And Keir Starmer is Out of Here

After weeks of gossip and the threat of a leadership challenge, Sir Keir Starmer has resigned as both leader of the Labour Party and the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

The announcement happened this morning, with Starmer saying that this decision is about “putting the country I love first.” In a speech, he said that he was proud of his work in “restoring trust on the economy, defence and national security.” Following disastrous local election results in May, Starmer faced calls to step down, which he initially rejected. Now, he says, his party is asking whether he is best placed to lead it into the next election, and he has “heard the answer” and “accepts that answer with good grace.”

The Labour Party will now open up the vote for a new leader on July 9th, and whoever wins that vote on July 16th will become the new Prime Minister. The chances are it will be Andy Burnham. He just re-entered parliament after winning a by-election where the previous MP stood down solely to give Burnham an opportunity to challenge Starmer. It’s unknown whether anyone will choose to run against him.

Honestly, good. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Look, when Starmer and Labour won with a massive majority in 2024, my hopes weren’t sky-high for this new era of power to be a bastion of progressiveness. Starmer had moved to the centre during his pre-PM leadership, but he at least seemed better than Rishi Sunak and the Tories. And then he got the top job and spent two years squandering all of that goodwill. He targeted trans people based on junk science. He made supporting Palestine Action an illegal act, claiming he did it to fight antisemitism, all while pro-Gaza activists were dragged from the streets. He swung hard to the right on issues of welfare and immigration, fostering some deeply offensive rhetoric on both issues. And he did nothing to combat the rise of Reform and Nigel Farage. Indeed, he seemed more concerned with cozying up to that racist foghorn of a man than challenging the hate he was mainstreaming.

Andy Burnham is better than Starmer, but in the lead-up to his seemingly inevitable coronation, he’s also gotten weird on stuff like trans issues. Labour cannot help itself with this crap: it acts as though being even remotely centre-left is poisonous to the electorate then tries to pander to a demographic that will never vote for them. The Green Party is making big waves across the country and they’ve totally ignored that potential. The sad thing is that, unless Burnham and Labour get brave and really invest in combating hate and investing in working-class communities, we will have Prime Minister Farage at the next General Election.