42m agoTue 12 May 2026 at 3:34am
We will end our live coverage here
Thank you for joining us. As it is very early in the morning in the UK, we will pause our coverage here.
For the latest news and updates visit the ABC News website.
59m agoTue 12 May 2026 at 3:17am
Analysis: How Nigel Farage moved from political fringe to UK PM contender
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has a lot to celebrate with the right-wing populist party having secured a seismic electoral breakthrough at Thursday’s local elections.
Scores of town halls have turned Reform turquoise as millions of voters deserted the two traditional parties of Labour and the Conservatives to try something new.
You can read more here from my colleague Rachel Wearmouth:
1h agoTue 12 May 2026 at 2:56am
‘Brexit could come back as a big issue’: UK journalist
On today’s episode of the Global Roaming podcast, UK journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy says Brexit could become a major issue again.
“Brexit could come back as a big issue because Keir Starmer and other senior figures in the Labour Party are saying the future of this country is going to be closer alignment with Europe. We’ve got to get closer to Europe in order to improve our chances of economic growth,” he told RN’s Global Roaming.
“A lot of people in the Labour Party are very keen on that because they they feel that is an easy way to get some economic growth. But a lot of people are very afraid of it because it reopens those Brexit divisions and they say it plays into [Reform UK leader] Nigel Farage’s hands.
You can listen to the full episode here:
2h agoTue 12 May 2026 at 2:11am
‘Weird to see unstable government’: Keir Starmer’s biographer
Keir Starmer’s biographer and former Labour adviser Tom Baldwin says “it is quite weird” that the party is unstable.
“It’s got this big majority, it’s three years to go before a general election and yet you’ve got this sense of panic among Labour MPs, partly because there’s so many of them, often with very small majorities, that are losing votes on both ranks and don’t know where to go,” he says.
Baldwin says it is strange that the party is trying to move towards new leadership given the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
2h agoTue 12 May 2026 at 1:48am
Keir Starmer’s biographer says the PM is in ‘deep trouble’
Keir Starmer’s biographer and former Labour Party adviser Tom Baldwin says the UK PM is in very “deep trouble”.
“There’s a very strong chance we will be on our seventh prime minister since the Brexit vote 10 years ago. We’re beginning to look like an unserious country,” he told RN Breakfast.
“We’re in an incredibly unstable period of politics. This sort of chaos that has been going for 10 years or more in our parties seems to have developed its own momentum, turning out more and more failing, unstable governments.”
3h agoTue 12 May 2026 at 1:04am
‘Very dark day for Labour Party’: Guardian political correspondent
The Guardian’s political correspondent Aletha Adu told RN members of the UK PM’s team have not made clear how they want his resignation to play out.
“They haven’t told him exactly when he should think about going or how he should manage his exit,” Adu said.
“But … this is looking like a very dark day for the Labour Party.”
She says the cabinet ministers that have called for his resignation are Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband andDefence Secretary John Healey.
“We not only have backbenches and ministerial aides saying enough is enough, but [also] members of Keir Starmer’s top team.”
You can listen to the full interview here:
3h agoTue 12 May 2026 at 12:30am
What role did local elections play?
They might be local elections, but the results of thousands of votes cast last Thursday in the UK had major ramifications for national government.
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party lost hundreds of seats in the local government election in England and has admitted defeat in Wales, which was previously Labour heartland.
It showed that less than two years after steering the Labour Party to a landslide general election victory, Sir Keir’s popularity plummeted in many parts of the United Kingdom.
“It was a terrible night for the Labour Party, and indeed, the Conservative Party as well in the UK in the local elections late last week,” ANU public policy professor Nick Rowley told ABC News Channel.
The Labour party was down about 20 per cent of the vote, while Nigel Farage’s Reform party up about 27 per cent of the vote.
The results showed how far the British political system had changed since as recently as 2017, when the two traditionally dominant parties — Labour and the Conservatives — gained a combined 82 per cent of the vote in a general election.
While voting is not compulsory in the UK and only 40 per cent of those who could vote in the local elections did so, the results were enough for Labor MPs to call for a transition toward a new prime ministership.
“For any political party in a liberal democracy to decide that the leader for that party who is the prime minister.. for a party to say this person who received 174 seat majority is not up to the mark and we’re going to replace him is a very very dangerous place for a political party to be in,” Rowley said.
4h agoTue 12 May 2026 at 12:12am
Situation is ‘pretty fraught, tense and hard to predict’: ANU expert
(ABC News)
Nick Rowley, a former member of the Downing Street Policy Directorate under prime minister Tony Blair and now an associate professor at ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy, has told News Channel trust in Keir Starmer as a leader has gone down and his future as the country’s leader is “hard to predict”.
“There’s this growing sense … we have a technocrat, we have someone who said that they were both decent and rigorous. This is a man who used to be the Director of Public Prosecutions in UK — certainly someone who you would want to trust with the detail,” he said.
“And yet there’s a growing sense within the party and indeed within the country, ‘What is the point of Keir Starmer?’ Because he doesn’t seem to be offering that, because of a number of decisions that have been perceived as bad decisions by the public and by the party, particularly his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as the ambassador to the United States.”
He said there was doubt that Sir Keir had the “charisma or ability to actually take the hard decisions as prime minister”.
“It’s pretty tense … certainly, anybody observing what is going on in the UK at the centre of power would say that Keir Starmer is in a really, really difficult position and may not be prime minister for very much longer.”
4h agoMon 11 May 2026 at 11:29pm
Europe correspondent says polling for UK PM has been terrible
The ABC’s Europe correspondent Elias Clure says the British prime minister has had a turbulent time since he took office less than two years ago.
“Ever since then there’s been internal party quarrels and then there’s, of course, the policy backflips, the scandal around Peter Mandelson, the UK’s ambassadorial appointment to the US who had ties to [convicted sex offender] Jeffrey Epstein,” he told News Channel.
He says the polling for Labour is terrible and the polling for Sir Keir Starmer is even worse.
“As we’re seeing now, many MPs want change, and that means a new prime minister,” Clure says.
He says Starmer is resisting the calls for him step down.
“So far he said that he will not stand down. He was elected to do a job and he wants to finish it,” Clure told News Channel.
5h agoMon 11 May 2026 at 11:07pm
‘Doubters are in two different camps’: BBC political correspondent
Iain Watson told News Breakfast the UK prime minister has told his party that he can beat the people who are doubting him.
“The trouble is those doubters are at least in two different camps,” the BBC journalist told News Breakfast.
“There are those on the centre-left of the Labour Party. They would be like Andy Burnham, a former cabinet minister who is now the mayor of Greater Manchester. They want him to succeed Keir Starmer, but he’s not an MP under the British Labour Party’s rules — he’d have to be to compete.
“They want Keir Starmer to set a long timetable — later than this year — for him to stand down to give Burnham a chance to return to parliament.
“Then there are those of the right of the party who want a rapid timetable.
“They still want him to go, they just want him to go more quickly because then they won’t be facing a left-wing challenger to the post.”
6h agoMon 11 May 2026 at 9:42pm
Welcome to our blog
Good morning and welcome to our live blog.
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is fighting to stay in his position after more than 70 UK Labour MPs publicly called for his resignation.
At least four ministerial aides have also stepped down.
Follow our live blog as we bring you the latest developments.