Good morning. It seems inevitable that Andy Burnham will become the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade, after Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday morning and, hours later, Burnham’s most likely challenger, Wes Streeting, rowed in behind the former mayor of Greater Manchester.
Starmer leaves office barely two years after his landslide victory that swept Labour into power on a mandate of change. Six weeks after the party’s humiliation at the hands of Reform across English councils, and historic defeats to progressive nationalists in the Welsh Senedd and Scottish parliament, Burnham offered the country another “change moment”: winning an emphatic victory over Reform in last week’s Makerfield byelection, cementing the view that he can defeat the hard right at the next general election.
