Downing streak: On the Starmer resignation, British politics

Keir Starmer entered Downing Street in July 2024 with a landslide victory. Ending 14 years of Conservative rule, marked by Brexit and the chaos that followed, he promised to build a government for all and bridge the widening trust deficit between the public and the political elite. Less than two years later, the former lawyer who took pride in taking Labour back to the political centre after the brief left-wing interlude of Jeremy Corbyn, has resigned amid mounting public discontent and growing revolt within the Labour party. Mr. Starmer rode an anti-Tory wave but soon found the public turning against him over his lapses in judgment and slow economic progress. His uncharismatic, technocratic centrism failed to withstand the rapid changes shaping British politics at a time when far-right parties were surging across continental Europe. The tide began to turn after revelations that Peter Mandelson, Mr. Starmer’s choice as Britain’s Ambassador to Washington, had links to the late convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Pressure mounted after Labour lost local elections in England and polls in Wales and Scotland. When Andy Burnham, Labour’s ‘King in the North’, won the Makerfield byelection and returned to Westminster, Mr. Starmer’s fate was sealed, and he resigned on June 22.

Under Mr. Starmer, the U.K. saw modest improvements in key economic indicators. Its economy began growing faster than those of its G-7 peers, while inflation remained broadly under control despite conflicts in Europe and Asia. New laws strengthened workers rights, and statutory minimum wage rates were raised. Yet, these incremental gains were insufficient to satisfy an electorate that had given Labour a commanding mandate. Mr. Starmer proved largely ineffective in addressing the economic anxieties of the working-class communities that delivered his majority, or the cultural grievances Reform UK had been amplifying. Labour MPs started turning against him, making it difficult for him to continue in office. Mr. Burnham, who belongs to the soft left camp of Labour, is expected to be elected as the party’s new leader and the next Prime Minister — and at a moment when the old bipolar consensus of British politics is breaking down. Reform is no longer a fringe force. With the conservatives, Britain’s traditional vehicle of the right, in deep decline, Reform is emerging as the second pole. Mr. Burnham should recognise that the Starmerite centrism is unlikely to withstand the onslaught of a far-right cultural politics entrenched in English nationalism. He must unite a fractious party around a progressive economic and foreign policy agenda and build a government that works for all while standing firmly on the right side of global issues. If Labour fails to reconnect with its core values and social base, it risks losing even the constituencies that have long sustained it.