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PRECISELY 10 years ago, on the day after British voters rejected the idea of remaining in the EU, Conservative prime minister David Cameron resigned. Since then, five of his successors have followed suit. Only one of them, Rishi Sunak, stepped down after an electoral defeat.
On Monday, the fifth person in that dismal list announced his exit with a lump in his throat while a band played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy in the background. Keir Starmer stands out for two reasons: he is (at least ostensibly) not a Tory, and his resignation comes less than two years after he won a huge parliamentary majority. Mainstream media generally neglects to mention, though, that the Labour Party’s landslide was based on one-third of the vote, or that Starmer’s popularity ratings, unimpressive in the first place, took a dive as soon as he entered No. 10 Downing Street.
By then, he had already betrayed the party he purportedly represented by winning leadership through false pretences, and then purging its left wing, including his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer further sullied his reputation as a former human rights lawyer by defending Israel’s genocidal tendencies while he was still leader of the opposition. That has been followed during his prime ministership by protesters for Palestinian rights being imprisoned as terrorists. The pseudo-progressives and sophists who highlight his ‘decency’ tend to ignore substantial evidence to the contrary.
His efforts as PM to deprive pensioners of their winter fuel allowance and to punish welfare-dependent families with more than two children were reversed only in the face of public revulsion and backbench revolts. And appointing Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US — presumably based on the assumption that he would bond with Donald Trump because of their well-known links with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein — turned out to be another own goal.
What will Andy Burnham bring to the role of PM?
Starmer’s dwindling band of supporters also claim that even if he faltered in terms of domestic politics and economics, at least he stood proud on the international stage. If that ever happened, the rest of us must have missed it. Sure, he might have bonded with fellow European leaders who are determined to back Ukrainian militarism without the faintest idea about how to resolve Kyiv’s conflict with Moscow. Vladimir Putin does not deserve to be appeased, but further provocation is hardly a recipe for peace in a conflagration that has gone on longer than World War I.
In his whingeing resignation speech, Starmer started off by highlighting his supposed achievements, but naturally steered clear of mentioning his monumental failures, not least in the communication department. His almost inevitable successor, Andy Burnham, might be better in terms of expressing what he stands for. It’s taken just a by-election for Burnham to be elevated from the mayor of Greater Manchester to a contender for Labour leadership, an extraordinary phenomenon in British politics. Starmer resigned shortly before Burnham arrived at Westminster to take his oath.
He could be PM by mid-July if there are no rivals, but the bigger question is what Burnham will bring to the position. He’s served in relatively minor ministerial posts since the Blair era. Burnham put himself forward twice before in leadership contests, with no luck. This time he is headed for a ‘coronation’ unless another contender emerges, which seems unlikely. That means his legitimacy as PM is likely to be questioned. More important, though, is what he brings to the post. There have so far been few signs that he will depart radically from Starmer’s largely failed policy agenda. There’s been some talk of taking back into public control segments of the economy that ought never to have been privatised. And Burnham is said to be an advocate for some form of proportional representation, which could be a big leap forward.
But whether any such ideas survive his transition to No. 10 is an open question. After all, he is being propelled towards that goal by many of the same Labour individuals and tendencies that embraced Starmer as a centrist messiah in order to banish the spectre of a socialist alternative. Burnham might turn out to be a less insipid alternative to the incumbent, but unless his administration offers significant alternatives to the mounting economic sources of domestic despair and Britain’s growing inconsequence in the global sphere, it’s far from inconceivable that the fascism-adjacent extremist Nigel Farage and his Reform party, lately polling better than Labour or the Conservatives, will be waiting to pounce at the next general election in 2029.
Burnham will potentially have three years to prepare for that contingency. So, good riddance to Starmer, but there are no guarantees of a rosy future for the remnants of an obsolete imperial power.
Published in Dawn, June 24th, 2026
