Andy Burnham will be Britain’s next prime minister, probably in less than a month, barring a gaffe or scandal of such enormity that we’d all need years of therapy, says ITV News Political Editor Robert Peston.
The last remaining Starmerites huff and puff at the injustice of the eviction of their hero. They warn that unless Burnham is tested in a leadership election, he could turn out to be the booby prize in a lucky dip.
Labour’s more left-wing MPs - the Campaign group - will do their normal thing of agonising about which of them should be the candidate of the true faith, though there is zero chance that any one of them could get the requisite 81 nominations.
The only semi-credible challenger would have been the former health secretary Wes Streeting, but he has today announced that he and Burnham agree on everything that matters - which presumably means on the compelling idea that Streeting should have a big Cabinet job.
“Wes would make a very good chancellor,” one minister said to me wryly.
So, Burnham will be the seventh UK PM since David Cameron stepped down just under a decade ago, and probably as soon as Friday, 17 July.
Hang out the union flag bunting?
Well, not if you think economies prosper on a foundation of political stability.
And not until we can assess whether Burnham can revive the economy and living standards in the tax and borrowing straitjacket imposed by Labour’s 2024 election manifesto, when that same manifesto imposes huge restrictions on improving commercial access to the European Union’s massive single market, and when the recalcitrance of Labour MPs are a brake on his ability to streamline both welfare state and Whitehall.
I first met Andy Burnham almost 30 years ago. He’s finally won the prize, the chalice he has long sought.
Its contents may not be poisoned, but they may be much less sweet and digestible than he hopes.
Sir Keir Starmer has resigned as leader of the Labour Party, triggering a process to replace him not just as party leader but also as prime minister.
Current Labour rules state that to mount a leadership contest, 20% of the party’s MPs — or 81 colleagues — need to back a candidate first.
Then, they need to receive nominations from either 5% of constituency Labour parties, or three affiliated organisations (which must include two trade unions), which represent 5% of affiliated membership.
Only after passing those two stages will candidates go before the party membership.
In Labour’s 126-year history, there has never been an official leadership challenge mounted against a sitting prime minister.
The son of a toolmaker, the man behind Labour’s seismic comeback after 14 years of Tory rule, and now, less than two years later, a leader ousted by his own party.
The beginning of Keir Starmer’s downfall came after a catastrophic set of election results for the Labour Party in May, in which it lost more than 1,400 council seats across England, and had little success in Scotland and Wales.
ITV News looks at the meteoric rise and fall of the UK’s 58th prime minister.
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