At least 70 Labour MPs demand Starmer resign – media
Published 11 May, 2026 21:01 | Updated 11 May, 2026 21:08
At least 70 Labour MPs are demanding that Prime Minister Keir Starmer resign, Sky News reported on Monday. This comes after the party came out as the biggest loser in last week’s local elections, relinquishing more than 1,300 council seats across the country.
In addition to dozens of lawmakers calling for Starmer to go, at least three junior members of his government have so far resigned from their positions, Sky News reported.
Under Labour rules, a formal leadership challenge would require backing by at least 81 party MPs, a fifth of the party’s total roster in the House of Commons. Former foreign secretary and Labour MP Catherine West announced that she’s gathering support to kickstart the process and elect a new leader by September.
“The results last Thursday show that the PM has failed to inspire hope,” she wrote on X. “What is best for the party and country now is for an orderly transition.”
In a speech earlier on Monday, Starmer admitted that there was “no sugarcoating” the scale of the defeat suffered by Labour but vowed to stay in office and claw back support. He promised to rebuild the UK’s relationship with the EU and to make Britain “fairer.”
Starmer has sunk in the approval polls since his party’s landslide victory in the 2024 general election. The decline followed deeply unpopular austerity measures, the resurfacing of the historical Pakistani rape gang scandal, and government response to the 2024 anti-immigration protests and riots – which sparked allegations of “two-tier” justice after hundreds of British citizens were arrested for social media posts.
The Labour government has also lost left-wing voters by designating the pro-Palestinian protest group ‘Palestine Action’ a terrorist organization.
Half of Britons want Starmer to step down, while only 29% want him to remain in office, according to a YouGov poll published on Monday that surveyed 4,904 UK adults.
Euroskeptic, anti-immigrant Reform UK has emerged as the biggest winner in the local elections, taking more than 1,200 local council seats across the country.
“Betrayed voters have left Labour for good,” party leader Nigel Farage said on X on Monday.
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Denmark’s pro-Ukraine PM is on the way out – who will replace her?
Published 11 May, 2026 21:33
Denmark’s government has collapsed after a record poor election showing for Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. King Frederik X has now asked Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen to form a right-wing government, but little will change: every major Danish party is preparing for war with Russia.
In a statement on Friday night, Denmark’s monarch announced that he had tasked Poulsen with forming a government “that does not involve the participation” of Frederiksen’s center-left Social Democrats or Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen’s Moderates. The announcement came after Frederiksen tried and failed to build a government after winning a plurality – but not a majority – in general elections in March.
Frederiksen’s party won just under 22% of the vote in March, the worst result for the Social Democrats since 1903.
The election was dominated by two issues: the rising cost of living, and immigration. Poulsen’s center-right Venstre party, Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, and Rasmussen’s Moderates are all in favor of restricting inward migration, but the right-wing Danish People’s Party (DF - 9.1%) wants citizenships revoked, migrants deported, and “measures that will lead to Muslim net emigration from Denmark.”
Two issues that went undiscussed in the runup to the vote were Denmark’s support for Ukraine, and its historic rearmament program. Unlike in recent elections in Hungary and Bulgaria, where the frontrunners had dramatically different views on relations with Kiev and Moscow, blind support for Ukraine is apparently baked into the Danish system.
Denmark’s uniparty
During Denmark’s last general elections in 2022, Frederiksen focused her entire campaign around defense and security issues. On these, her views were indistinguishable from those of her rivals. Six months before the election, Denmark’s five main parties had signed a ‘National Compromise on Danish Security Policy’ in which they agreed to hike defense budgets, inject an additional 7 billion DKK ($1.1 billion) in emergency funding into the country’s armed forces, and end Russian energy imports.
Frederiksen went on to form a government with Venstre and the Moderates, both of which supported these policies. Together, the PM and her traditional rivals on the right have announced planned increases in military spending from 2.4% to 3.5% of GDP, purchased hundreds of new armored cars and dozens of fighter jets, given Ukrainian arms manufacturers grants to produce weapons components on Danish soil, and in an historic first, introduced compulsory military service for women.
Frederiksen and Poulsen both explicitly blamed Russia for a series of drone sightings at Danish airports and military sites in late 2025, despite months of investigation concluding that there was no credible evidence the drones ever existed. Frederiksen used the drone panic to push her rearmament program, telling the public in September that “there is primarily one country that poses a threat to Europe's security – and that is Russia… and that is why we are embarking on a historic buildup here in Denmark.”
Under Frederiksen, Denmark has given Ukraine just over €11 billion in bilateral military and economic aid. At 3.27% of its GDP, Denmark has proportionately handed Ukraine more money than any other Western country. After meeting Frederiksen in Cyprus in April, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “noted the cross-party consensus on supporting Ukraine” in Denmark, according to a Ukrainian government statement.
More of the same
A government led by Poulsen will in all likelihood deliver more of the same. Poulsen warned in 2024 that Russia could attack NATO territory “within a three- to five-year period.” To prepare for this eventuality – which Russia has outright dismissed as “ridiculous” and a ploy by European leaders to extract more tax money from their citizenry – Poulsen has called for Denmark to increase military spending yet again, to 4% of GDP. Such an increase would put the country’s per-capita defense expenditure higher than that of the US.
