British PM Keir Starmer announces his resignation, to ensure orderly transition of power

LONDON – British Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned from his post on June 22.

He said in a national address at his No. 10 Downing Street residence that he informed King Charles in the morning, and promised his successor an orderly transition of power.

Starmer said he will remain in power until his successor is selected, with nominations set for July 9. A new prime minister will be elected before Parliament returns in September.

He is expected to set out a timetable for his departure with rival Andy Burnham tipped for the post, as he paves the way for Britain’s seventh leader in a decade.

Starmer said he will also resign as leader of the Labour Party, less than two years after he led the party to a landslide election victory that promised to end Britain’s chaotic politics.

Skills minister Jacqui Smith told Times Radio early on June 22 that she would have liked Starmer to stay on, but he had been weighing what was best for the country, due to the “pressure that is being brought upon him”.

One source said he had spent the weekend considering whether to step aside or fight a leadership contest.

Pressure had been building for months

The threat to Starmer, which has been building for months, increased sharply on June 19, when Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor, decisively won a parliamentary election to return to Westminster, beating a candidate from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, which has led national opinion polls for more than a year.

That victory gave hope to Labour lawmakers that Burnham, a career politician known for his communication skills, could transform the fortunes of a party that has lost support under Starmer, whose popularity ratings have sunk to the lowest for any British leader.

But the widely expected change of leader is not without risk.

Beyond saying that the country needs fundamental change and to bring down the cost of living, Burnham has yet to make clear his approach to foreign affairs, the economy and defence.

Like Starmer he could find he has little room to manoeuvre, hemmed in by bond market investors opposed to any additional borrowing, and confronted by an angry electorate which believes the country is not working properly.

Britain already has the highest borrowing costs in the Group of Seven (G-7) wealthy nations due to its high debt and interest payments, years of anaemic economic growth, its struggles to cut spending and the need to invest in areas like defence.

Investors spoken to by Reuters were divided over whether Burnham, who said in September 2025 that Britain had to get “beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets”, would respect the need to reassure markets.

He has since said he was misrepresented.

“In our view, a Burnham premiership would inherit a precarious fiscal situation with few tools to deliver meaningful change,” economists at Citibank said on June 19.

Starmer had pledged to fight any challenge

Starmer had said on June 19 he would stand in any formal Labour leadership contest that sought to replace him. But that appeared to change over the weekend.

“Keir likes to think about things,” said a source on condition of anonymity.

Any change in leader, without even a contest within the party, could anger voters who will not have had a say in who is running the country from Downing Street.

Former health minister Wes Streeting has also said he has the backing of the 81 Labour lawmakers needed to enter a leadership race, but one senior figure in the party believed Streeting could do a deal with Burnham, giving him a senior role if he stayed out of the contest.

While Starmer’s team believes his landslide national election win in 2024 gives him the mandate to stay in post until 2029, business minister Peter Kyle said on June 21 the Prime Minister was reflecting on “the political challenges that he faces in this moment”.

Burnham, if he succeeds, would become Britain’s seventh prime minister since the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, which took place 10 years ago this week.

That level of turnover – the highest in Britain in nearly two centuries – underlines the struggle of maintaining the support of voters angry at successive failures to improve living standards and public services, and tackle illegal immigration.

Political advisory group Eurasia said the best outcome would have been for Starmer to say he would step down in September, enabling him to attend a Britain-European Union reset summit in July and give Burnham time to prepare for government. REUTERS