Keyword – Politics
Trefwoorden – Politics, UK news, Keir Starmer, Labour party leadership, Andy Burnham, Labour, House of Commons, Nigel Farage, Zack Polanski, Green party, Reform UK, Ursula von der Leyen, Anthony Albanese, Jeremy Corbyn, Your Party, Micheál Martin, Mark Carney, Opinion polls, Anas Sarwar, Kemi Badenoch
Title – Andy Burnham sworn in as an MP after Keir Starmer resigns as prime minister – as it happened | Politics | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/vivian-ho,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/andrewsparrow,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/severincarrell,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jessica-elgot,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jennifer-rankin,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/matthewweaver,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sallyweale,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jakub-krupa,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/stevenmorris,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/peterwalker,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/benquinn
Link – Andy Burnham sworn in as an MP after Keir Starmer resigns as prime minister – as it happened | Politics | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-22T19:50:59.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/jun/22/keir-starmer-resignation-timeable-andy-burnham-labour-leadership-prime-minister-latest-news-updates
Andy Burnham sworn in as MP for Makerfield
Lindsay Hoyle says, in a particularly loud voice, ‘we now come to Andy Burnham , member for Makerfield.”
There is a heckle from Desmond Swayne.
And Burnham takes the oath.
Summary
Keir Starmer announced that he is resigning as prime minister following days of intense pressure from Labour MPS, paving the way for the newly elected Andy Burnham to take over at Downing Street.
A new prime minister is set to take over by mid July if Burham runs unopposed, or by the end of August if there’s an election.
Nigel Farage , leader of Reform UK , has called for a general election, claiming that it is “ridiculous to pretend that Andy Burnham has any kind of meaningful mandate to lead the country.”
Wes Streeting has confirmed that he won’t stand as a candidate for the Labour leadership, saying that a contest where candidates spend the summer “exaggerating small differences” would not be good for the party or the country. Having spoken to Burnham, he said he was confident that that there is “a place” for the policies he has been advocating under a Burnham premiership.
Andy Burnham traveled from Manchester to London to be sworn in as MP of Makerfield. Labour MPs turned up en masse in Westminster Hall to pose for photographs. Chancellor Rachel Reeves was there as well to greet Burnham, though she was not present outside No 10 for Keir Starmer’s resignation as prime minister this morning.
The UK-EU summit scheduled for 22 July has been postponed to allow new PM more time to prepare. Tributes to Starmer and his premiership have been coming in from European leaders all day, with Ursula von der Leyen , the European Commission president, posting that “European and Ukrainian security is stronger because of you” and Volodymyr Zelenskyy , the Ukrainian president, thanking Starmer for “always being in touch, always engaged, and always striving to do what is needed and what will truly help”.
Lord Neil Kinnock , former leader of the Labour party, was on LBC’s Tonight With Andrew Marr to say that he believes Keir Starmer resigned due to his “really seriously bad judgments, some of which had a real effect on people’s lives”,
“His greatest flaw is his inability to appoint really effective, honest, independently minded advisors,” Kinnock said.
However, Kinnock commended Starmer on his “absolutely irrepressible sense of duty”.
“With the tawdriness of politics, it’s difficult for people to grasp, and I understand why, that there is honour, there is duty, there is commitment, there is integrity, and he showed a lot today,” he said.
Andy Burnham called for a general election during the Conservatives’ leadership crisis in 2022 after Boris Johnson resigned, BBC Verify has revealed.
The new MP for Makerfield declined to answer a question today over whether there should be a general election if he becomes prime minister.
But the fact-checking team at the BBC has found several Tweets by Burnham where he said a general election was needed after Conservative leader Johnson resigned, plunging the Tories into chaos.
“We need to start demanding a General Election at the end of this Tory leadership election”, Burnham said on July 13 2022. “They were all elected on a manifesto promise to level up the North and are all abandoning it.”
Britain will soon have its fifth prime minister in four years. How did we get here and what challenges await Keir Starmer’s successor?
Ben Quinn , our political correspondent, explains what will happen next in UK politics after the prime minister’s resignation.
