Trump post seems to push Starmer to resign

LONDON — President Donald Trump appeared to scoop Downing Street on Sunday, announcing that Prime Minister Keir Starmer would resign before any public statement from Starmer himself.

“Keir Starmer will resign as Prime Minister of The United Kingdom,” proclaimed in a social media post, in which he also asserted that Starmer had “failed badly” on immigration and energy policy.

Then, Trump added: “I wish him well!”

Doubts about Starmer’s political future have swirled for weeks since his Labour Party suffered staggering losses in local elections in May, and prospects of a leadership challenge increased markedly on Friday after his most formidable rival, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, won a special election for an open seat in parliament.

Earlier on Sunday, British media had reported that Starmer was considering resigning. Still, Trump’s intervention represented an extraordinary foray into British domestic politics that left some veteran political observers stunned.

“There is literally no boundary this American president will not bulldoze through,” ITV’s Robert Peston wrote on X.

Peston also cited a cabinet minister who said that, despite Trump’s “scoop,” Starmer had “genuinely not made a decision to quit.”

Broadcaster Piers Morgan called it “the final humiliation.”

Downing Street told the Washington Post on Sunday evening that Starmer and Trump had not spoken over the weekend, raising questions about how the U.S. president came to make such a definitive prediction.

But it also didn’t mean Trump was wrong about Starmer’s plans. A senior Labour Party MP told the Post on Sunday evening that some Labour Party lawmakers were “being briefed that he will step down tomorrow and that he realizes his position is untenable.”

Speaking on the condition of anonymity because she wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly, she added that Starmer “no longer has the confidence” of his peers and that it was “only right that he now steps aside.”

However Trump reached his conclusion, the president’s ties with close European allies are increasingly strained. In recent days, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni accused Trump of lying after he claimed she had “begged” to have her photograph taken with him.

Relations between Starmer and Trump have been rocky for months.

Earlier this year, Trump branded Starmer “no Winston Churchill” during a dispute over Britain’s support for U.S. strikes on Iran, and the two leaders did not hold a bilateral meeting at the Group of Seven summit in France last week.

Starmer led the Labour Party to a landslide election victory just two years ago, but has faced increasing pressure from within his own party and growing calls for him to step aside since the local elections in which Labour and the Conservatives lost badly to Reform UK, the populist party led by Nigel Farage, one of the key architects of Brexit, the U.K.’s departure from the European Union.

Starmer on Friday vowed to fight any leadership challenge. He has not commented publicly on the matter since then, but briefings from senior lawmakers have suggested that he spent the weekend weighing his position.

Some commentators have suggested that the question is no longer if Starmer will leave, but how, and when.

The focus, they say, has shifted to choreography — whether Labour will stage a full leadership contest, with figures such as Wes Streeting, the former health secretary, also entering the race — or rally around a single successor.

British politics have been remarkably unstable since the 2016 Brexit referendum. If Starmer does announce his resignation, it would usher in Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade.

In the special election last week, Burnham won a decisive victory against a Reform UK opponent — a win that for many Labour lawmakers provided a test case of whether Burnham could help reverse Labour’s dire poll ratings of late.

Starmer, for his part, took to social media on Sunday only to comment on Father’s Day. “Being a dad is my great joy,” he wrote.