British Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to fight on and said his government was a "10-year project" despite calls to quit after his party's drubbing in local elections earlier this week.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves 10 Downing Street in London, Reuters/Toby Melville
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to fight on and said his government was a "10-year project" despite calls to quit after his party's drubbing in local elections earlier this week.
Starmer's Labour Party recorded the worst losses of a governing party in local elections in more than three decades, prompting a growing number of lawmakers to call for his removal.
A former minister in Starmer's government said she would seek the backing of other lawmakers to trigger a leadership contest unless his cabinet took steps to remove him by Monday.
Asked by the Observer newspaper in an interview published on Sunday whether he would lead his Labour Party into the next general election and serve a full second term, Starmer responded: "Yes, I will."
He added: I'm not going to walk away from the job I was elected to do in July 2024. I’m not going to plunge the country into chaos."
If Starmer is removed in the coming weeks, Britain would end up with its seventh prime minister in the past decade.
"A REAL KICKING"
So far, Starmer's cabinet has stayed loyal to the prime minister, despite Thursday's election losses.
Bridget Phillipson, the education minister, said she was confident the prime minister could turn things around, telling Sky News on Sunday that Starmer would set out a "fresh direction" for Britain in a speech on Monday.
"We got a real kicking from the voters, there’s no escaping that," she said of Labour's performance in the elections. "We have to reflect seriously on that."
Catherine West, who served as a junior foreign minister until Starmer sacked her last year, said she would listen to Starmer's speech on Monday before making a final decision about whether to seek the backing of the 81 members of parliament needed to trigger a leadership contest.
Asked on Sunday if she was likely to get the numbers, West told the BBC: "We will find out".
Starmer must call Britain's next national election by 2029 at the latest.
If he were still in office at the end of a second five-year term, he would be the third-longest-serving continuous leader in Britain in the last two centuries after Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.
By Andrew MacAskill
Russia held its most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years on Saturday due to the threat of attack from Ukraine, where victory for Moscow's forces has proven elusive more than four years into the deadliest European conflict since World War Two.
Shorn of influence in its former colonies in West Africa, France will seek to deepen ties elsewhere on the continent next week at an Africa summit in the Kenyan capital Nairobi, its first in an English-speaking country.
Keir Starmer's Labour Party suffered heavy early losses in local elections on Friday, showing the depth of voter anger with the British prime minister and increasing doubts about his future just two years after a landslide victory in a national vote.
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