2026年5月12日 / 美国东部时间下午1:15 / 哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）新闻
伦敦电——英国首相基尔·斯塔默爵士周二坚称，他将“继续推进施政”，拒绝了其所在工党内部日益高涨的要求他下台的呼声。近期内阁多名成员辞职，使得这一呼声进一步升级。
在上周地方选举遭遇惨败后，斯塔默所在工党已有五分之一的英国议会成员呼吁他辞职，而四名内阁成员于周二辞职，以此逼迫他下台。
负责国家保障事务的大臣杰斯·菲利普斯、负责受害者事务以及打击针对妇女和女孩暴力行为的大臣亚历克斯·戴维斯-琼斯、卫生创新与安全事务议会副国务大臣祖比尔·艾哈迈德，以及权力下放、信仰与社区事务大臣米亚特塔·法恩布勒，均于周二宣布辞职。
“民众迫切呼吁变革，”法恩布勒在写给首相的辞职信中写道，“公众认为你无法引领这场变革——我也同样如此认为。”
CBS新闻的合作媒体BBC周二报道称，未来几日预计会有更多大臣辞职。
据《卫报》报道，周一已有六名低级部长助手辞职，多名斯塔默执政内阁的高级成员敦促他制定辞职计划，并启动党内领袖竞选。
但斯塔默周二上午在与内阁大臣的谈话中态度强硬。
“我为此次选举结果负责，也为兑现我们承诺的变革负责，”这位处境艰难的首相说道。
“国家期望我们继续推进施政，”斯塔默补充道，“这正是我正在做的，也是我们作为内阁必须做的事情。”
如果工党当选议员中有20%同意推举替代人选领导工党——以工党目前在议会下院的403个席位计算，这意味着需要81名议员支持——那么他们实际上可以迫使斯塔默卸任首相一职。
据BBC消息，至少已有80名议员公开呼吁斯塔默辞职，但他们并未支持同一位替代候选人。目前至少有三位潜在的斯塔默继任者人选被政界和政治评论员广泛讨论，想要达成统一共识难度极大。
斯塔默周二证实，工党针对党领袖的挑战程序尚未因党内分歧而启动。
若该程序启动，他将可以像美国初选一样，参与领袖竞选对抗挑战者。或者，如果斯塔默内阁的多数成员认定他并非带领工党前进的合适人选，他们可以集体辞职，使其职位难以为继。
局势缘何至此？
5月7日，英格兰地方议会席位以及威尔士和苏格兰半自治议会席位的选举中，斯塔默领导的工党遭遇惨败。该党不仅在英格兰失去了1000个议会席位，还丧失了对威尔士议会的牢牢掌控——该议会此前由工党执政长达27年。
当日的最大赢家是由特朗普的意识形态盟友奈杰尔·法拉奇领导的民粹主义反移民政党改革英国党。该党在英格兰赢得近1300个地方席位，在苏格兰斩获重大突破，并在威尔士位居第二。
此次选举被视为对现任政府的一次公投，与美国中期选举类似，对工党而言是一场彻底的灾难，对斯塔默个人亦是如此。这位前政府律师自2024年上台以来，支持率持续下滑。
斯塔默试图在周一的演讲中挽回主动权。他卷起衬衫袖子，誓言重建英国与欧洲的关系，并将濒临崩溃的英国钢铁行业国有化，同时警告称，如果工党未能从选举失利中恢复过来，英国可能会“走上一条极其黑暗的道路”。
“我知道有人对我心存疑虑，也知道我需要证明他们是错的，”他说，“我会做到的。”
但他所在政党的一些议员似乎并未被这番演讲打动。多名议员告诉BBC，这场演讲“让我为首相感到难过”，“完全不合格”，而最具杀伤力的评价或许是：“也就那样。”
另一名议员表示，这场演讲给人的感觉像是斯塔默“在提交规划申请”——这是对这位向来更像管理者而非魅力型领袖的政客的常见批评。
爱泼斯坦丑闻的阴影
尽管工党在议会占据绝对多数席位，斯塔默政府仍难以降低生活成本、提振萎靡不振的英国经济——乌克兰和伊朗的战争及其对全球能源价格的破坏性影响加剧了这一困境。
但针对斯塔默个人领导能力的尖锐批评真正升温是在4月，当时他因任命杰弗里·爱泼斯坦的一位旧友为英国驻美大使而广受批评。
反对党议员坚称，斯塔默要么是在隐瞒自己知晓此事的实情，要么就是能力不足，未能更早察觉彼得·曼德尔森与已故美国金融家、已定罪性犯罪者爱泼斯坦的密切关系。当时已有多名反对党议员呼吁他辞职。
问题“远比首相本人深刻”
即便在当下，仍有工党议员认为，罢免斯塔默或许无法解决工党面临的根本性问题。
据BBC报道，截至周二，已有超过100名工党议员签署信件支持斯塔默留任。
上周被赶下台的巴恩斯利市议会工党领袖斯蒂芬·霍顿——该党在此次选举中失去了数百个地方公职，民粹主义反移民的改革英国党成员取而代之——表示，问题“远比首相本人深刻”。
霍顿虽然失去了议会领导职务，但保住了自己的议员席位。他在谈及工党在地方选举中的惨败时表示，这场挫败“在全国范围内酝酿了30年，涉及后工业社区、沿海社区，这些地区被抛在了后面”。
“你可以天天换首相，”他辩称，“但如果不改变政策，一切都不会有改观。”
“这不仅仅关乎本届政府，历届政府都忽视了这个问题，但我会对基尔·斯塔默说，他现在必须解决这个问题，因为如果他不这么做，很快还会出现更多类似的失利。”
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer rejects mounting calls to resign, even from his own party
May 12, 2026 / 1:15 PM EDT / CBS News
London– British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer insisted Tuesday that he will “get on with governing,” rejecting growing calls from within his own party for him to step aside, which have been intensified by multiple resignations from his cabinet.
