Keir Starmer is set to leave office after announcing his resignation on Monday, ending a premiership marked by collapsing public support, internal party discipline battles and deep anger over his handling of Gaza.

His departure follows months of pressure inside Labour and a bruising set of local election results in which the party suffered heavy losses while Reform UK made major gains. Labour lost 1,496 council seats and control of 38 councils in the 2026 local elections, while Reform UK gained 1,451 seats and emerged as the major beneficiary of public discontent.  

Starmer’s resignation confirmed the fragility of the mandate he won in 2024. Labour secured a landslide majority in Parliament, but did so with only around a third of the vote. The result was made possible by the collapse of the Conservative vote and the split on the right created by Reform. 

Labour’s vote share under Starmer was also lower than Jeremy Corbyn’s in both 2017 and 2019, even though Starmer won a far larger parliamentary majority. Critics argued at the time that Labour’s victory reflected the distortions of the first-past-the-post system as much as public enthusiasm for its leader.

Starmer entered Downing Street with the Conservatives at their weakest point in modern electoral history. Yet his government quickly alienated many voters who had expected Labour to reverse years of austerity and poverty. One early flashpoint came over the two-child benefit cap. Labour had criticised the policy in opposition, but when seven Labour MPs voted to scrap it in July 2024, Starmer suspended them from the parliamentary party. The cap affects around 1.6 million children, and campaigners say it has pushed hundreds of thousands deeper into poverty.  

For many on the Labour left, that episode confirmed a wider pattern. Starmer had presented himself as a unity candidate when he ran for the Labour leadership, but his leadership became associated with strict party discipline, abandoned pledges and the exclusion of left-wing figures. Jeremy Corbyn was blocked from standing again as a Labour candidate, while other left-wing MPs and candidates faced suspension, deselection or removal from the party machine.

Starmer’s critics also point to the scale of suspensions under his leadership, arguing that party discipline became a central tool for remaking Labour and marginalising the left. The use of the whip, the removal of candidates........

© Middle East Monitor