Former home secretary Alan Johnson was on BBC Radio 5 Live with some advice for Andy Burnham : “Be brave Andy, be brave.”
Johnson’s idea of being brave is for Burnham to “go to the country”.
“It’ll be a very bold thing to do,” Johnson said. “It might set a precedent that others in the future will have to follow, but it will help restore trust in politics, and that is Andy’s big plus. He can’t do that and say, oh, but I’m going to do what every other previous leader who waltzed into Downing Street without any consultation with the public… “…Because if he doesn’t go to the country, he has got to follow the mandate and the manifesto of Keir Starmer and he’s criticised big chunks of that.”
The former home secretary applauded Burnham for standing in Makerfield , calling it “bold stuff”.
“You have to continue that boldness,” Johnson said.
YouGov poll: 62% of Britons say Keir Starmer right to resign
Six in 10 Britons (62%) think Keir Starmer was right to quit, while one in five (19%) think he was wrong, according to new YouGov polling conducted after Starmer announced his resignation.
Of those who voted Labour in 2024, 52% thought he was right to resign while 28% wish he had stayed in office.
When asked how Starmer performed as prime minister , 21% thought he did a poor job while 29% thought he did a terrible job. However, 28% thought he was an “average” prime minister, while 13% thought he was good and 2% thought he was great.
Among Labour voters, 33% thought Starmer did a good or great job while 28% considered him average.
Meanwhile, 39% of those polled believe that Labour MPs will look back in a few years and be glad Starmer was forced to resign but 26% expect they will come to regret the situation.
Among Labour voters, 31% said they think Labour MPs will be glad Starmer was forced to resign, while 34% think they’ll regret it.
The Guardian’s Lucy Hough speaks to senior political correspondent Peter Walker on the latest Today In Focus about today’s happenings:
The latest edition of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly UK podcast is out. It features Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey talking about Keir Starmer’s resignation.
That’s all from me for today. Vivian Ho is taking over now.
Keir Starmer gave a private speech to No 10, after his public resignation announcement, thanking them for their work, Emilio Casalicchio and Noah Keate report in their London Playbook PM briefing. They say:
Once the door was closed, Starmer made another speech thanking staff — in particular those who have been there from the start. He said the super-human effort, moments of kindness and extra hours worked were all for the good of the nation and had been noted and appreciated. “It will make a difference to people who you will never meet, who will never know what you did,” he told them, according to one paraphrased account that others confirmed. “That’s what really matters.” He also thanked those who worked in the building to look after his wife and kids, and spent time talking to people one-on-one in the garden over teas and coffees.
Farage condemns Burnham as ‘another professional politician’
The JL Partners polling explains why Reform UK is so alarmed about the prospect of Andy Burnham becoming PM. (See 5.01pm .) In a statement issued earlier, Nigel Farage , the Reform UK leader, said:
I’ve had enough of waiting around. Britain needs change – real change, not another washed-up has-been shoved into place by the uniparty.
If Labour thinks it can shove another professional politician into No 10, it has another thing coming. Reform is ready for an election, and we are ready to deliver radical change.
It’s a bit rich for Farage to criticise Burnham as a “professional politician”. Farage himself was first elected as a parliamentarian (an MEP) in 1999, two years before Burnham was first elected as an MP. And “bit rich” is an understatement when it comes to describing how much Farage himself now earns from second jobs linked to the celebrity he has achieved as politician.
Last week Deltapoll published some polling suggesting that, with Labour led by Keir Starmer, Reform UK would be 8 points ahead of Labour in an election, but with Andy Burnham leading the government instead, Reform’s lead would be just 1 point.
Today another polling company, JL Partners, has released polling suggesting that people think Reform UK would win an election with an 18-point lead if Starmer were leader, but that with Burnham as leader they think Labour would be on course for a 2-point win.
UPDATE: The JL Partners figures are not from a voting intention poll (how people would vote); they are from a poll of what people would expect the result to be, which is different. I have changed the language in the second paragraph to make that clear.
Jonathan Freedland has an excellent account of where it all went wrong for Keir Starmer . Here is an extract.
