LONDON — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Monday that he will resign, paving the way for the country’s seventh leader in a decade after facing an uprising within his center-left Labour Party.
Starmer’s likely successor is Andy Burnham, the popular ex-mayor of Greater Manchester who secured a return to Parliament last week.
Burnham confirmed Monday, shortly after Starmer said he would stand aside, that he would seek to replace the departing leader. He is the runaway favorite.
Starmer said that he had informed King Charles III of his decision, but that he would remain in the job as caretaker until a new leader is chosen.
“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election,” Starmer said, as he spoke in front of supporters and a bevy of journalists outside No. 10 Downing St. on a sweltering summer morning. “I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”
His voice choked as he talked about the support of his wife, Victoria Starmer, and their two children — a rare public display of emotion for the prime minister.
“Every decision I have taken has been about putting the country I love first,” Starmer said. “That is why I will resign.”
Starmer said that nominations to replace him as leader of the Labour Party, and thus prime minister, will open July 9 and close when Parliament breaks up for its summer recess July 16.
If no challenger emerges to Burnham, he could be in office shortly after that. If there is a contest, Starmer said, a new leader will be chosen by Sept. 1.
Starmer’s “decision marks the beginning of a transition and it is important that this process is conducted in an orderly and responsible way,” Burnham said in a statement. “I will put myself forward as part of this process.”
One of the few people who had been expected to challenge Burnham, former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, said Monday that he would in fact back his leadership bid.
In an open letter, Streeting said he was convinced the former mayor could “win the fight of our lives against the forces of nationalism.”
Streeting resigned last month as the speculation swirling around Starmer reached fever pitch.
Starmer’s decision marks an astonishing fall for a leader who led his party to a landslide election victory in 2024, riding a wave of popular discontent against 14 years of right-wing Conservative rule.
Before announcing his resignation, Starmer touted his achievements, including what he said was a stronger economy and higher wages, improvement in workers’ rights, bigger defense budgets and lifting a million children out of poverty — all “because of the choices that I made.”
But a series of bruising scandals hit him, while many of his own lawmakers blamed him for policy missteps that were deeply unpopular.
Calls for Starmer to quit have intensified since May when, after two years in power, he led his party to one of its worst-ever performances in local and regional elections, as Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK made historic gains.
The leader’s key rival within the party is Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, who had openly discussed plans to bring a leadership challenge. Burnham won a special election Thursday for a seat in Parliament, clearing a crucial hurdle for him to mount such a challenge.
Starmer had vowed to fight any contest, but as reports spread over the weekend, President Donald Trump even weighed in. The prime minister “failed badly on two very important subjects- IMMIGRATION AND ENERGY.”
“I wish him well!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
‘The change moment’
Burnham, nicknamed the “King of the North” for his forceful advocacy for northern England in his role as mayor, will be the overwhelming favorite to succeed Starmer with support from the party’s MPs.
He defied political gravity to defeat the Reform candidate and re-enter Parliament with a large majority on a message of change.
“This now is the change moment,” he said early Friday after his special election victory. “We have an opportunity to turn the tide, to make the country feel like it’s working again, to make people see that politics can make a positive difference, to make people feel hope again.”
Starmer, 63, had lost two of his key Cabinet ministers in recent weeks as discontent within his party grew. Streeting quit last month and issued a stinging attack on Starmer’s record of indecision, saying at the time he would consider his own leadership bid.
Another blow was dealt this month when Defense Secretary John Healey quit in a dispute over military funding.
Among Starmer’s lingering political headaches has been a scandal over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States in December 2024 despite the Labour grandee’s friendship with the late convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Starmer eventually fired him after Mandelson’s personal messages with Epstein came to light, but the prime minister was forced to deny lying to lawmakers following a series of questions about the vetting process.
Mandelson was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office connected to Epstein, though so far no charges have been brought. He has denied all wrongdoing.
The scandal proved especially difficult for Starmer given his 2024 election promise to clean up politics, one of several pledges that have since come back to haunt him.
After years without sustained growth in Britain, economic headwinds linked to global conflicts and the fallout from Brexit, as well as his own electoral pledge of fiscal discipline, have left a leader who promised change with little room for major reforms or investment in ailing public services. Instead, Starmer has struggled for ways to cut spending and hike taxes while sticking with his promises not to do so.
Meanwhile, a series of his flagship political projects, from massive investment in net-zero emissions to the rollout of digital ID cards, have ended up dramatically watered down or scrapped entirely — fueling doubts even among some of his allies about his propensity for tactical mistakes and miscalculations.
“In one sense, it was always going to be tough for Starmer,” said Andrew Barclay, a politics lecturer at the University of Sheffield.
“The economic legacy that the Labour government inherited was obviously very tricky to begin with,” he told NBC News, “but it needn’t have been as bad as it has been.”
Starmer has “never really properly been able to establish, at least in the minds of the public, what it is the government is actually trying to do in the first place,” he added. “Scandals are always important, but they’re all the more important when a government doesn’t have a central narrative to go back to.”
Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, said the seeds of Starmer’s downfall were sown before he took power.
Starmer made a “whole bunch of promises” to progressives to win control of his party but then steered to the center, leaving his government “without the financial means” to bring about lasting change, he told NBC News.
He also rolled out a series of controversial policies that alienated progressive voters while chasing right-wing approval on immigration, he said, adding: “It was all downhill from there.”
While struggling at home, Starmer has earned praise for his response to global conflicts, sometimes appearing more at home at international summits than when wrestling with the details of domestic policy. His initially warm working relationship with Trump was soured by his decision to keep out of the Iran war, a stance that even Starmer’s detractors have since called brave and principled.
In the now-looming leadership contest, candidates need the support of 20% of Labour MPs to be considered. If more than one clears that threshold, a vote will be held among party members and supporters.
But Burnham is the overwhelming favorite, and some within the party have expressed hopes of avoiding a messy, drawn-out contest if he is the only serious challenger.
Starmer originally promised to fight in any leadership contest, but the scale of Burnham’s victory in Makerfield against Farage’s Reform party was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” added Barclay.
“Andy Burnham’s stock is so high at the moment, and it’s just implausible, really, that Starmer could feasibly fight on,” he said. “This is a way of the prime minister exiting with as much grace as he possibly can.”
