The scene was familiar, probably too familiar for the UK Labour Party’s besieged leader.
We saw a desperate-looking Keir Starmer, knuckles white as he gripped a lectern with a snappy slogan, pleading with sceptical Britons to stick with him as prime minister. There had been the handpicked local supporters, the hype gang, filling the room.
Afterwards, there had been the piercing questions from a hostile Westminster press pack, smelling blood. There was also the image of a defensive Starmer who seemed intent on deflecting, confecting, ducking and diving his way out of his inquisitors’ reach.
There were also the whispered, snatched conversations among Labour faithful as they filed out the door afterwards: “Did you think he got away with it? Did he do enough?”
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Yet that was all in early December 2025, fully six months ago.
It was one of Starmer’s many previous attempts to “reset” his government – that time after its budget landed badly. This Monday in the Coin Street neighbourhood centre near Waterloo in London, Starmer gave more or less the same speech all over again.
He delivered it at the same location, with the same kind of crowd, on the same stage. Different lectern slogan, same political triteness in its words. The same political backdrop – with the knives out for the UK prime minister.
We had, quite literally, all been here before.
If this was Starmer, back to the wall, trying to reboot his position, they might have at least had the imagination to pick a new venue.
Unfortunately for the prime minister, this new attempt at an old location to make a fresh start with a stale message fell flat. It was the same old Starmer, the same old story.
The difference now is that his job really is in danger. By evening, a torrent of his own MPs, unconvinced by his speech, had called on him to go. Starmer’s earnest but ultimately flaccid reset speech may not buy him much time.
Even if he gets through the perilous days ahead, he may need more than this to see out the summer. It feels as if the ground is shifting beneath his feet. It must be hard to stop himself from falling over.
His Monday gathering at Coin Street had been called hastily on Sunday night, following a weekend of recrimination as a backbench revolt brewed over Labour’s dire election results last week. The party had been hammered by Reform UK in the English local elections, swatted aside by Plaid Cymru in the Welsh Senedd elections and thoroughly destroyed by the Scottish National Party (SNP) in the Holyrood vote “up the road”.
Music played over the speakers as the crowd waited for Starmer to arrive just before 10am. It was Tom Odell’s song Black Friday. They had just heard the line: “Every time you touch me, I feel adrenaline.” But right at that moment, the music cut out abruptly, leaving Odell’s racy lyric hanging in the silent air.
The music had cut out because Starmer was about to walk through the door. The entire room chuckled at the lyric’s juxtaposition with the embattled Labour leader. He was here to defend his job against those who say he lacks inspiration. If only he made people feel adrenaline.
Starmer’s jacket and tie were off, his sleeves rolled up. We have seen this hard-at-work, no-nonsense symbolism before.
“Come on Keir!” shouted one of the Labour members, as if the prime minister was about to take a penalty in a cup final.
Starmer said he knew he “had his doubters” including some in his own party. “I will prove them wrong.”
He made promises to get closer to the European Union, but offered nothing new in substance. The only real curveball was a promise to ban “agitators” who might try to enter Britain this weekend for Tommy Robinson’s hard-right march in London.
Starmer insisted he was going nowhere. He also gave no succour to the allies of Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, that his main leadership rival would be allowed back to parliament in a byelection.
Afterwards, Catherine West, an MP who had threatened to spark a leadership contest against Starmer, said it was “too little, too late”.
West started formally seeking names of MPs to support a leadership contest by September.
By late afternoon, the number of MPs calling on Starmer to set a date for his exit was up to about 60. It wasn’t a list of household names. “Who the f**k is Fred Thomas?” asked one grizzled hack in the press gallery of a Plymouth MP.
One name stood out in all the chaos. Wes Streeting.
With Burnham marooned in Manchester, logic suggested that Streeting, the health secretary, may have to move on Starmer soon, if ever. One of Streeting’s MP outriders, Chris Curtis, went on Sky News, to join the chorus of calls for the prime minister to quit.
By early evening, the trickle of dissenters was turning into a flood.
The walls seemed to be still closing in on Starmer. Streeting, or any other contender, will have to be careful not to embarrass King Charles with a scene of chaos when he visits parliament on Wednesday.
But the sense is still that Starmer is now living on borrowed time, that this chaos can’t go on.
