Starmer expected to announce departure as prime minister on Monday
Peter Walker
The Guardian’s senior political correspondent, Peter Walker, has more on the prime minister’s intentions going forward:
Keir Starmer is expected to announce on Monday that he will step down as prime minister, after overwhelming pressure from Labour MPs to make way for Andy Burnham to become Labour leader.
The prime minister and his allies had insisted for weeks that they would fight a leadership challenge from Burnham, or anyone else, before the Makerfield byelection in which Burnham was hoping to secure a return to Westminster.
But on Sunday morning, the business secretary, Peter Kyle, told Sky News that Starmer was spending the weekend “making time to reflect on the political realities” he faces.
Speaking for the government, Kyle refused to say what he thought Starmer’s plans were, or what he had asked the PM to do. You can read the full story here:
Key events
Nadeem Badshah
In other news, Police Scotland said a man was charged after a series of attacks in Edinburgh on Friday night that are being treated as potential anti-Muslim hate crimes.
Counter-terrorism officers were brought in to investigate the attacks in which five people were injured.
A 36-year-old white Scottish man was arrested on Friday.
The force added late on Saturday night: “A 36-year-old man has been charged in connection with a number of incidents which took place in Edinburgh on Friday, 19 June, 2026. A report has been submitted to the Procurator Fiscal, and the individual will appear at court in due course.” Police said there was no further threat to the public.
You can read more here:
Trump predicts Starmer will resign as UK prime minister after failing ‘badly’ on immigration and energy
In a post to Truth Social, the US president, Donald Trump, has just said that Keir Starmer “will resign” as the UK’s prime minister, in comments that will cause huge embarrassment to Downing Street.
Trump wrote: “He failed badly on two very important subjects- IMMIGRATION AND ENERGY (OPEN NORTH SEA OIL!). I wish him well!”
Starmer, looking to stay on the right side of the erratic president for preferential trade terms for the UK, was accused of kowtowing to Trump after the Republican president took office last January.
But the two leaders’ relationship broke down over Starmer’s refusal to be involved in the US-Israel war on Iran as much as Trump would have liked. The US president repeatedly lashed out at Starmer’s refusal to approve direct military involvement in the war, labelling him “no Winston Churchill” because of his cautious leadership style.
Home Office minister Mike Tapp has retweeted the following post from the ‘Politics UK’ account on X:
NEW: A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels “betrayed”
“He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children’s teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him”
The Green party has named Trafford council councillor Geraldine Coggins as their candidate in the by-election for the Greater Manchester mayoralty triggered by Andy Burnham’s election as an MP for Mankerfield last week.
Coggins, a published academic, is the leader of the Green Party group on Trafford council and has promised to put “people and planet over profits”. She said:
The Green party has shown in Gorton and Denton and these last local elections that people are ready for a new kind of politics, one that puts communities, fairness and the future first. We did it in Gorton and Denton, and now we will do it across Greater Manchester.
People are feeling abandoned by Labour and want real change to deliver affordable homes, thriving local communities and a healthier environment. They are tired of being told to settle for less. This campaign will offer a positive vision for the future of Greater Manchester and show that Green leadership can deliver real change.
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The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, has framed the contest as a two-party race between his party and Reform.
He is hoping to ride the momentum from the Green’s landmark victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February, in which Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green party councillor, was elected as the party’s first MP in northern England after overturning Labour’s 13,000-vote majority.
Applications to become Labour’s candidate to replace Burnham in Greater Manchester are open until 5pm on Sunday. Labour is set to announce its candidate next Friday. Reform has not announced their candidate yet but former mayoral candidate Dan Barker is most likely to be selected, according to the Manchester Mill. The mayoral election is due to take place on 30 July.
Labour backbencher, Barry Gardiner, has said he doesn’t want to see a Labour leadership contest, but that the PM should go.
Gardiner, who has been a Labour MP continuously for almost three decades, said he believes Keir Starmer should be “able to go with dignity”.
Speaking to Sky News, Gardiner said:
I think what we will see is the prime minister setting out a timescale. I want him to be able to go with dignity. I think it should not be, in any way, a contest that humiliates him.
