British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says he isn’t going anywhere, but bookies claim his time is already up.
The prime minister, facing calls to resign from inside and outside his party over his appointment of now-disgraced ambassador Lord Peter Mandelson, told his closest allies on Monday evening that he will not step down.
“After having fought so hard for the chance to change our country, I’m not prepared to walk away from my mandate and my responsibility to my country, or to plunge us into chaos as others have done,” Starmer told a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, declaring, “I have won every fight I’ve ever been in.”
Prediction markets and betting platforms, prominent political bellwethers since they predicted U.S. President Donald Trump’s second victory, think this fight will be the one Starmer loses.
Kalshi, among the most popular of these services, puts his odds of leaving office before Sept. 1 of this year at a whopping 72% and his chances of going before Apr. 1 at 38%. Star Sports, another platform, has suspended betting on Starmer stepping down before the next general election, giving the prospect an 89% chance.
In the event of an opening at 10 Downing Street, there is already a list of Labour members many see as his replacement.
Wes Streeting
Health Secretary Wes Streeting is widely considered a front-runner to become the next prime minister.
While Streeting was on-message with the rest of the Cabinet in supporting Starmer after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called for the prime minister to resign, the secretary reportedly spoke with Sarwar in the days leading up to the call for Starmer to resign.
Streeting has long been accused of angling for the top job, with rumors he has vigorously denied.
Allies within Starmer’s camp briefed multiple news outlets in November 2025 that the prime minister expected a leadership challenge from Streeting in the coming months. Those allies claimed Starmer would fight off the attempt.
Starmer himself denounced the briefing campaign in the House of Commons, saying he “never authorized” anyone on his team to come out against Streeting.
The Health Secretary affirmed to media outlets in the immediate aftermath of the political dust-up that he had no such machinations.
“I’m not challenging the prime minister. I’m not standing against him,” Streeting told the BBC. “I cannot see the circumstances in which I would do that to our prime minister.”
He told Sky News: “Trying to kneecap one of your own team when they are out, not just making the case for the government, but actually delivering the change that we promised, I think that is also self-defeating and self-destructive behavior.”
Streeting is back in the press this week after deciding to willingly publish records of his communications with Mandelson, evidence that he was not close with the disgraced former ambassador. He also published an op-ed discussing the situation.
Critics have cast the texts and the op-ed as a thinly veiled political platform published under the guise of clearing up his association.
In the texts, Streeting tells Mandelson that he believes Starmer is “toast at the next election” and that the Labour government has “no growth strategy at all” on the economy. He also breaks from the Labour Party line by calling Israel a “rogue state” that is “committing war crimes before our eyes.”
In his op-ed reflecting on the texts, the secretary takes to task the Westminster establishment that allowed Mandelson’s selection, but also waxes philosophical about sexism, diversity, and inclusion.
“That is why diversity in leadership is so important and why we need to push back hard at those who think that equality, diversity, and inclusion are tick-boxes or fringe issues,” he wrote. “Diversity brings different perspectives to every place where power resides.”
Shabana Mahmood
Others believe that Labour would choose to go in a drastically different direction by tapping a member of parliament who proudly self-identifies as “Blue Labour” — Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.
Mahmood, a close ally of Starmer, is seen as a possible curveball that could re-engage left-wing voters who feel dissatisfied with Labour while also offering concessions to right-wing voters concerned about the immigration crisis.
As one of the first Muslim women elected to the British Parliament in 2010, it would be hoped that her faith background would salve pro-Palestine citizens outraged by the Labour government’s backing of Israeli military campaigns in recent years — the very conflicts that Streeting believed qualified the country as a “rogue state.”
Mahmood, the daughter of Pakistani immigrants, also advocates an overhaul of the British immigration system, claiming it is “creating division” across the country.
“I can see that it is polarizing communities across the country. I can see that it is dividing people and making them estranged from one another,” she told Sky News in November. “I don’t want to stand back and watch that happen in my country.”
Her actions on the issue as Home Secretary have included heightened efforts to deport illegal migrants and tightening requirements for citizenship, permanent settlement, and government benefits.
It has drawn ire from pro-immigration advocates in the party, with Labour peer Alf Dubs claiming the Home Secretary is “pulling up the drawbridge” behind her family.
Dubs also accused her of “kowtowing” to Reform U.K., the surging third-party led by Nigel Farage, which has found immense success by campaigning on mass deportations of foreign nationals.
Mahmood would be a logical choice given her position as head of one of the four Great Offices of State, but she has not expressed any desire to lead.
Angela Rayner
Angela Rayner, a Labour MP who previously served as deputy prime minister under Starmer, reportedly told a fellow member of parliament that she “will be ready” if her former boss goes down.
Rayner is a popular and charismatic Labour Party soldier who was forced to step down from her role at 10 Downing Street in September due to a breach of the ministerial code after underpaying taxes on one of her residential properties.
“I have long believed that people who serve the British public in government must always observe the highest standards, and while the independent adviser has concluded that I acted in good faith and with honesty and integrity throughout, I accept that I did not meet the highest standards in relation to my recent property purchase,” she wrote in her resignation letter.
In public opinion polls, Rayner places well ahead of Starmer and appears neck-and-neck with Reform UK’s Nigel Farage in a hypothetical election.
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She was accused on Monday of having accidentally activated a website for a future campaign to lead the Labour Party.
An unfinished website touting Rayner as a candidate to lead Labour briefly went live in January, according to The Guardian. The former deputy prime minister denied any involvement in the site or knowledge of who created it, calling it “fake.”
One ally told the Guardian that it was a “crass false-flag operation, obviously designed to undermine Angela.”
“These sort of by-the-playbook dirty tricks would be laughable if this wasn’t so serious,” they added.
Ed Miliband
Ed Miliband, currently Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, was the leader of the Labour Party from 2010 to 2015, succeeding former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Miliband’s tenure at the top culminated in defeat to then-Prime Minister David Cameron.
His tenure at the top can be remembered for an infamous photograph of him eating a bacon sandwich while campaigning in the 2014 local elections. The image became a meme, repeatedly used to portray Miliband as awkward.
He spent several years as a backbencher before returning to Starmer’s shadow Cabinet in 2020. He assumed his current position as the energy secretary when Labour won the 2024 election.
Now 56 and one of the more experienced members of the Labour government, he has played down any desire to return to the leadership position, although a report from GB News suggested he was plotting a bid and would take a leaf out of the playbook of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
