On June 22 Sir Keir Starmer announced his resignation as Labour Party leader and Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. He remains in post until a successor is elected, either by Labour Members of Parliament if, as is almost certain, there is an unopposed candidate; or by Labour MPs, Labour Party members and affiliates if there is a contest.
Starmer’s resignation followed Labour’s disastrous devolved and local election results in early May in Wales, Scotland and large areas of England.
In Wales, where the party had not lost an election in a century, Labour lost control of the devolved Assembly, crashing to third place behind the Welsh Nationalists and Nigel Farage’s populist Reform, with just 11% of the vote – down 25 percentage points on the last election in 2021.
In Scotland, once a similar Labour heartland, the Scottish National Party retained control of the Scottish Parliament with 57 seats, despite a poor record on issues such as health and a corruption scandal involving the party’s chief executive. Labour won only 17 seats, the same number as Reform.
In England, the Labour Party lost almost 1500 local councillors and 38 of the 66 contested councils it had previously controlled, while Reform gained almost as many councillors as Labour lost and took control of 14 councils.
But it was another election that precipitated Starmer’s downfall – that of Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham in a parliamentary by-election engineered by his supporters so that he could bid to become leader of the Labour Party and thus, with Labour’s large majority in Parliament, Prime Minister.
Labour MPs fearful of losing their seats had long concluded from conversations with constituents and his dire poll ratings that Keir Starmer would lead them to disaster at the next national election, which must be held by summer 2029. Burnham’s stunning success in the Makerfield by-election – he won almost 55% of the vote in what had been expected to be a close contest with Reform, despite it being Burnham’s home territory – confirmed their view that he was Labour’s best hope. Remaining parliamentary and Cabinet support for Starmer rapidly drained away, leaving him little alternative but resignation.
How is it that Keir Starmer and the Labour Party, only two years after winning a huge parliamentary majority, have become so unpopular? And, with the UK anticipating the country’s seventh prime minister in a decade, why have British politics become so unstable?
Labour won 411 of 630 parliamentary seats in the 2024 general election. That victory was however much shallower than those numbers suggest: the party won only a third of the national vote but benefited from the vagaries of the UK’s ’first past the post’ electoral system.
Tony Blair’s Labour victory of 1997 was very different. In that election the party won a similar number of seats – 418 – but 43% of the vote, which provided a firm foundation for subsequent victories in 2001 and 2005. Moreover, Blair’s team had made thorough preparations for the government, rooted in a clear strategy.
By contrast, as Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s electoral strategist and Starmer’s ex-chief of staff, has recently admitted, Labour was woefully ill-prepared for government in 2024. Keir Starmer meanwhile seemed to take pride in his lack of political vision (‘there is no such thing as Starmerism and there never will be’).
The result has been a government lacking political direction, strategy, grip and judgement, unable to marshal its own MPs when necessary, vacillating on issues such as welfare, and confused about its priorities.
Keir Starmer came into government announcing that economic growth would be his number one priority. Yet in her first budget months later Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves increased significantly employers’ national insurance contributions – effectively a tax on jobs and job creation. Similarly, Starmer has repeatedly said that defence and national security are (also) his top priorities but has failed to fully fund the recommendations of the defence review that he commissioned from George Robertson, ex-Secretary General of Nato.
Notwithstanding these failings, Starmer has also been the victim of deeper, longer-term challenges.
The UK was hit harder than most other developed economies by the 2008 crisis, suffering a steeper initial recession, a more prolonged period of economic stagnation, and a more pronounced weakening of annual productivity growth (from 1.9% between 1993 and 2008, to an average of 0.5% since). Thereafter, the severe cuts to public expenditure introduced by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat government from 2010 impoverished the public realm at a time, some economists argue, when the UK could have borrowed long-term at ultra-low interest rates to finance investment.
Next came the economic damage of Brexit, which one recent study estimates has been as much as 6-8% of Gross Domestic Product (the state-funded, independent Office for Budgetary Responsibility assesses the loss as 4%).
Covid 19 had a worse economic impact on the UK than on most comparable countries, with the country suffering a bigger initial contraction (over one fifth of GDP between April and June 2020) and longer-term strain, including a spike in public debt and a shrinking labour supply (the number of people claiming disability and sickness benefits increased from 3 million to 4 million between 2019 and 2024) that prolonged the economic recovery.
