The question was clear enough. Wes Streeting has said publicly that Starmer should set a timetable to stand down after Makerfield. What does he say to that?
Keir Starmer’s answer, delivered at the G7 summit in France with the world leaders backdrop that has been his political shield this week: “I’m not going to get involved in this Westminster discussion.”
Beth Rigby pushed. “It’s not a Westminster discussion. You could be facing a leadership challenge in a week.” Starmer held the line. “My job is to concentrate on the job I was elected to do. Others may say you’d be far better off getting involved in the Westminster discussions. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in the job.”
It is a coherent position. It is also, on some level, the only position available to a Prime Minister who cannot both signal he is taking the challenge seriously and simultaneously project stability at a summit he has been using as evidence that Britain matters again.
The more revealing exchange came when Rigby put a specific fact to him.
In September 2025, Starmer told her he would lead Labour into the next general election. In November 2025 at the G20, he gave an emphatic yes to the same question. On Thursday at the G7 in France, with two cabinet ministers gone and over 100 MPs having lost confidence, Rigby asked him again. His answer: “That’s what I want to do. Do I recognise that that means we’ve got to turn things around? Yes, I do.”
Rigby noted it directly: “Your answer has changed.”
He didn’t dispute it. “Of course, when you lose elections as badly as we did in May, it hurts and it should hurt.” What was once a flat yes has become a conditional – a statement of preference that acknowledges, for the first time, that the preference might not be delivered.
That shift is small in language and significant in what it signals. A Prime Minister certain of his position doesn’t need to add the caveat about turning things around. The qualification does the work.
He was also asked whether he was, in essence, Liz Truss. The comparison was specific: Truss used the phrase “I’m a fighter, not a quitter” from the dispatch box in October 2022 and resigned within 24 hours. Starmer is now in a structurally similar position of insisting on his own continuation while the party moves around him.
He rejected the frame. “I have many people that I admire in life, but Liz Truss, I’m afraid, is not one of them.” He preferred to express himself in his own way – pointing to his track record of being told things were impossible and proving them wrong.
It is a reasonable answer. It is also the answer of a man very much aware of the parallel, which is why he addressed it.
On Andy Burnham, the warmth was notable and almost certainly deliberate.
“Andy is a great asset and yes, I want him to have a big role in government.” Asked whether he would call Burnham after the Makerfield result and invite him into cabinet: “I’m sure I’ll talk to Andy after the weekend. Of course, I will.” He recalled joining Burnham’s team when he entered politics in 2015. “He’s been a fantastic mayor in Manchester and if he comes back into Parliament, he’ll be a fantastic asset for our party.”
The generosity is genuine, but it is also a political calculation. Burnham has positioned himself as a potential challenger without explicitly saying so. Starmer calling him a great asset and promising him a big government role is an attempt to absorb the threat rather than confront it. Whether Burnham accepts that framing, or uses a Makerfield win to define his own terms, is the question Thursday will answer.
His proudest achievement, when Rigby asked at the end: lifting half a million children out of poverty through removing the two-child benefit cap. “That will be felt not just this year or next year, but for those children, it’ll be felt for the rest of their lives.”
His regret, when pressed for a specific one: he wouldn’t give a name. “There are plenty of things we didn’t get right and I regret the fact we didn’t get them right.” He declined to elaborate.
His wife Victoria is with him in France. He described her as his rock, the person with whom every decision has been made. “I can’t tell you how lucky I am to have a rock like Vic with me on my journey through life.”
Two days before Makerfield. The rock and the record may both need to hold.
You can watch the interview below:
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