LONDON — Take your best shot.
That was British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s defiant message Tuesday to a growing rebellion within his Labour Party.
More than 80 Labour lawmakers have called for Starmer to step down or say when he will depart, including several members of his inner government Cabinet.
But in a crunch meeting with ministers in No. 10 Downing St. early Tuesday, Starmer faced down the growing mutiny.
“The country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing and what we must do,” Starmer said, according to his office.
Starmer is polling as the most unpopular British leader on record, a series of errors and U-turns having compounded the sense among many voters that he does not have a plan to fix the country’s stagnant economy. That dismay reached a peak last week after Labour was humiliated in the country’s midterms-style elections, with many voters saying they were specifically punishing Starmer himself.
A growing number within his party fear inaction will lead to Labour’s being smashed by hard-right Reform UK, led by Trump ally Nigel Farage, at the next national election scheduled for 2029. Yet no clear candidate has emerged to challenge Starmer.
Under chilly blue skies Tuesday, Westminster was rife with speculation about who might try to move against their own leader.
Any member of Parliament would need the support of 20% of colleagues to spark a leadership contest.
“That has not been triggered,” Starmer told his Cabinet, effectively challenging any contenders to make their move.
“I take responsibility for these election results, and I take responsibility for delivering the change we promised,” Starmer said. But he echoed the remaining loyalists who say a leadership contest would be distracting when the country needs real solutions to its long-standing issues.
“The past 48 hours have been destabilizing for government, and that has a real economic cost for our country and for families,” he said.
That did little to stem the drip-feed of resignations from Starmer’s government, with four of his ministers handing in their notice and urging him to go as of 4:30 p.m. local time (11:30 a.m. ET).
Most notable was Starmer’s safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, a prominent politician and media personality in Britain.
“I’m not sure we are grasping this rare opportunity with the gusto that’s needed,” she wrote in an open letter, “and I cannot keep waiting around for a crisis to push for faster progress.”
However, many within Starmer’s party say a leadership contest would be distracting for the party and disastrous for the country.
“The prime minister is going to continue with his job, as he should,” Pensions Minister Pat McFadden told the waiting news media earlier Tuesday as he emerged from No. 10.
No one had openly challenged Starmer around the large oval table inside, he said.
Tom Baldwin, a former Labour communications director who wrote a biography of Starmer and knows him well, told NBC News “it’s looking very rocky at the moment.” He described Starmer as “a very stubborn and proud man” who “won’t want to be forced out like this.”
Starmer “feels a strong sense of duty that this is a really bad time” for a leadership contest, Baldwin said, citing the “war going on in the Middle East, which affects our security and our economy.”
Starmer will “dig his heels in quite hard, but whether that is enough stop him going is another matter,” Baldwin said.
It is a remarkable turnaround from the historic landslide of June 2024, when Starmer cast himself as a sensible technocrat to end years of exhausting chaos under the long-ruling Conservative Party.
The Tories, as they are known, had descended into a political psychodrama that had delivered four leaders in as many years.
Starmer was supposed to be the adult in the room, a competent former chief prosecutor who could not only end the personality politics of Britain’s governing class but also address its crumbling public services and sense of wider societal malaise.
On paper, Starmer’s position is still strong.
He does not have to call a general election until at least 2029, and his Labour Party still holds a commanding 406 of the 650 lawmakers in the Houses of Commons.
But his personal and party polls are dismal, crippled by what critics and analysts say has been a series of unforced errors.
The hope is that another leader — perhaps popular Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham or the left-wing former deputy leader Angela Rayner — would appeal to a jaded electorate.
Another front-runner is the health secretary, Wes Streeting, who hails from the right of the party and is yet to make his move.
“If Starmer goes, we will be on our seventh leader since Brexit,” said Baldwin, referring to Britain’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union. “There’s nothing to like about this. And so there is a case to be made for saying, ‘Calm down, let’s park this now and get on with governing.’”
Labour figures feel all the more pressure because it is a relative rarity for their party to be in power. Far more common in the postwar era is rule by the Conservatives, who have been ruthless at decapitating leaders they deem to have become liabilities.
Internal rules mean it is much harder for Starmer’s mutineers to trigger such a challenge. A full 20% of Labour MPs are needed to nominate a specific challenger to their leader, who is automatically included to fight the ensuing contest.
With the path ahead once again uncertain, markets seemed perturbed at the renewed tumult and the pound slumped against the dollar and the euro.
Days like these have become familiar in Britain: the plotting in tea rooms and corridors, the hurried shuttling between Westminster offices, the media rushing to witness the potential demise of another leader.
On Tuesday, there was the usual tourist selfie scrum under the statues of Winston Churchill and David Lloyd George, prime ministers who stewarded their country through successive wars and in doing so became giants of history and politics.
Yards away, Starmer was attempting a far more prosaic challenge: surviving the day.
