Is It Over For Keir Starmer? Andrew Marr Warns 'Weak' Prime Minister Could Resign Within Days

The mood around Downing Street this weekend has had the tight, airless quality of a room where everyone can hear the clock. Not the comforting tick of routine government, but the louder, accusatory thud of a leadership crisis—one that suddenly feels personal, and oddly intimate, for the Prime Minister himself.

Keir Starmer, a man who built his political brand on competence and caution, is now wrestling with a brutally simple question: if his judgement cannot be trusted, what is he actually for?

That is the subtext to the resignation of his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who quit after taking 'full responsibility' for advising Starmer to appoint Lord Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the United States.

And then there is the sting in the tail: Andrew Marr, never a politician's idea of a soft landing, went on LBC and said what plenty of MPs and aides tend to mutter only after the second drink. 'I think it's over for Keir Starmer,' Marr said, adding he 'would not be surprised to see him resign quite quickly now'—possibly 'in days.'​

Resignation Talk Turns From Murmur To Drumbeat

The immediate catalyst is McSweeney's departure, but the deeper problem is what it symbolises: a premiership that suddenly looks as though it is being hollowed out from the inside.

A chief of staff is not just another senior hire; in modern Downing Street, it is the job that turns the Prime Minister's instincts into an operating system. When that person walks, it is rarely because everything is fine.

McSweeney, credited in much of the commentary with having been central to Labour's 2024 election machine, acknowledged in his resignation letter that 'the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong' and that it had 'damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself.' That language is not the usual Whitehall euphemism; it is an obituary written in real time.​​

Starmer, for his part, praised McSweeney's service but did not address the Mandelson controversy in the same breath—a silence that has been noticed, and not kindly, by those who think the Prime Minister is trying to wait out a storm that is only gathering force.​

Resignation Pressure And The Mandelson Shadow

What makes this episode so corrosive is that it combines the worst of two political sins: a judgement failure and a lingering sense that voters are being asked to accept a story only half-told. Starmer has apologised to Epstein's victims for appointing Mandelson, and has said he was misled about the 'depth and darkness' of Mandelson's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

It had been publicly known that Mandelson knew Epstein, Starmer said, but he argued that officials did not grasp how serious the ties were.

Even if you accept that explanation, it raises a grim follow-up: how did a government that sells itself on seriousness end up in a vetting shambles involving one of the most toxic names in modern public life?

The administration has promised to release emails and other materials related to Mandelson's appointment, insisting they will show that Mandelson misled officials—but promises of future transparency do not always calm a present crisis.

Marr's broadside on LBC was notable not only for its ferocity—he called Starmer 'never remotely a good enough politician for the job'—but for how he framed the alternative.

He spoke openly about successor figures, suggesting Angela Rayner on the left and Wes Streeting on the right, the kind of blunt naming that usually happens only when a leadership contest is no longer theoretical.​​

For Starmer, Monday's meeting with Labour MPs looks less like a diary appointment than a test of whether his colleagues still see him as an asset—or a liability they can no longer carry.

McSweeney's exit may remove one lightning rod, but it also strips away a layer of protection. And in politics, once the protective layer is gone, the weather tends to get worse, not better.