Starmer says he's fighting Farage's reform, not his own party

Alex Wickham, Bloomberg News on Feb 10, 2026

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Keir Starmer brushed aside divisions within the U.K.’s governing Labour Party, saying his main battle is with Nigel Farage’s poll-leading Reform U.K.

A day after surviving a call from Labour’s Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, for him to quit, Britain’s prime minister sought to move on from the drama within his own party with a pledge that he would “never walk away” from the mandate to change the country that he was given just 19 months ago in a landslide election win.

“The fight coming up in politics, the real fight is not in the Labour Party,” Starmer told attendees at a community center in Hertfordshire, north of London. “It’s with the right wing politics that challenges that, the politics of Reform, the politics of divide, divide, divide, grievance, grievance, grievance that will tear our country apart. That is the fight that we are in, and I will be in that fight as long as I have breath in my body.”

Starmer is trying to draw a line under internal strife within Labour that saw his chief of staff and communications chief quit within 24 hours of each other, before the challenge from Sarwar — a friend of the premier’s. Trailing Reform in the polls, Labour is girding for a battle in a special election in Greater Manchester later this month, and for a wider electoral test in local votes across England, Scotland and Wales in May.

Earlier on Tuesday, Starmer thanked his Cabinet for keeping him in his job — and also praised Sarwar. A Downing Street operation had ensured every member of his top team voiced their support for Starmer in quick succession, after the Scottish politician’s intervention, including one of his main rivals, Health Secretary Wes Streeting.

A readout of the premier’s meeting with his political Cabinet — which excludes politically neutral civil servants — said Starmer told his team they had been “strong and united.”

There were also words of support for Sarwar — a friend of Starmer’s who when urging the prime minister to step down on Monday had cited the need to secure a Labour victory in May’s elections for the Scottish Parliament. “The Prime Minister said that the whole of the Labour Party wants Anas Sarwar to become First Minister and will fight for a Labour government in Scotland,” the readout said.

Those remarks represented a bid to calm tensions which had threatened to boil over with Sarwar’s intervention less than 24 hours earlier. However a raft of ministerial resignations feared by some Starmer allies did not materialize, and the Cabinet declarations of support — as well as one from former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, shored up the premier’s position.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband — a former party leader who’s also often touted as a potential challenger to Starmer —told broadcasters on Tuesday that Labour should get behind the premier.

“I think MPs as a whole looked over the precipice yesterday and thought we need to step back, we need to back our leader, we need to back the man who as elected only 18 months ago as prime minister,” Miliband told Sky News. “This has got to be a moment of change for the government,” he said, describing as “Herculean” its task of winning back public support and calling speculation he might stand against Starmer “baloney.”

U.K. borrowing costs dipped on Tuesday as the risk of a sudden leadership change faded. Longer-dated bonds gained the most, with the 30-year yield falling four basis points to 5.31% after a sharp rise on Monday when it appeared that Starmer might be forced to step down. The 10-year yield declined by a similar amount to 4.50%.