Inflation in the UK following the economic shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine peaked at 11%, higher than in many comparable countries. Finally, there has been the economic impact of the American attack on Iran.
These successive economic shocks have hit household finances hard. Real incomes have hardly grown since 2008, while total taxation is at its highest level since the immediate post-war period. The political impact is clear. A resentful and impatient electorate has been increasingly willing to ‘throw the dice’, be it with the UK’s membership of the EU or the populist parties of right and left.
Under the pressure of a fragmenting political landscape and a volatile electorate, Conservative and Labour members of parliament have in turn become increasingly willing to dispense mid-term with an under-performing prime minister who has become an electoral liability (Theresa May in 2019, Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss – after seven weeks – in 2022, and now Keir Starmer).
Public, as well as household, finances have suffered. In its latest report the Office of Budgetary Responsibility warns that the incoming Prime Minister will need to implement spending cuts or tax rises of more than £100bn to stabilise debt at 95% of GDP from 2030-31. Otherwise, on current policy, the UK’s debt will move onto ‘an unsustainable and ever-rising path’ under the pressure to spend more on health, social care and the state pension. The OBR also points out that the UK is in a challenging position relative to peer countries, with a debt-to-GDP ratio 45 percentage points higher than the advanced economy average.
What do we know of presumptive Prime Minister Burnham’s likely approach to these problems, in particular the key necessity for improved economic growth? And what are his political prospects?
Burnham set out his vision for government in a speech at the end of June. The key elements were, first, devolution of power. He would create a new No10 Downing Street in Manchester, in which he would base himself for part of the week and which would become ‘the nerve centre of a re-wired Britain’ (he is now reported to be considering basing his Deputy Prime Minister there).
‘Number 10 North’ would have ‘three clear tasks’: exerting greater public control over essential utilities, re-industrialisation and regeneration, including through ‘the biggest council (i.e. publicly funded) house building programme since the post-war period’. Burnham also committed to reducing the welfare bill ‘in a way that is fair and lasting’ (but also to retaining the ‘triple lock’ under which state pensions are increased each year by whichever is the highest of inflation, average wage growth or two and a half percent – a ratchet that many believe is unsustainable with an ageing population).
So far there is little detail of how a Burnham Government would fund and accomplish these objectives, nor of how a Manchester No10 operation will help other regions (Scottish and Welsh politicians of parties other than Labour have already reacted with disdain). Nor, crucially, is it clear how Burnham intends to generate economic growth. He has said little about technology or artificial intelligence and seems yet to acknowledge the reality that urban agglomeration is a crucial element, which implies that London will continue to be its main driver. Without quick results and a consequent rise in living standards, a Burnham premiership is unlikely to survive beyond the next election.
That said, Burnham may have some political breathing space. He will come to national power on the back of undoubted success as the Mayor of Manchester, having ridden a flourishing local economy that pre-dates his period of office, and having reintegrated the privatised bus service into a transport network under public control. He has much better communication skills than Keir Starmer, and an optimistic outlook that contrasts with his predecessor’s gloom.
Burnham also has ministerial experience in the governments of Gordon Brown and Tony Blair including, crucially, in the Treasury. While there is not yet much indication of a developed strategy for government, he at least has political vision. And he has expressed a willingness to work with other political parties and support electoral reform, though whether these aspirations survive the Westminster bear-pit remains to be seen.
The broader political landscape may be a little more favourable than Starmer enjoyed. While Reform still leads in opinion polls, the party’s support, according to the latest polling, has fallen from 32% to 27% (Labour and Conservatives are both around 20%). Reform leader Nigel Farage meanwhile is mired in controversy over an undeclared personal gift of £5m from a cryptocurrency billionaire based in Thailand and other financial support from a convicted fraudster. Encouragingly for Burnham, the traditional parties have cooperated to neutralise Farage’s attempt, through staging a by-election, to position himself as the public’s champion against ‘the establishment’. For the time being at least, Reform’s momentum seems to have stalled.
All but the most cynical observers must hope that Burnham achieves, at least to the extent possible in the next three years, his stated objectives. If not, he is likely to become the latest prime ministerial scapegoat for the UK’s serious persistent challenges and, let’s face it, for the electorate’s own choices.
By John Buck
