Labour could oust Starmer, he could elegantly step aside – but without a plan, it will all be for nothing

Keir Starmer, right, with health secretary Wes Streeting and chancellor Rachel Reeves, at the Sir Ludwig Guttmann Health and Wellbeing Centre, London, 3 July 2025. Photograph: Jack Hill/AP

Will he still be there to see in the next new year? Noise about Keir Starmer’s durability quietens with MPs being away from Westminster’s tearooms and murmuring corridors, but WhatsApps zing to and fro just as busily: should he stay or should he go?

Any party that has fallen so far, so fast would doubt its leader. At minus 54%, Starmer has been declared the “most unpopular PM ever”, a title also held at one time by each of his four predecessors. Given how little Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Starmer have in common, whoever comes next may join their “most despised” club in this time of anti-politician volatility.