In the wake of disastrous results in local elections last week, a fifth of all members of the U.K. Parliament from Starmer’s own Labour Party have now called on him to step down, and four members of his cabinet resigned Tuesday in an effort to force him to quit.
Jess Phillips, the national minister for safeguarding; Alex Davies-Jones, minister for victims and tackling violence against women and girls; Zubir Ahmed, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health Innovation and Safety; and Miatta Fahnbulleh, minister for devolution, faith and communities, all announced their resignations on Tuesday.
“People are crying out” for change, Fahnbulleh wrote in her resignation letter to the prime minister. “The public does not believe that you can lead this change – and nor do I.”
CBS News’ partner network BBC reported Tuesday that more ministerial resignations are expected in the coming days.
On Monday, six lower-ranking ministerial aides quit, and several senior members of Starmer’s governing cabinet urged him to set out a plan for his resignation and to hold a party leadership contest, according to The Guardian newspaper.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets construction apprentices during a visit to London South Bank Technical College on May 12, 2026 in London, England. Toby Melville – WPA Pool/Getty Images
But speaking Tuesday morning with his cabinet ministers, Starmer was defiant.
“I take responsibility for these election results and I take responsibility for delivering the change we promised,” said the embattled prime minister.
“The country expects us to get on with governing,” Starmer added. “That is what I am doing and what we must do as a cabinet.”
If 20% of all the Labour Party’s elected members of parliament can agree on an alternative figure to head the party — which, with Labour’s current 403 seats in the House of Commons, would mean 81 MPs — they can effectively force him out of the role, and the country’s top job with it.
At least 80 MPs have publicly called for Starmer’s resignation, according to the BBC, but they have not all backed the same alternative candidate. And it may be a very high bar to clear, with at least three names of potential Starmer replacements being bandied about by politicians and political pundits.
Starmer confirmed Tuesday that the Labour Party’s process for challenging a leader had not been triggered by unified dissent.
If that were to happen, he would be able to stand against any challengers in a leadership contest, in a process similar to U.S. primaries. Alternatively, if a majority of Starmer’s cabinet decide he’s not the right man to lead the party forward, they could resign en masse and make his position untenable.
How did it come to this?
In a May 7 round of elections for local council seats in England and seats in the semi-autonomous legislatures of Wales and Scotland, Starmer’s Labour Party lost big. It not only hemorrhaged 1,000 council seats in England, but also lost its firm grip on the Welsh legislature, which it had controlled for 27 years.
The big winner on the day was populist, anti-immigration party Reform UK, led by President Trump’s ideological ally Nigel Farage. Reform won nearly 1,300 local seats in England, made huge gains in Scotland and came second in Wales.
The elections were seen as a referendum on the current government, not unlike the U.S. midterms, and they were an unmitigated disaster for Labour — and personally for Starmer, a former government lawyer whose popularity has spiraled downward since he took power in 2024.
Starmer tried to claw back the initiative in a speech on Monday. With his shirt sleeves rolled up, he vowed to rebuild Britain’s relationship with Europe and nationalize the flailing U.K. steel industry — and he warned the U.K. could “go down a very dark path” if Labour failed to recover from its election losses.
“I know I have my doubters and I know I need to prove them wrong,” he said. “And I will do so.”
But some lawmakers from his own party seemed unimpressed by the effort, with various parliamentarians telling the BBC that the speech, “made me feel sorry for the PM,” that it “really didn’t cut the mustard,” and, perhaps most damningly: “Meh.”
Another MP said it came across like Starmer “delivering a planning application” — a familiar critique of a politician who has always come across as more managerial than charismatic.
The shadow of the Epstein scandal
Starmer’s government, despite a massive Labour majority in parliament, has struggled to lower the cost of living and kick start a floundering British economy — hampered albeit by the wars in Ukraine and Iran and their devastating impact on global energy prices.
But the pointed criticism of him as an individual leader really started gaining steam in April, when Starmer was widely criticized over his decision to appoint a former friend of Jeffrey Epstein as the U.K.’s ambassador in Washington.
Opposition politicians insisted that Starmer was either lying about what he knew, or guilty of ineptitude for not knowing sooner of Peter Mandelson’s close ties with the late American financier and convicted sex offender. Several opposition lawmakers started calling for him to resign then.
Issues “deeper than the prime minister”
Even now, there are Labour politicians who feel that sacking Starmer may do little to address the underlying problems the party is facing.
According to the BBC, more than 100 Labour MPs had signed a letter by Tuesday backing Starmer to remain in his position.
Stephen Houghton, who last week was booted from his position as Labour leader of the Barnsley city council in the north of England — one of hundreds of local officials who lost posts to members of the surging, populist, anti-immigration Reform UK party — said the problem “goes deeper than the prime minister.”
Speaking of the Labour rout in the local elections, Houghton, who lost the council leadership but managed to cling onto his own seat, said the blow had “been coming for 30 years around the country, in post-industrial communities, coastal communities, that have been left behind.”
“You can change prime ministers all day long,” he argued. “If you don’t change policy, it’s not going to charge.”
“This is not just about this government, previous governments have ignored the problem, too, but I will be saying to Keir Starmer that he needs to deal with this now, because if he doesn’t, there will be even more losses like this coming soon.”