Two years is nothing in the life of a country and an eternity in the life of a government.
Keir Starmer arrived at Number 10 in July 2024 with the biggest Labour majority in a generation and left it, almost to the week two years later, sounding like a man reading his own obituary out loud on the doorstep. By Monday, Andy Burnham, the former Mayor of Greater Manchester turned MP for Makerfield, is expected to be sworn in as Britain's next Prime Minister, its seventh in a decade. That number alone tells you something about the state of the operation Burnham is inheriting.
Starmer: competent abroad, hollowed out at home
Start with the case for the defence, because Starmer's allies have been making it loudly on his way out the door. On the world stage, the argument goes, he found a register that eluded most of his predecessors: steady, lawyerly, allergic to grandstanding. He got noticeably closer to France and Germany on defence, took a lead role in planning a postwar coalition force for Ukraine, and cast himself as a rare bridge between Washington and a nervous Europe during Donald Trump's second term. Supporters point to a genuine run of foreign policy competence, at a moment when NATO cohesion looked fragile and nobody in London was quite sure who Trump would be talking to on any given week.
Critics, and there are plenty, argue this is a myth dressed up as a legacy. Britain has watched this ritual before, they say: an unpopular PM leaves office and the commentariat reaches for "flop at home, statesman abroad" as a kind of consolation prize. The counterargument is blunt. Starmer's defence spending pledges, made with real fanfare at summit after summit, were never fully funded, echoing the exact pattern Labour spent years attacking the Conservatives for. His swan-song trip to the NATO gathering in Ankara this month was, by most accounts, a diplomatically awkward affair. Egypt cancelled a planned visit. Few leaders seemed eager to be seen with a man already halfway out the door.
A government elected on 34 percent of the vote saw that support collapse toward the high teens within eighteen months
At home, the story is worse and less contested. A government elected on 34 percent of the vote saw that support collapse toward the high teens within eighteen months. Reform UK and the Greens ate into Labour's flanks from opposite directions. Wes Streeting resigned from cabinet in protest. Junior ministers and aides followed him out. The welfare bill, the pensioners' fuel allowance, planning reform, Gaza: each became its own rebellion, each survived by margins that flattered nobody. Peter Mandelson's sacking as ambassador to Washington, over his links to Jeffrey Epstein, became the story that finally made Starmer's judgment on appointments a punchline rather than a talking point. By May 2026, more than ninety Labour MPs were openly calling for him to name a departure date.
Starmer inherited a party that was "financially and morally bankrupt" and left one "far stronger and fairer" behind
His resignation speech leaned on a familiar frame: he'd inherited a party that was "financially and morally bankrupt" and was leaving one "far stronger and fairer" behind. Whether that holds up depends entirely on who you ask, and increasingly, few people outside his own circle were asking.
Burnham: the King of the North finally gets the crown
Which brings us to Burnham, a man who first ran for the Labour leadership sixteen years ago and lost, then spent nine years turning Greater Manchester into the loudest regional voice in English politics before finally forcing his way back into Westminster via a by-election win in Makerfield. He took the seat with 55 percent of the vote, comfortably ahead of Reform, and within days had the backing of roughly 85 percent of the parliamentary party, enough to make any rival contest mathematically impossible. If nobody else can gather the nominations needed to stand against him, and nobody currently can, he becomes Prime Minister by default this Monday.
Burnham's nickname "King of the North" was earned honestly, through a decade of picking fights with Westminster
The nickname "King of the North" was earned honestly, through a decade of picking fights with Westminster over transport funding, devolution, and the north-south divide, and it is central to his pitch now. He has promised what he calls the biggest rebalancing of power Britain has seen, handing real autonomy to the regions rather than administering it from London. He has also, pointedly, tried to reassure markets rattled by the transition, committing to existing borrowing limits and talking fiscal discipline in the same breath as devolution, an early sign he knows the tightrope he is walking.
Burnham's political identity is built largely on the claim that London-centric government has failed everywhere north of Watford
What should we hope for from him. First, that the devolution promise is more than rhetoric, given how much of his own political identity is built on the claim that London-centric government has failed everywhere north of Watford. Second, some actual room to breathe from a Labour Party that has just watched two leaders in two years get chewed up by the same problems: a sluggish economy, a squeezed cost of living, public services running on fumes, and a foreign policy environment complicated by an unpredictable ally in Washington and a hostile one in Moscow. Third, and this is the harder ask, a bit more warmth than the Starmer years managed. Burnham is by most accounts more comfortable in a room than his predecessor ever was, which counts for something in a country exhausted by technocratic distance.
None of this guarantees anything. Burnham inherits the same fractured arithmetic Starmer did, the same restless electorate flirting with Reform on one side and the Greens on the other, and a party that has shown it will move fast against a leader it decides isn't working. The last two Prime Ministers found that out. The King of the North has his coronation. What he does with the crown is the actual story, and it starts Monday.