Quit or Labour Will Die, MPs and Unions Tell Starmer

PM told to go after disastrous election results

Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets Labour Party members at Kingsdown Methodist Church Hall in Ealing, west London, May 8, 2026

Andrew Murray

First Minister and SNP leader John Swinney with party supporters, at the election count for the 2026 Holyrood elections, at Dewars Centre in Perth, May 8, 2026

QUIT now or Labour will die, Sir Keir Starmer was told by his own MPs today as disastrous local election results rolled in from across Britain.

Leading figures on the left called for swift change in Downing Street as Labour lost votes in all directions after two years of failed government with hundreds of council seats falling to Reform, the Greens and even the Tories.

Labour was on course to lose around 1,300 seats and control of dozens of councils, as well as being crushed in the Welsh Senedd and Scottish parliament elections. Vote-counting continues tomorrow in many areas.

Former party chair Ian Lavery said that the Prime Minister would “kill Labour” and should be replaced or “the party could cease to be in the immediate future. We cannot have stability when we’re at 16 per cent in the polls and witnessing annihilation.”

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham had the same message: “The writing is on the wall for this Labour government and it could be the beginning of the end for the party itself.

“The working class have been abandoned and have delivered their verdict. It is change or die. Now or never.”

Leading left MP Jon Trickett said Sir Keir “needs to go.

“The pride of one individual cannot be more important than the future of so many communities and councillors up and down this country,” he added.

Suspended Labour MP Diane Abbott said: “Keir Starmer is very unpopular. But it is the policies that drive that unpopularity. Simply changing the leader without changing the policies will not avert disaster in 2029.”

Poplar and Limehouse MP Apsana Begum said: “To avert the ultimate disaster of a Reform government, there needs to be a superspeed change, in both leadership and policy.”

Generally loyalist Knowsley MP Anneliese Midgley said: “Unless we see significant change very quickly it is clear that he cannot lead us into another election.”

However, Sir Keir stuck his fingers firmly in his ears and pledged to carry on as Prime Minister to the next general election, and the cabinet appeared politically paralysed.

“There’s a five-year term I was elected to do. I intend to see that through,” Sir Keir said, pledging major policy announcements imminently.

This announcement cheered the international money markets and nobody else, as voters evicted Labour from town halls it had run for decades.

The biggest winner was the hard-right Reform UK, which had gained nearly 900 seats by early evening. Leader-owner Nigel Farage said the results showed his party could win in Tory and Labour areas alike and was on course for government.

“What has happened is a truly historic shift in British politics,” he said.

However, polling expert Peter Kellner said that Reform had underperformed as against last year and that its support had “peaked.”

With around half results declared, Labour had lost 672 seats and the Tories 423, with the Greens gaining 175.

To avert the Farage menace, trade union leaders and Labour MPs were exploring ways to prise Sir Keir out of office, with Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham favoured to take over — a process that would take months at least since he is not presently an MP and thus unavailable.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and a number of MPs on the party’s “soft left” are pushing for the Prime Minister to set a timetable for departing.  

One such told the New Statesman: “Rejected by the public. Increasingly rejected by his own party. If Keir truly listens to these results he will set out a date for his departure. If he doesn’t, he’ll go down in history as the man whose hubris killed the Labour Party.”

Another warned that “the party has been dominated by a small clique who have brought us to the edge of extinction.”

Unison general secretary Andrea Egan pledged resistance to attacks on public service workers by Reform-led authorities and added: “Labour faces oblivion because it is not delivering for the vast majority of people.

“What must change is not just the leader but the entire approach: only a Labour government which always puts the interests of workers before the wealthy can succeed.”

Transport union TSSA general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust said that “TSSA will now seek to work with other unions to assert our political influence at all levels of the Labour Party to try to deliver” change.

“Labour urgently needs a leadership election to allow members to pick a candidate who is much more responsive to the needs of working people and who can stop the very real danger of a far-right government coming to power,” she said.

Daniel Kebede, leader of the teachers’ union NEU, warned that “a far-right party, pledging mass detention, deportation, and hyper-austerity in public services, is on course to take the keys to No.10 — with a vote share ahead of every other party.

And Fire Brigades Union general secretary Steve Wright said there was “no credible path” for a government led by Sir Keir to recover and “he should resign.”

Suspended Labour MP Karl Turner said that “Keir Starmer is more toxic on the doorstep in East Hull than Jeremy Corbyn ever was.”

Green Party leader Zack Polanski, celebrating a range of advances for his party, summed up: “My message to Keir Starmer is that he needs to go. I think that’s the country’s message.”

And Socialist Campaign Group secretary Richard Burgon said: “It is clear that Keir has fought his last election as Labour leader and, deep down, he will know it. The party should now work towards a timetable for an orderly transition to a new leader by the end of this year.”