He has lost all authority and respect’ – Starmer enters the end game

Everyone is depressed and nothing’s getting done, say Labour insiders as Sir Keir clings on in No 10 Daily Telegraph 24 April 2026 If you stood anywhere inside the Palace of Westminster and chucked a paper dart right now, you could be pretty sure you would hit someone discussing one of three questions: will Sir Keir Starmer go, when will he go, and who will replace him?

It is self-evident that if people are talking about the Prime Minister’s future, they are not discussing how this Government is going to make the country better, and the problem for Britain is that the same is true in No 10. Instead of finding solutions to the cost-of-living crisis, energy prices, illegal immigration or defence spending, the collective brainpower of Downing Street is preoccupied with fighting one crisis after another just to keep Sir Keir in a job. Forget having a five-year plan. Whitehall sources say there isn’t even a five-day plan right now, as each day’s main target is simply surviving until tomorrow. The resulting paralysis means nothing is getting done, Labour insiders admit. They talk of “inertia” in No 10, which is spreading to the Civil Service. Civil servants know a lame duck when they see one, and the danger for Sir Keir is that his instructions will be ignored by officials because they assume he is on his way out. ‘[Starmer] has now lost all respect’ “There is nothing happening at all,” according to one Labour Party insider. “They can’t make decisions, there is no organisation, they are just trying to get through the day. But Starmer won’t quit so this will just drag on.” A senior Labour figure said: “He has not just lost authority, he has now lost all respect and, once that’s gone, there’s no getting it back. People at Cabinet level are openly talking about timelines to replace him so of course they’re not taking instructions from him anymore. “One of his defining characteristics is that he doesn’t have a view on anything – whenever anyone goes to him for a decision he always says, ‘I will talk to the team’. “When that team included people like Sue Gray or Morgan McSweeney, there was a chance of getting an answer, but now it’s [acting chief of staff] Vidhya Alakeson and a team of junior people who are pretty hopeless, so nothing gets progressed and he just picks up his briefs and concentrates on foreign policy stuff.” There is fury among many Labour MPs at the Prime Minister’s decision to have the King’s Speech – setting out the legislative programme for the new parliamentary session – on May 13, six days after the local elections. They see it as a sign of desperation: knowing that Labour is likely to be battered on May 7, Sir Keir wants to give the media something else to talk about in the days after the poll. Government sources have privately admitted the timing will make it harder for anyone to launch a leadership challenge on the back of poor election results, because the new agenda will be locked in. As a result of having a King’s Speech earlier than necessary (the timing is very much up to the Prime Minister), several parliamentary bills will fail to become law before the end of the current session, meaning they will be junked. Around 14 are in the late stages of passing through Parliament, and up to half of those will fail to make the cut. One Labour backbencher said: “They have chosen the date for the King’s Speech based on what is good for Starmer, not what is good for the country. We have spent months working on bills that now won’t make it through Parliament, all to try to distract the media from the local election results when they come through.” It’s the sort of wheeze a lawyer would come up with, rather than a politician, because the only thing that could save Sir Keir now would be if he came up with a vision for the country that captured the public’s imagination. Even his supporters don’t expect that to happen, given that he failed to come up with a plan for the country during his distraction-free four years in opposition. Journalists had been tipped off about a likely Cabinet reshuffle after the local elections, but there is now doubt as to whether that will go ahead. “Reshuffles are tricky enough things for prime ministers who are strong and powerful, never mind ones that are useless,” said a Labour veteran. “If he tries to move people, they might just say, ‘No’. They don’t even feel sorry for him any more. They just think he is a guy with terrible judgment that will never get better, who just keeps sacking people to save his own job.” A senior government source described the mood as miserable and lacklustre, saying “everyone is depressed”. They pointed out that few cabinet ministers have been out campaigning for Labour before the local elections – which are only two weeks away – for fear of being personally associated with the expected disastrous results. The Government was reduced this week to announcing a legal ban on smartphones in schools – something it admitted was already happening anyway – to give the impression that decisions were being taken. Needless to say, the policy is an about-turn, as Labour had previously dismissed the idea as an unnecessary gimmick, and it has the advantage of being cost-free. The source admitted that “the centre needs to be bold” to get robust solutions to the country’s problems through Parliament, but “it can’t because it’s weak”. Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, decided to make a speech this week promising to “double down, not back down” on his race to net zero, the timing of which surprised many observers. “Miliband did that because he is frustrated by the lack of movement, by the Government not being bold enough,” said a Labour source. “He believes in something, he has a cause, and Starmer should bear in mind that he has courage – he took out his own brother when he beat him to the Labour leadership [in 2010]. He will be a key figure in deciding when Starmer’s time is up.” It might seem obvious that the only way to unblock the obstruction at the heart of the Government is to get rid of Sir Keir, but Labour MPs fear that might make things even worse. According to a member of the House of Lords: “You can’t move in Parliament for bumping into people who think he should go, but there aren’t that many who say they’re going to do anything about it. “People go round and round in circles, saying ‘Starmer has to go’, then ‘but what if Angela Rayner gets the job, so maybe it’s better to keep Starmer for now’, then there’s another crisis and we’re back to ‘Starmer has to go’, and so on.” Veterans of Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister see parallels between Sir Keir’s situation and Mr Johnson’s final days in office. Guto Harri, who was Mr Johnson’s last director of communications, says: “I remember in 2022 Boris wanted to sort out energy security by building eight or nine new nuclear power stations. “We had three or four months where we were having meetings on this with civil servants, and it never got beyond them looking into branding or very preliminary stuff. “Boris wanted them to give him the plans, give him a shovel, but they wouldn’t do anything because they didn’t expect him to be there much longer.” In the end, Mr Johnson made a speech promising money for just one new plant – Sizewell C – in September 2022, by which time he had already announced his resignation. Mr Harri said living from one crisis to another, as Mr Johnson was at the time, was “a massive distraction” for a government, “when you don’t know whether you will get through the day or the week”. He said: “It consumes energy, focus, morale, you’re running on empty and people start finger-pointing. Things that should be a matter of routine become tricky, like when Boris went to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations and got booed. “The dice just seems loaded against you. It undermines your stature on the world stage and in meetings and the Civil Service stops trying to get anything done.” Cabinet ministers are telling colleagues that “you can change the leader but it doesn’t change the numbers”, pointing out that the deficit and national debt will not suddenly go away just by switching out the person at the top. The problem for Sir Keir is that virtually no one in Labour thinks the party can win the next election with him in charge, so he will have to be replaced at some point. Even those who fear Ms Rayner getting the job concede that Labour will need to “roll the dice” eventually. Sir Keir undoubtedly brought that moment closer this week with his astonishing attack on the Civil Service, which he blames for not telling him Lord Mandelson had failed the vetting process before taking up the post of ambassador to the US, from which he was later sacked. By picking a fight with the Civil Service – and with Sir Olly Robbins, the former Foreign Office permanent secretary, in particular – Sir Keir has made it even more likely that civil servants will down tools and refuse to do what he wants them to. Some observers saw this as proof that Sir Keir was not thinking beyond the end of each day. He survived Monday by heaping the blame on Sir Olly, even though he knew that risked another crisis on Tuesday, when a riled Sir Olly gave his own version of events to MPs. One friend of Sir Keir’s said: “I would be very surprised if he resigned of his own volition. The only thing he believes in is himself, and that trumps everything. Nothing is ever his fault so he doesn’t see why he should take the blame for anything.” A Labour insider asked: “What is this Government for? No one knows. What is Keir going to look back on as his achievements as Prime Minister? I can’t think of any. At least Liz Truss had the excuse that she wasn’t around long enough to achieve anything, but he can’t say that.” Unless 81 Labour MPs – 20 per cent of the parliamentary party – can pluck up the courage to challenge Sir Keir publicly and trigger a leadership election, as Labour’s rules dictate, there is a very real possibility he will stay put for some time to come, in his personal game of whack-a-mole, while most of the Government twiddle their thumbs.