are being overpaid payments.
Disability News Service (DNS) reported that disabled researcher and campaigner Caroline Richardson was contacted by multiple claimants who’d been overpaid.
DWP absolutely useless, again
Campaigners identified that over payments were made to people receiving both contribution-based employment and support allowance (ESA) and Universal Credit. Basically, the DWP is recording ESA payments as lower than the amounts actually being paid out. Therefore, Universal Credit is increased to compensate for the reduction through the DWP’s ‘transitional protection programme.’
This means claimants are overpaid Universal Credit and, as with the Carers Allowance scandal, there are fears they’ll be asked to pay it back without warning.
These errors are also affecting council tax. One claimant was told to pay an extra £546 a year because the council thought her universal credit had increased due to the DWP’s woeful bookkeeping.
Richardson told DNS:
I am struggling to understand how this has gone so catastrophically wrong, and whether it has gone wrong for everybody. This is going to cause disabled people an enormous amount of worry. It is just such a mess.
Richardson checked her online Universal Credit journal before she received her benefits in her account. This meant she was able to contact DWP and try to stop her own £388 overpayment.
However, because the DWP is a clusterfuck, Richardson was issued with both a correct statement. She then received a notification acknowledging the overpayment and noting it would need to be repaid to DWP in instalments.
Richardson said:
It just seems like the whole DWP is functioning so badly, and they are blaming claimants for their mistakes. The more universal credit is rolled out, the more the errors in the software are going to be exposed.
DWP already under fire for blaiming claimants
In February, the Public Accounts Committee also pulled the DWP up for not taking accountability for their own issues and instead blaming claimants.
They found that between 2024 and 2025, claimants were overpaid by £1 billion due to the DWP’s own errors. This is up from £0.8 billion in 2023-24. However, this is cancelled out by the fact that claimants were underpaid by £1.2 billion for the same reason 2024-25. This is up from £1.1 billion in 2023-24.
The report said:
The DWP has carried out some work to tackle the root causes of fraud and error – but this has focused on those committed by claimants, rather than errors by officials.
DNS also spoke to disability activist Flick Williams, who has already repaid a £289 overpayment. However, she is still expected to pay £546 in extra annual council tax because her council thinks her benefits have increased too.
Williams said:
How many people would let their universal credit go into their account, not check it and just assume the money in their account was theirs to spend?
Another scandal brewing
This comes as yet another Carers’ Allowance inquiry could be on the cards. The department is still chasing unpaid carers for repayments after their case was discredited.
Debbie Abrahams, Chair of the Work and Pensions committee told Stephen Timms that:
The failure to offer carers redress with due care would lead the public to conclude that [it] is not serious in its public commitment to do so, which is extremely damaging to the existing issues of trust with the department.
As the Canary’s Alex Cocker reported at the time:
Spoiler alert: we have already concluded that the DWP is not serious about righting its injustices. Because, you know, its injustices could fill around 2,244 articles on a mid-sized indie news site.
Despite all this evidence, the DWP told John Pring that:
it would be wrong to describe the overpayments as a developing scandal, and insisted that it took overpayments very seriously, was aware of this issue, and was working to resolve the cases of those affected.
With the DWP fraud and error statistics out later this week it will be interesting to see just how much overpayment has increased since the latest Universal Credit forced migration.
But it’s becoming ever clearer that the DWP is a joke of an organisation that doesn’t care about claimants. It’s time the whole thing was abolished.
Featured image via the Canary
Keir Starmer is clinging on to power despite dozens of Labour MPs joined calls for him to quit as prime minister.
Nearly 60 backbenchers had called on him to quit by Monday evening after a steady stream of MPs joined the rebellion despite Starmer delivering a speech pledging to turn around the party’s fortunes.
In a further blow for the embattled PM, ministerial aides to health secretary Wes Streeting, home secretary Shabana Mahmood and environment secretary Emma Reynolds all quit their jobs calling on him to resign.
Starmer once again vowed not to “walk away” from No.10 and said he would prove the doubters wrong, despite Labour’s drubbing in last week’s elections at the hands of Reform UK and the Greens.
He said: “This is nothing less than a battle for the soul of our nation and I want to be crystal clear about how we will win it because we cannot win as a weaker version of Reform or the Greens.
“We can only win as a stronger version of Labour, a mainstream party of power, not protest.”
Starmer confirmed the government will nationalise British Steel and pledged to put the UK “at the heart of Europe” by agreeing closer ties with the EU.
But his speech was dismissed as “utterly inadequate” by one former minister, and was greeted by a fresh wave of demands from MPs for him to set out a timetable for when he will leave Downing Street.
They included Gower MP Tonia Antoniazzi, who said: “Keir Starmer is a man of great integrity who has led the Labour Party through difficult times.
“There will be those that disagree with me but I think it is genuinely time for him to step aside as PM in an orderly manner.”
Markus Campbell-Savours, the MP for Penrith and Solway, said:“I have listened carefully to the prime minister’s speech. Sir Keir Starmer is a decent, principled and kind man. But his leadership is not working, and it is with genuine regret that I say so.
“His position is now untenable. Colleagues should have the courage to say publicly what many have said privately for months.
“Loyalty matters. Loyalty to him, to the party and to each other. But today loyalty lies with our elected members across the country and with the 1,500 who lost their seats last week. It does not lie in maintaining a course that is not commanding confidence.
“What the party needs now is leadership with a credible vision for the country, a clear sense of direction, purpose and ambition. Those skills exist within our ranks, and I am confident we can find a leader who has them.”
Catherine West, the former Foreign Office minister who on Saturday threatened to challenge Starmer herself, instead wrote to all Labour MPs asking them to support her calls for a leadership contest by September.
Under Labour’s rules, 81 MPs would need to support a candidate to trigger a leadership election.
So far, no one has put their name forward, but the likes of Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner are thought to be weighing up their options.
Meanwhile, speculation is mounting that an MP will give up their seat in order to give Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham the chance to return to Westminster and mount his own bid to become PM.
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Labour-backing union Unite, told HuffPost UK that Starmer’s speech had not “cut the mustard” and said he should quit.
She said: “I don’t think it’s going to happen tomorrow, but there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance that Keir Starmer’s going to lead us into the next election. It would be the death knell if that happened.”
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