Perhaps there was a time when voters would have given a newly elected PM a few years to turn things around, but those days are long gone. The electorate is impatient now, demanding almost instant results. That process has been intensified and accelerated by social media, which does not merely put the worst possible gloss on the actions and motives of those in its sights, but distorts public figures out of all recognition. Labour canvassers for the May elections were shocked to find voters who were not just disappointed in Starmer but harboured a visceral loathing for him – who saw him in almost demonic terms. They were reacting to an invention untethered to reality, but one pushed and promoted by Elon Musk and his X platform especially.
Given all that he faced, historians might be impressed with what Starmer achieved. In his resignation speech, he highlighted his transformation of the Labour party, the fall in NHS waiting lists and the lifting of half a million children out of poverty, along with a raft of workers’ and renters’ rights that, say Starmer’s advocates, sits at the centre of a record of progressive accomplishment that bears comparison to the first two years of the 1945 government. They also credit Starmer with boosting Britain’s standing on the world stage, the canny statecraft that kept Donald Trump’s US engaged on Ukraine and which kept the UK out of Trump’s doomed war with Iran – a decision that takes its place alongside that of Starmer’s hero, Harold Wilson, to abstain from the war in Vietnam. At all this, say Starmer’s friends, he was brilliantly adept. But, sighs one, “This is not an age of substance, it’s an age of sheen – and he was just not very good at that.”
And here is the full article.
A reader asks:
Is there any realistic possibility that Keir Starmer might be offered a ministerial post in an Andy Burnham government? There was some speculation a while back that Burnham might ask him to be Foreign Secretary, for example. His legal background might also make him a good Attorney General, or perhaps even Justice Secretary.
Short answer: No.
There is precedent for a former PM coming back to serve as foreign secretary. Alec Douglas-Home did that, as did David Cameron.
But I can’t think of any precedent, at least in modern history, for someone stepping down as PM one week and then turning up to cabinet the following week in a more junior role. There is far too much bitterness between Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham to imagine that happening; even if there wasn’t, you might imagine that an ex-PM would want time to adjust to their reduced status before rejoining the cabinet.
Cameron resigned in 2016 and did not become foreign secretary until 2023. Douglas-Home lost an election in 1964 and did not become foreign secretary until 1970. He did become shadow foreign secretary in 1965, when Ted Heath replaced him as leader. But there was no particular animus between them; Douglas-Home had not been forced out. And, in those days, a shadow cabinet job was more part-time than it is now.
Badenoch claims Starmer having to resign because he ‘failed on national security’
In the Commons Kemi Badenoch , the Conservative leader, has been responding to David Lammy’s statement about last week’s G7 summit. She criticised Andy Burnham for not being present himself, claiming he was “more interested in his leadership bid than Britain’s national security”.
She went on:
If [Burnham] becomes prime minister, he will be briefed by the heads of our military about Britain’s reducing ability to defend herself, let alone Ukraine.
In order to fund defence, we need more money, not more speeches at summits. He will find that Britain is not able to borrow any more money. He will find that it has all been spent on welfare. He will realise that this government is providing export finance to rebuild Ukraine’s energy system while crippling our own, reducing sanctions on Russian oil while sanctioning oil from Aberdeen.
She accused Labour MPs of “living in La-La Land” on defence. And she went on:
The prime minister is resigning because he failed on national security. He appointed a known security risk as our ambassador to Washington. He is destroying our energy security, which is national security, and he is refusing to fund the defence investment plan needed to keep our country safe.
Responding to Badenoch, David Lammy , the deputy PM, sarcastically thanked the Tory leader for her “generosity and constructive suggestions” and said Starmer had left the UK “stronger and fairer” than it was before.
A reader asks:
@Andrew: Can Lucy Powell remain deputy leader if Burnham becomes leader? I presume not, which probably means she will be given a cabinet role in exchange, right?
She can. In fact, she must. Lucy Powell is the only Labour MP with a senior post who is elected to her role, and that means she cannot be sacked. She is also a fellow north-west MP who is a friend of Andy Burnham’s, and so her prospects are looking good. One theory is that she could be appointed deputy PM – or co-deputy PM, if Burnham decides to keep David Lammy in post.