At the July 2024 general election, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party won a huge parliamentary majority of 174 seats, echoing Tony Blair’s New Labour triumph at the polls in 1997. Less than two years later, in June 2026, Starmer announced his decision to resign as PM within a few weeks. By this stage, his premiership had become untenable and he accepted that he had to stand down. This blog examines the key reasons why Starmer’s premiership collapsed so quickly.

1. A ‘Loveless Landslide’

It is worth noting that, from the outset, Starmer’s position as PM was not as strong as it appeared. Although Labour had secured 412 seats at the 2024 general election, there was no evident surge of voter enthusiasm for the party or Starmer. In reality, Starmer and Labour benefited from a ‘loveless landslide’, which was attained on just 33.7 percent of the votes cast and the second lowest turnout in modern times (59.9 per cent). Thus, Starmer’s premiership rested on relatively slender electoral foundations and was really the consequence of Conservative unpopularity rather than his own or Labour’s popularity. Indeed, on the eve of the 2024 general election, he had a personal net favourability rating of minus 18.

2. Unpopular policies and U-turns

The ‘loveless landslide’ might not have mattered if, once in office, Starmer’s government had appeared sure-footed but a series of unpopular policies and U-turns conveyed the impression that the PM’s administration lacked credibility, direction and competence, which was reflected in falling poll ratings. Starmer’s government, for example, made U-turns over its (1) unpopular restrictions to the winter fuel payment (which was removed from over 9 million pensioners in winter 2024) and (2) proposed cuts to disability benefit in its welfare bill in July 2025 (to quell a mounting backbench rebellion). It also reversed its previous position in the autumn 2025 budget by ending the two-child benefit cap. Other policies also damaged the PM’s and the government’s standing. The so-called ‘tractor tax’, for instance, which was announced in the 2024 budget, removed 100 percent relief on inheritance tax for agricultural and business property valued at £1 million or more, seriously alienating farming communities. The threshold was increased to £2.5 million in December 2025 in a largely unsuccessful bid to placate opponents.

3. The Mandelson affair

Starmer’s controversial decision to appoint Peter Mandelson (who had had to resign twice as a cabinet minister under Tony Blair) as ambassador to the United States in December 2024 soon raised serious questions about the PM’s judgement. When batches of the Epstein files were released in September 2025 and January 2026, details of Mandelson’s close relationship with the convicted sex offender were revealed, the most damaging of which appeared to indicate that Mandelson had used his position as Blair’s Business Secretary to provide Epstein with financially beneficial information and had received payments from the disgraced financier. Mandelson was sacked in September 2025 and later investigated by the police for alleged misconduct in public office. To make matters worse, it came to light that Mandelson had still been appointed ambassador after he had failed the vetting process conducted by the Foreign Office. The affair led to the departure of Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, and Olly Robbins, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office. Starmer survived but his reputation had been badly damaged by the episode.

4. Record local election losses

In hindsight, the results of the English local elections and the Scottish and Welsh parliamentary elections, held in May 2026, delivered the crucial body blow to Starmer’s ailing authority as PM. Widely seen as a referendum on his premiership, these contests inflicted a heavy defeat on Labour. Starmer’s party lost almost 1500 local councillors and relinquished control of 38 councils as Reform won 1451 seats and 14 councils and the Greens and the Lib Dems also made gains. In the Senedd elections, Labour lost 35 seats (reduced to a rump of 9) and Plaid Cymru and Reform became the largest parties with 43 and 34 seats respectively. The Scottish parliamentary elections saw Reform equal Labour’s diminished total of 17 seats and the SNP emerge as the largest party with 58. Once the results were known, a group of about 70 Labour MPs, concerned about their prospects in the next general election, began calling on the PM to resign and the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, blamed the Holyrood result on ‘national dissatisfaction’ with Starmer’s leadership.

5. Cabinet resignations

The ebbing of a PM’s authority is often revealed, and hastened, by cabinet and other ministerial resignations. Starmer’s case was no exception and his premiership was weakened by two resignations in particular. After Labour’s disastrous May 2026 local election results, Wes Streeting stepped down as Health Secretary. Known to harbour his own leadership ambitions, Streeting stated he had lost confidence in the PM because the government was drifting and lacked vision. The other damaging departure was that of Defence Secretary John Healey, who up to that point had been regarded as a Starmer ultra-loyalist. Healey’s shock resignation in June 2026 was prompted by what he saw as the PM’s inability and the Treasury’s unwillingness to commit the required funds to the long-delayed Defence Investment Plan at a time when security threats to the UK were increasing.

6. Unpopularity in the polls

Over the two years of his premiership, Starmer and his government suffered a drastic decline in popularity in large part because of the reasons outlined above. In June 2026, a YouGov poll indicated that only 18 percent of voters would back Labour at the next general election whereas 25 percent would support Reform. Similarly, Starmer’s personal popularity spiralled downwards over this period. By July 2025, the polling company Ipsos reported that net satisfaction with Starmer had dropped to minus 66 which represented ‘the lowest satisfaction rating recorded by Ipsos for any prime minister going back to 1977.’ In June 2026, the PM’s net satisfaction rating still stood at around minus 60, with 76 percent dissatisfied with his performance and only 16 percent satisfied. According to Ipsos, in comparison, Liz Truss never dropped below minus 51 during her short disastrous premiership.

7. An alternative PM

In the end, Starmer’s resignation was inextricably linked to the emergence of a credible challenger for the party leadership and the premiership – Andy Burnham, a former Labour cabinet minister and mayor of Greater Manchester. Burnham’s emphatic victory in Makerfield by-election in June 2026 piled further pressure on Starmer because the former mayor had defied national trends by increasing Labour’s share of the vote and defeating the Reform candidate by over 9,000 votes in an area where Farage’s party had made significant gains in the May local elections. The result gave substance to the claims made by Burnham’s allies in the Commons and the wider party that only he had the ability, drive and presence to secure a Labour victory over Reform at the next general election. With Burnham back in the Commons with sizeable support from Labour MPs and a leadership challenge now inevitable, Starmer finally capitulated on 22 June.

Ultimately, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Starmer, for all his talents, was not well suited to the demanding job of PM – and he was found out. Certainly, it is difficult to disagree with Professor John Curtice’s recent assessment: ‘He did not define what he believed in and what the Labour Party believed in. He does not have a narrative, a story on what his long-term objectives are, what he wants and (had) no sense of direction. Starmer is a very clever lawyer. What he seems to lack is political antennas and the presence of a leader.’