Although I do understand why people say it would be good to have a contest so people can set out their stalls and we can be clear about exactly what Andy Burnham is offering.
Labour MP for Chesterfield, Toby Perkins, a Starmer loyalist, said it needs to be clear whether a new leader would take the party on a “radical departure” from the manifesto it was elected on two years ago.
Meanwhile, the former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who resigned from the government in May, said candidates should at least present their ideas to the Parliamentary Labour Party.
“I very much hope that over the next week, at least, that whilst we may not end up with a full-scale contest, that there is an opportunity to properly question, in somewhat of a public forum, what’s coming next?,” she told the BBC.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has written in the Mail on Sunday that her party would never sign up to an electoral pact with Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader.
“We are not the same, and voters are not ours to trade like football cards,” she wrote, as she claimed that Reform are in favour of a bigger state, nationalisation and “unfunded giveaways”. “Reform dress like Thatcherites but act like Corbynites,” Badenoch wrote.
“Farage may be trying to unite the right, I am trying to unite the country.” This statement jars with the reality of the Conservatives trying hard to win back some of their voters by adopting divisive Reform-like stances on issues such as immigration and asylum policy.
At national level, Badenoch, whose party has consistently trialled behind Reform in the polls, and Farage have both rejected talk that they could go into the next election with some sort of electoral pact.
A string of conservative MPs and former ministers have defected from the Tories to Reform over recent months, citing their disillusionment with the party. But their defections have led many to question how different Farage’s party is to previous Conservative administrations that he blames for huge failures in governance and policy – especially on immigration.
Heather Stewart
The Guardian’s economics editor, Heather Stewart, has written an interesting analysis piece suggesting it would be wise for Andy Burnham to set clear expectations about tax and spend if he is not to spook the bond markets in the likely event he becomes prime minister. Here is an extract from her analysis in our weekly economics viewpoint column:
Burnham’s every pronouncement – and that of whoever he picks as chancellor – will now be watched intently by the markets.
If his team are serious about nationalisation of key utilities, they may well want to borrow significantly more – something Rachel Reeves’s rules allow for, where the government gets a financial asset, such as a shareholding, in return.
The logic is that the nation’s balance sheet has barely changed, if it takes on a new liability to bondholders, but that’s matched with something that generates a financial return.
The bond markets may be wary of taking such a laid-back view, however, if a Burnham government cannot show that when it comes to day-to-day spending – pensions, benefits, public services – it has a plan to make ends meet.
Peter Walker
Under Labour party rules, any MP who wishes to challenge to be leader needs the backing of at least 20% of the parliamentary party, or 81 MPs.
The former health secretary, Wes Streeting, has pledged to seek the top job and says he has sufficient backers, but allies of Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham are sceptical.
His candidacy will become less likely if wavering Labour backbenchers conclude that they would prefer to back a likely winner and swing behind Burnham.
Starmer’s departure will set the UK on course for a seventh prime minister in 10 years, just two years after he led Labour to a sweeping general election victory, winning a majority of 174 seats.
His premiership has been battered by controversies and U-turns, including over winter fuel payments to older people and the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington.
Labour has slumped in the polls, and Starmer himself is enormously unpopular with much of the public. Reform UK has led for more than 300 consecutive national polls and many Labour MPs are increasingly convinced that without a change of leader, Nigel Farage will win the next election.
The former Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak has given Andy Burnham some advice in a piece for the Sunday Times. As a reminder, in July 2024 Sunak lost to Keir Starmer in what was the Tory party’s worst general election defeat in its parliamentary history. Sunak, who is still the MP for Richmond and Northallerton, wrote:
Burnham must recognise that if he reaches No 10, he’ll never have more power than on his first day in the job. It is vital he has a clear and achievable plan for what he wants to do in those opening hours.
Those around Burnham will want to get him there by forcing Starmer out through ministerial resignations and the like. Burnham shouldn’t want to become PM by default, though.
I remember on the morning after Boris Johnson dropped out in October 2022, I kept suggesting to my team that we should want a contest, that it would be good for us.
They assumed that I was just emotionally preparing for another candidate getting the necessary nominations and having to go through a leadership election. But I actually meant it. Without one, your mandate is weak, and you end up being bound by commitments that aren’t your priorities.
