And Starmer Makes Six, Why Britain Can’t Keep a Prime Minister

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**Keir Starmer** (0:08)
Every decision I've taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party.

**Wendy Benjaminson** (0:19)
Less than two years into the job, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer is stepping down.

**Edward Evans** (0:24)
It's an extraordinary turnaround in his political fortunes. To somebody who won a landslide majority in 2024, the 174 seat majority, something Labour hadn't won since the days of Tony Blair.

**Wendy Benjaminson** (0:38)
Bloomberg editor Edward Evans says, Starmer suffered a series of early missteps.

**Edward Evans** (0:43)
Nobody was quite clear what the policy was, what the big picture was.

**Wendy Benjaminson** (0:47)
Then this May, Starmer's Labour Party had a disastrous showing in local elections. That prompted about a quarter of his party's MPs to call on him to resign. That resignation leaves the UK facing its 7th leader since the country's Brexit vote 10 years ago.
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Wendy Benjaminson, in for David Gura and Sarah Holder. Today on the show, how did the UK get here? Who's next in line to replace Starmer? And can Britain's next PM hold on to the top spot longer than he did?
More than two years is not a long time to last as Britain's Prime Minister, but Edward Evans tells me Starmer's downfall has been underway from the beginning.

**Edward Evans** (1:37)
Very quickly he came in, and there were a series of early missteps that really started to undercut his authority. There was an attempt to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners, which he put through, which was incredibly unpopular with many in his party, particularly on the left, but it was then subsequently reversed. There was also an attempt to cut benefit payments, which again later reversed. So you saw at that point, blood was in the water. His political authority was starting to drain away.
Then of course more recently, we had the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK ambassador to the US. Mandelson subsequently emerged, was a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein. That was particularly damaging for Starmer because this was an appointment that Downing Street had particularly gone out of its way to put through. And it's one of the most, if not the most senior post in the diplomatic service and one that's absolutely crucial right now with Donald Trump.
Then you fast forward to the local elections of disastrous result for Labour and many in his party in Westminster were extremely nervous at that point about their own seats if the party continued on that course. And then more recently still, he lost his defence secretary over a dispute over increased defence spending. And then above all this, this fiscal straitjacket that the government's been operating under a set of rules essentially imposed by the chancellor. And they hold that the chancellor must balance day-to-day spending with tax revenues by 2029-30 and reduce debt as a share of GDP by the same point. There's very little room to increase borrowing. There's very little room to increase spending. And squaring that circle has proved impossible for Starmer with his own party.

**Wendy Benjaminson** (3:16)
You mentioned the Peter Mandelson appointment, which I'm interested in where it ranks in all of these problems that Starmer had in his term. Because as you know, in the United States, almost no one has faced any consequences for their relationships with Epstein. And this has not only cost Peter Mandelson his job, but now Keir Starmer as well.

**Edward Evans** (3:35)
I think that the point with Mandelson was it's a political appointment, and it was made clearly by Downing Street. So this was very much on the prime minister's own judgment. Two, it came out over a period of days and weeks, and you had the drip, drip, drip of news. And Parliament took the unusual step actually of forcing Downing Street to release a lot of the papers surrounding the appointment of Peter Mandelson. So again, that dragged out even, dragged the whole process out even further.

**Wendy Benjaminson** (4:03)
So the favorite right now to lead Britain is Andy Burnham, who was just sworn into Parliament today. Who is he and why has he become a major player so quickly?

**Edward Evans** (4:11)
I think the first thing to say is a long-term figure in the Labour Party. He's not someone who's a stranger to Labour. He's grown up in the Labour movement and has been active in it since the days of the Blair governments.
He was, I think, most recently known for being Mayor of Manchester. I think that was the really, you saw the political reinvention of Andy Burnham. He came out colloquially known as the King of the North and the emergence of this thing called Manchesterism, which is essentially a mix of state control. He nationalized the local buses in Manchester, mixed with working with business to promote development. If you look at Manchester Skyline over recent years, there has been a huge, huge change there. Before Manchester, he was a Labour MP for many years. It's important to note this is someone who he ran for the Labour leadership in 2010 and lost. He ran in 2015 again and lost to Jeremy Corbyn. This is somebody who's no stranger to the Labour Party.