Keir Starmer, left alone and without support, decided to step aside at the end of his political journey, preparing to hand over the office of prime minister to Andy Burnham.
In the statement delivered outside Downing Street, and amid emotions he was unable to hide, Starmer praised the efforts to achieve the “revival of a party that was politically, financially and morally broken,” but said that “The question my party is asking now is whether I am the right person to lead it into the next election.”
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He added: “My decision is to put the country first. For that reason, I am resigning. This morning I spoke with His Majesty, who has accepted my resignation.”
The head of the British government spent the weekend shut away in isolation, hoping he could withstand the pressure. In the end, however, he was forced to accept the situation: even the ministers closest to him asked him to set a timetable for his departure and for the transfer of power to Burnham, a process that could be concluded in September.
Burnham, now the mayor of Manchester, is preparing to become Britain’s seventh prime minister since the Brexit referendum. Ironically, the 10th anniversary of that referendum falls precisely tomorrow. David Cameron resigned immediately after the result of the vote held on June 23, 2016. After that, in the same way, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and now Keir Starmer all left one after the other.
Starmer had entered Downing Street just over two years ago, with an overwhelming two-thirds majority of seats in Parliament, Corriere della Sera recalls. But very quickly he became perhaps the least popular prime minister in modern British history, even more unpopular than Boris Johnson or Liz Truss, who in just seven weeks brought Britain to the brink of a financial crisis.
“I do not understand politics,” he had once admitted, a statement which, according to experts, does not sound at all reassuring for someone seeking to govern a country. In essence, Starmer always remained what he had been: a lawyer and former attorney general, shaped by law and procedure, but not by the backstage dealings, intrigues and ideological clashes of Westminster.
