By Sam Tabahriti
LONDON (Reuters) -British health minister Wes Streeting denied on Wednesday he was plotting to bring down Keir Starmer, after allies of the prime minister briefed newspapers that they feared an attempted coup could come later this month after the budget.
Starmer steered his Labour Party to one of the biggest election victories in British history in 2024 but just 16 months later it is languishing in the polls and poised to break one of its main election pledges to increase income taxes for the first time since the 1970s.
Several British media outlets on Wednesday cited allies of Starmer saying the prime minister would fight any challenge to his leadership, with Streeting and interior minister Shabana Mahmood named as possible candidates to replace him.
“That briefing is categorically untrue,” Streeting told BBC Radio.
Doing the early media round of talking to broadcasters, Streeting said the briefings of a challenge were self defeating because they gave the impression Starmer was fighting for his job when he was instead focused on fighting to improve Britain.
“I’m not going to demand the prime minister’s resignation,” he told Sky News. “I support the prime minister. I have done since he was elected leader of the Labour Party.”
Opinion polls suggest Starmer is one of the most unpopular prime ministers of all time, and his party has trailed Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party for months.
The centre-left Labour Party is now bracing for the budget on November 26, with finance minister Rachel Reeves suggesting she will have to increase taxes to fill a fiscal black hole, a year after she hiked levies by 40 billion pounds ($53.7 billion) in what she said was a one-off event.
($1 = 0.7451 pounds)
(Reporting by Sam Tabahriti, writing by Kate Holton; editing by Elizabeth Piper)
