British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has urged his Labour Party to unite against the rising populist party planning a “racist policy” of mass deportation, as dissatisfaction with his governance grows before local and regional elections in May.
At Labour’s annual conference in the city of Liverpool, Starmer called on party members to focus their anger on Reform UK, led by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, rather than his leadership.
“We have got the fight of our lives ahead of us, because we’ve got to take on Reform. We’ve got to beat them, and so now is not the time for introspection or navel gazing,” Starmer told BBC News. “We need to be in that fight united,” said the British prime minister, whose support has plummeted over policy U-turns and a series of missteps.
The comments come after reports of party members plotting Starmer’s replacement, including Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, who spoke to British media about potentially mounting a leadership challenge.
Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from Liverpool, said the challenge for Burnham – a popular figure within the party – is that one has to be an MP to be able to run for prime minister. “So it’s not quite code red for Starmer, but if you see seats becoming vacant and Burnham becoming an MP, that’s when the warning signs really start flashing.”
Starmer is also under pressure to increase spending and relax self-imposed fiscal rules that aim to balance day-to-day expenditure with tax revenue by 2029. While leftist party members criticise Starmer for failing to improve living standards as he promised at last year’s election, centrists fear the markets could punish the government if it raises spending.
Amid the criticism, Starmer turned his fire on Farage’s party, which centres its policy around restricting immigration, one of the voters’ main concerns.
“It is one thing to say we’re going to remove illegal migrants, people who have no right to be here. I’m up for that,” he said. “It is a completely different thing to say we are going to reach in to people who are lawfully here and start removing them… I do think that it’s a racist policy, I do think it is immoral.”
Pro-Palestine protests outside conference venue
Starmer has also faced criticism over his policy on Israel’s war on Gaza, which a United Nations inquiry panel has dubbed genocide. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in Liverpool on Saturday, the day before the start of the governing Labour Party’s annual conference.
The demonstrators, who were taking part in a march organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, expressed their desire for the British government to “end Israel’s genocide, stop starving Gaza, stop arming Israel.
“Brick by brick, wall by wall, Israeli apartheid has to fall,” some of them shouted as they marched through the streets of the northwest English city.
On Sunday, dozens of protesters sat in, waiting to be arrested by the British authorities because of the identical banners they were holding. “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action,” their signs read.
Al Jazeera’s Challands said he counted 72 demonstrators before the UK police started their detentions.
“Each of these protesters is waiting to be arrested. They know that because they’ve been watching it happen again and again and again,” he said.
Challands noted that the demonstrators were attempting to “make a mockery” of the British government’s recent designation of the direct action group Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organisation.
It proscribed the organisation earlier this year after some of its activists broke into a Royal Air Force (RAF) base and spray-painted two planes in protest at the British government’s actions.
Campaigners have been demanding that the UK government stop exporting F-35 jet parts to Israel, which has been accused of committing widespread abuse against Palestinians in Gaza.
“They want to cause acute embarrassment on the first day of the Labour Party conference by having mass arrests of peaceful protesters,” Challands said.
Also on Saturday, celebrities urged the British prime minister to say that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Appearing in a video released by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) before the Labour Party conference, comedian and actor Steve Coogan said: “Keir Starmer says it’s not genocide; it is genocide.”
Vote looming
The government does not have to call an election until 2029, but pressure will mount on Starmer if, as many predict, Labour does badly in local and regional elections in May.
Labour ended 14 years of Conservative rule with a landslide victory in July 2024, but Starmer has since struggled to retain support. According to a polling firm Ipsos, only 13 percent of voters are satisfied with his government, while 79 percent are dissatisfied – the worst score of any prime minister since the firm started collecting data in 1977.
At Sunday’s conference, Starmer said he was not simply ignoring criticism and would be judged by three things: Improvement in living standards, better public services, and whether people felt safe in their homes.
In the last few weeks, several exits from Starmer’s team added to the party’s sense of disarray.
Starmer has lost his deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, who quit over a tax error on a home purchase, and fired the UK ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, after revelations about his past friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
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