Andy Burnham, the former Mayor of Greater Manchester and the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has picked a challenging time to enter office. The revolving doors at 10 Downing Street appear to be spinning off their hinges — he will be the seventh Prime Minister in just over a decade, and the fifth in four years. Nevertheless, he has promised a fresh start, and an economic and social revival. To truly set himself apart from the fumbling approach of his predecessor, Keir Starmer, he might have to spearhead a radical change in governance, and be willing to redefine the traditional Labour Party framework to tackle the spiralling crises of cost of living, fraying global alliances, disagreements on immigration policy and the fiscal pressures of an ageing population. He might learn from Mr. Starmer’s missteps, who won Labour a resounding victory in 2024 with just 34% of the popular vote. It was, however, a “loveless landslide” according to some analysts, and had more to do with deep disenchantment with the previous Conservative governments for losing their grip on macroeconomic policy management. Although Mr. Starmer at the time vowed to restore “respect to politics”, a mini scandal over government officials accepting gifts, a policy furore over botched plans to cut welfare spending, and an error of judgement in appointing Peter Mandelson, discredited by his association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as U.K. Ambassador to the U.S., led to Mr. Starmer’s ousting by his party.

To avoid continuing this cycle of leaders who appear to be unable to govern what appears to be an increasingly ungovernable polity after Brexit, and a weary public that is looking for a new model of governance to stabilise their embattled nation amidst political storms, Mr. Burnham will need to quickly implement reforms while tamping down on infighting and factionalism within Labour. He has little room to manoeuvre on public revenue given his party’s promise not to raise taxes; yet he will have to find innovative ways to cut the U.K.’s welfare bill and entitlements. Similarly, he cannot abandon European allies in their support for Ukraine against Russian depredations on its soil, yet he will have to act quickly to mend fences with the Donald Trump administration to prevent further breakdown in the “special relationship”. On immigration, net migration to the U.K. is said to be down compared to previous years, yet the thirst for even tighter immigration policies in some quarters is being contested by some Labour MPs and progressive leaders, who are seeking a compromise approach. He will have to step nimbly across the many political minefields in tackling these challenges, yet remember that history rewards dynamism and fresh thinking, rather than leaders stuck in survival mode.

In his 2026 State of the Union address, U.S. President Donald Trumpchose to double down on the politics of his conservative support base by touting his second administration’s achievements with regard to divisive, if not polarising issues relating to immigration, the cost of living, and foreign policy concerns including tariffs and the prospect of war in the context of Iran. The speech itself comes at a fraught moment for the Trump White House, days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down its use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to slam a broad swathe of trading partners, including India, with punitive tariffs. An apparently undaunted Mr. Trump repeated his earlier remarks on social media hinting at disdain for the ruling, when he described it during the speech as “unfortunate” and argued, against evidence to the contrary regarding the burgeoning public debt, that the tariff revenues received by his government were “saving” the U.S. Similarly, he neatly avoided alluding to the two Americans killed in ICE raids in Minneapolis or the agency’s other heavy-handed actions targeting “criminal aliens” and “drug lords”. With regard to Iran, even though Washington has rapidly built up its force posture across West Asia following Teheran’s crackdown on protesters, Mr. Trump appeared to be holding out hope for a modus vivendi when he said, “My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But… I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon.”

If Mr. Trump’s remarks in Congress sounded self-congratulatory, that might have been because they echoed a well-rehearsed campaign speech ahead of the critical mid-term elections. While it is true that inflation has gradually come down during Mr. Trump’s second term, his description of the price trend as “plummeting” might have appeared to some to be an exaggeration, especially given that it was under his predecessor Joe Biden that prices came off their nearly 9% peak in mid-2022 to 2.9% by the time Mr. Trump entered the White House, leading to the current rate of nearly 2.4%. More concerningly for the White House and Republican lawmakers, opinion polls suggest that most Americans are disenchanted with the tariff policy and its cost-escalating pressure on the economy, with the design and implementation of the current immigration policy, and with the perceived involvement of Mr. Trump in the Epstein scandal. While an upbeat address to a joint session of Congress might galvanise the faithful, it will take more than words to alter the bitter ground realities faced by the common people and they tend to express their frustrations in this context at the ballot box.