Burnham must break with Starmer's dishonest politics, or fail just like him Submitted by Jonathan Cook on Tue, 06/23/2026 - 21:05 Even if likely successor Andy Burnham wants change, he'll face formidable external controls and internal constraints from the Labour machine Prime Minister Keir Starmer announces his resignation in London on 22 June 2026, after a term characterised by policy U-turns and deep public unpopularity (Henry Nicholls/AFP) On Keir Starmer’s announcement on Monday that he was stepping down as Labour leader - and therefore as Britain ’s prime minister - is a remarkable turnaround for the man whose election victory less than two years ago was uniformly heralded as a triumph. In fact, Starmer rode into 10 Downing Street on a grand deception, propped up by the UK’s establishment media, that has proven the key to his undoing.  This was a disaster foretold. And Andy Burnham , his likely successor, could well find himself in the same boat a year or two hence - unless he radically rethinks his party’s strategy on a range of domestic and foreign-policy issues.  Labour won by a landslide in 2024, gaining around two-thirds of the parliamentary seats on a third of the national turnout, thanks to the UK’s dysfunctional first-past-the-post electoral system.