Poulsen’s potential coalition partners include the Danish People’s Party, Liberal Alliance, and Conservatives. Of these, the Danish People’s Party is the only voice of moderation on Ukraine. Party leader Morten Messerschmidt has called for an end date to military aid to Kiev, has urged Ukraine to make territorial concessions for peace, and opposes its accession to NATO.
“Every time we spend a billion in Ukraine, that money goes from Denmark, from welfare, from whatever it is we want here,” he told Danish state broadcaster DR in 2024. Messerschmidt added that he intends to pressure whoever is in power in Copenhagen to “conduct a Ukraine policy that is based on the world of reality and not on a fantasy world.”
However, despite the party tripling its vote share to 9% in March, its leadership has told King Frederik that their only demand from Poulsen is that he enact policies that will reduce Denmark’s Muslim population.
Will Russia’s relations with Denmark change?
It is highly unlikely that the transfer of power from Frederiksen to Poulsen will alter Moscow’s sub-zero relations with Copenhagen. Denmark currently has no ambassador to Russia, and is considered an “unfriendly” nation by the Kremlin.
“If anyone wishes to talk, we will never refuse dialogue, even though we fully realize… that reaching an agreement with the current generation of European leaders will most likely be impossible,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in January. “They have entrenched themselves too deeply in a posture of hatred towards Russia.”
‘Are we idiots?’: Fico on EU pivot away from Russian fuel
Published 10 May, 2026 19:00 | Updated 10 May, 2026 20:05
The EU plan to phase out Russia as an energy supplier will end in the US reselling Russian oil and gas to Europe at far higher prices, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has warned.
Speaking in Bratislava on Sunday, Fico said Washington has “a huge interest in buying all transit infrastructures” across the European continent.
“So the Russians will supply the Americans with gas and oil at standard prices, and the Americans will sell it to us with an American high-margin surcharge. Are we such idiots already?” he said.
Already, “the share of Russian liquefied gas in Europe is increasing,” Fico added, pointing out the hypocrisy of Brussels singling out countries like Slovakia to pressure over Russian fuel supplies. “So we can’t, but France can buy liquefied gas from Russia.”
Contrary to the EU, Bratislava’s position is to “diversify the supply options for all fuels,” he said.
In February, the European Commission doubled down on long-standing plans to phase out Russian fossil fuel imports by 2027.
While the US-Israeli war on Iran and the subsequent fuel crisis have pushed Brussels to prepare for “the worst-case scenarios,” the EU will not abandon its pivot away from Russian liquefied natural gas, the bloc’s energy chief, Dan Jorgensen, told the Financial Times last month. Brussels will instead rely on more expensive supplies from the US and other partners, he said.
Just last week, Washington launched a multi-billion dollar push to invest in and build a major US pipeline project in Central and Eastern Europe, which still imports Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline and its extension – Balkan Stream.
According to Moscow, such US projects, as well as sanctions against Russian oil companies, are part of a sweeping strategy to capture the energy market.
Washington is aiming to monopolize all international energy supply routes in an attempt to attain global economic dominance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told TV BRICS earlier this year.
Global reputation of US sinks below Russia’s rating – survey
Published 8 May, 2026 17:03
America’s reputation has been worsening under US President Donald Trump and the country now lags behind China and Russia, an annual study commissioned by the Alliance of Democracies Foundation indicates.
The Denmark-based nonprofit was founded by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2017 in response to the purported retreat of Washington from the global stage amid Trump’s first tenure. Over the past six years, the foundation has released Democracy Perception Index reports, which assess “the state of democracy” in countries across the globe.
The return of Trump to office has seen the US plummet in the rating, which ranges between +100% and -100%, with the country currently dropping to -16% from +22% two years ago. The current indicator is less than China (+7%) and Russia (-11%), according to the survey.
The Nordic countries, Sweden, Norway, and the host nation of the non-profit, Denmark, were listed as the top three nations in the latest index. Ukraine was among the bottom five, taking 95th place in the rating and measuring -23%.
The survey was conducted by Nira Data polling company between March 19 and April 21, reaching more than 94,000 respondents across 98 nations. The study, however, does not provide much detail on what exact criteria were used to compile the index.
The poor performance of the US is “saddening but not shocking,” Rasmussen stated when the report was released. The ex-NATO chief squarely blamed Trump for the situation, citing the US administration’s actions, including repeated run-ins with Washington’s European allies over various issues ranging from aggressive trade policies to the openly proclaimed intent to seize Greenland from Denmark.
“US foreign policy over the past 18 months has, among other things, called into question the transatlantic relationship, imposed widespread tariffs, and threatened to invade a NATO ally’s territory,” Rasmussen said.
The strained transatlantic ties have been further aggravated by the US-Israeli war against Iran, which has been unpopular among many European NATO allies. The conflict has led to global oil shortages, with Europe emerging as one of the worst-affected regions.
Not to mention America's hostile takeover ambitions for Canada, and it's assaults on the Canadian economy.
Canada generally finishes near the top tier but for issues like the lack of transparency in the government.
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