One of Labour’s leading metro mayors has given Keir Starmer a September deadline to turn around the party’s popularity or face being ousted.
Kim McGuinness, mayor for the North East, said the Prime Minister needed to improve Labour’s poll ratings by the party conference in late September.
She also said that fellow mayor Andy Burnham would be a ‘great prime minister’ but refused to say whether she backed his return to Westminster.
The North East mayor spoke out after devastating local election results in her area, which saw Reform and the Greens make huge gains at Labour’s expense.
Sir Keir vowed to stay in post and fight for working-class people in a do-or-die speech this morning.
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McGuiness told Metro: ‘The Prime Minister needs a chance, but he’s on borrowed time. We need to see this happen urgently.
‘He knows his leadership has come on the doorstep.
‘It’s going to be untenable for Keir to go into another party conference without having demonstrably turned things around in a way that the public can actually feel.’
Asked what would convince her Starmer had changed things, she said: ‘The story is told in the polls every single day.
‘We need to see improvement in public sentiment. That is the only metric for measuring our success.’
She continued: ‘If we aren’t seeing that improvement [by party conference] then I think the Prime Minister’s decision will be made for him by MPs.’
The Labour Party’s conference is due to take place between September 27 to September 30 2026.
That gives Sir Keir more than four months to improve the party’s polling position, which the local election results suggested sits at 15 per cent.
McGuiness added: ‘Voters are never wrong. They vote with their feet and their message is certainly very loud and clear.
‘In my region, it feels very much like this was a national issue as opposed to local issues.’
While more than 50 MPs are calling for Sir Keir to set out a timetable for stepping down, but a leadership contender has not emerged.
Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is considered his most dangerous rival but cannot stand until he gets a seat in Parliament.
Labour’s Starmer-friendly national executive committee blocked Burnham from becoming a candidate in the February Gorton and Denton by-election.
That decision has now been attacked by ex-deputy PM Angela Rayner, in a major boost for his chances of taking the top job.
McGuinness also heaped praise on her fellow mayor, saying: ‘Andy would be a great prime minister and a great leader. He’s been a fantastic mayor. He’s really led the way on devolution.’
However she stressed that he was not an MP, and would not be drawn on whether she supported his return to Parliament while there was not a live by-election or leadership election on the cards.
In the local elections in the north east, Labour went down to five councillors in Sunderland, two in Newcastle and just one in South Tyneside.
The metro mayor said that the current Labour government in Westminster had to take direct action ‘urgently’ to persuade voters to return to the party.
Among the things she wants to happen is ‘more devolution and faster’
She explained: ‘We need to see is some real tangible things that tackle the cost of living in a way that people can recognize.’
She cited her policies of capping bus and Metro fares in the region as central to helping locals with the cost of living.
Sir Keir warned in a speech this morning that replacing him as Prime Minister would plunge the country into chaos as he battled to save his job.
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He vowed: ‘I take responsibility for not walking away, not plunging our country into chaos, as the Tories did time and again. Chaos that did lasting damage to this country.’
As he pledged rapid change to improve the party’s position, he committed to closer relations with Brussels, saying he would put Britain ‘at the heart of Europe’.
The Prime Minister also announced that the government would take ‘full national ownership’ of struggling British Steel, which received raucous applause from party followers.
Sir Keir’s speech has now slowed the trickle of Labour backbenchers turning on him.
Moderate backbencher David Smith said immediately after the address that he wanted the Prime Minister to lay out a timetable for leaving office.
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