Labour MPs have put Starmer on notice after election battering. Can he turn it around?

Key developments are emerging from the global stage. Labour MPs have put Starmer on notice after election battering. Can he turn it around? 17 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on GoogleLaura Kuenssberg Sunday with Laura KuenssbergBBC"Over to you Keir," says a senior minister, not mincing his words.

Not everyone in the Labour Party wants there to be a challenge to the leadership, but even Sir Keir Starmer's most loyal ministers are pushing him to change - and fast. The prime minister is nothing if not a determined man. But can he show he can turn it round?

The Details

Millions of voters have told him they aren't impressed with what he's been doing in 22 months of government - and, as each hour passes, more of his colleagues are going public to say, neither are they. The powerful unions, who still pay the party's bills, have put the prime minister on notice, too. One of their leaders told me: "It's been a slow motion car crash – we need a concrete promise that things will change.

"Labour has been battered at these elections - and it being expected makes it no less painful. At count after count, seat after seat, the party lost to Nigel Farage, a man many in Labour deride as a vaudeville performer who harbours offensive views. In other parts of the country, Labour gave ground to another leader, Zack Polanski, who used to be an actual performer, a hypnotist, and a Lib Dem.

The success of Reform UK under Farage is extraordinary, and the progress of the Greens under Polanski is impressive too. But for some in Labour the grating thing about their dismal position now is it's different to losing to the Conservatives - that feeling is familiar, it's in their DNA. Getty ImagesSo how can Labour escape this new bewildering world of pain?

What Experts Say

Starmer's allies say the best thing to do is to be better, move faster, govern more effectively, and to show voters "the change" - the most overused, ill-defined couple of words in politics. What they really mean is they want to appear like a group of people who know what they're doing, and will make a meaningful improvement to your life. "We made unnecessary mistakes," Starmer said on Saturday, including not doing "enough to convince about the change that would impact them, how their lives would be better".

"The hope wasn't there enough in the first two years of this government," Starmer added. Downing Street is already trying to show he is cracking on – surprising Westminster by bringing in Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman as unpaid advisers on global finance and women and girls (although precisely how Harman's new job differs to the appointment she was given last year is not clear). Global finance and women and girls are, of course, important issues.

It's hard not to conclude those decisions are also to beef up the prime minister's political security - one of Brown's nicknames was the "clunking fist", after all. You might wonder if the best way of showing you're all about "change" is by bringing back faces from the past.

The development has drawn wide international attention, with diplomatic circles watching closely.