The Prime Minister hasn’t been arrested

27 February 2026

A group of Facebook videos liked and shared hundreds of times falsely claim that the Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has been arrested.

To quote one of the posts: “The unthinkable just happened. The Prime Minister of Britain Keir Starmer dragged into court and placed under arrest in front of the entire nation.”

All of the posts share an image supposedly showing Mr Starmer being led away by two police officers, with a banner reading: “STARMER ARRESTED LIVE”.

This hasn’t happened. The posts were published at the end of January, but there have been no credible reports of Mr Starmer being arrested, and he remains prime minister.

One clue that these posts are false is that Mr Starmer looks much younger in the fake image with the police officers than he does in 2026.

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because Sir Keir Starmer has not been arrested.

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