It is hard to overstate the scale of what is happening to Keir Starmer's government this week. The Health Secretary has resigned. Four junior ministers — including the Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips and the Victims Minister Alex Davies-Jones — have followed him out the door. Around eighty Labour MPs have publicly demanded the Prime Minister name a date for his departure. All eleven Labour-affiliated trade unions have signalled that he should be gone before the next election. Less than two years in, the Labour project is unravelling on live television.

A government that has lost the country

The trigger was the catastrophic local election results on 7 May. Reform UK won over 1,400 council seats. Welsh Labour was wiped out. Labour failed to recover ground in Scotland. The voters delivered a verdict — and Labour's own MPs have heard it loud and clear. This is no longer a question of "will Starmer survive". It is a question of how much damage he does on the way out.

Streeting's resignation is the most damaging blow. He is — was — the highest-profile reformer in the Cabinet, the man Labour pointed to whenever they were asked to prove they still believed in change. His departure tells you everything about the state of the ship. Senior figures are no longer willing to attach their reputations to a sinking Prime Minister.

Starmer's defiance is the problem, not the solution

And yet Sir Keir clings on. He told Cabinet this week that "the country expects us to get on with governing". The country expects nothing of the sort. The country expects him to recognise that he has lost their confidence and act accordingly. Refusing to read the room is not leadership — it is hostage-taking.

Every day Starmer remains is another day of paralysis. Markets are nervous. Investment decisions are being held back. The pound flickers on every leadership briefing. The civil service cannot get clear direction. And the public — the people whose lives depend on these decisions — are stuck watching a Westminster soap opera while their bills rise and their borders remain wide open.

Why this happened

This collapse did not come from nowhere. Labour ran a campaign built on the promise of competence and change. They delivered neither. Channel crossings have passed 200,000 since 2018. The tax burden is at a post-war high. NHS waiting lists are still not at target. Energy bills remain punishing. Small businesses are leaving the country. On every measure that matters to ordinary voters, this government has failed.

Voters were patient. Voters gave them time. Voters watched, and waited, and then in May they spoke. Reform UK now leads in the polls because we have offered the country what Labour refused to: a clear, honest plan to control immigration, cut taxes, restore policing, and stop the sabotage of British industry through net zero.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK would not be having this conversation because Reform UK would not have governed like this. We would have closed the asylum hotels. We would have ended the small boats trade by intercepting and returning. We would have unfrozen tax thresholds and cut the burden on workers. We would have scrapped net zero deadlines that are wrecking British industry. And we would have done what every successful government must — listened to the people who put us in office, not the activists who never voted for us.

Starmer will fall. The only question is whether Labour finds the courage to push him, or whether the country has to wait until a general election to remove a government that has visibly lost the will to govern. Either way, the verdict is already in.