UK PM Starmer resigns, Andy Burnham emerges as likely successor

Britain's unlucky Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced his resignation. What succession favorite Andy Burnham wants is a mystery even to his own party.

27 June 2026 | 5:24 PM

Andy Burnham during his swearing-in as an MP on June 22, 2026. Photo: Uncredited/House of Commons/ap

From London

By Dominic Johnson

In the end, everything happened very quickly. On June 22 at 9:30 AM, Keir Starmer announced his resignation as head of the governing Labour Party and thus as British Prime Minister in front of his official London residence. At 10:54 AM, succession favorite Andy Burnham boarded the train to London in Manchester. He arrived at 1:30 PM and was sworn in an hour later in the House of Commons as the newly elected MP for the Makerfield constituency, which he had won in a by-election four days earlier. Afterwards, he gathered the Labour parliamentary group for a group photo, fully embodying the new man in charge.

In the same hall where the Queen had lain in state nearly four years ago, hundreds of Labour politicians now cheered the "King of the North," who beamingly held up his phone for a group selfie. "We want someone who understands us," said Andy McDonald, Labour MP for Middlesbrough, immediately afterward.

One might almost forget that Burnham and Starmer are in the same party and that less than two years ago, Keir Starmer won a two-thirds parliamentary majority for Labour with the campaign slogan "Change."

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To understand why Starmer has left now, one must remember why he came. In December 2019, Labour suffered its worst electoral defeat since the 1930s under left-wing party leader Jeremy Corbyn, while the Conservatives under Boris Johnson achieved a landslide victory. Britain braced itself for at least ten years of Johnson hegemony. But someone had to pick up the pieces and rebuild Labour – preferably someone without illusions and without ambitions. Who seemed more suitable than Keir Starmer, a lawyer without charisma and without ideology, an administrator rather than a politician, preparing the ground for Labour's next generation?

No Competition in Sight

Then Boris Johnson's government collapsed, his successors Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak could no longer save the sinking ship, and suddenly Labour was in power. That its leader was still Keir Starmer was a kind of accident. Starmer never quite settled into office. He appears awkward in public appearances, and behind the scenes, he operates opaquely. Now, belatedly, Labour is looking for a leader who seems up to the task.

So will it be Andy Burnham, who, unlike Starmer, seems comfortable in the company of others? On July 17, the former Mayor of Manchester could become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Competition for the party leadership is possible but not in sight.

What Burnham plans is purely speculation. The 56-year-old, born in Liverpool, presents himself as an outsider shaking up London, but he is the ultimate insider. Burnham's first real job after studying at Cambridge was in the parliamentary office of a Labour MP; he already served in the Labour government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Only afterward did he go to Manchester; only under Prime Minister Starmer did he stage himself as a left-wing reformer.

There are now two narratives about what a Burnham government would mean. One is: The revenge of the left wing of the party, which Keir Starmer ruthlessly fought as party leader from 2020 onward and kept in check after taking over the government in 2024. Labour's leftists are in revolt against Starmer's policies.