Liverpool Labour MP Byrne calls for Starmer’s resignation

Liverpool West Derby MP Ian Byrne has become the latest to join a growing chorus of Labour politicians to demand the resignation of Keir Starmer over the party’s appalling performance in the 2026 local elections.

Labour collapsed, losing — so far — almost 60% of the seats it was defending: 1443 lost out of 2484. Three areas have yet to declare. It has also lost a number of mayoral positions. It was too much for Byrne, a Hillsborough survivor who held onto his selection for the 2024 general election only after defeating the party machine’s attempt to remove him.

He said:

Statement re: local election results

The election results across the country make this a truly existential moment for Labour. They cannot be dismissed as a bad night or a messaging problem. This is a political crisis.

Councillors in Knowsley and across the country who have lost their seats will rightly be furious with the Prime Minister and the national leadership, who must be held accountable for this electoral disaster.

Like them, I do not believe this will be fixed by another speech, another reset, or another reshuffle. The problem runs far deeper. Labour has lost touch with the working class people and communities it was created to represent.

Our natural voting base has turned away because we have failed to address the deep-seated decline they see in their public services and communities. This sense of anger is being intensified by the Government’s failure to tackle the cost of living crisis, rooted first in Tory austerity and sustained by an economic system that allows the wealth of this country to flow upwards, instead of being shared fairly across it.

Across towns and cities that should be Labour heartlands, our base has collapsed. We cannot brush this off as a bad night or a messaging issue. This is a political crisis for the entire Labour movement. How we respond now will determine whether the Labour Party remains a relevant political force for years, and decades, to come.

The Prime Minister has reached the point where the question is no longer whether he can recover, but whether staying on causes lasting damage to Labour’s ability to rebuild trust and stop the advance of the right.

The longer this drags on, the greater the damage to the party and the country. The Prime Minister must now set out a clear timetable for his departure, and restore our party’s democratic processes for selecting candidates, which have been shamefully eroded in recent years.

Only then can we use every asset this party still has to deliver the change we promised this country.

Byrne doesn’t go far enough, though. Labour is beyond saving. Keir Starmer is clinging on, but his response to the collapse has been to appoint disliked former PM Gordon Brown and a(nother) paedophile-linked adviser, Harriet Harman. Harman wrote an argument in the 1970s against prosecuting paedophiles who sexually exploit children on film.

There could hardly be a clearer demonstration of Starmer’s utter moral and political bankruptcy — and the rotting corpse he has made what was once the Labour party that Byrne loved.

Featured image via the NewWorld