And Starmer Makes Six, Why Britain Can’t Keep a Prime Minister

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1:43Wendy Benjaminson:Podcasts. Radio. News. Every decision I've taken has been about putting the country I love first.

1:51Edward Evans:That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party.

1:57Wendy Benjaminson:Less than two years into the job, Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer is stepping down.

2:02Edward Evans:It's an extraordinary turnaround in his political fortunes. This is somebody who won a landslide majority in 2024, the 174-seat majority, something Labour hadn't won since the days of Tony Blair.

2:15Wendy Benjaminson:Bloomberg editor Edward Evans says Starmer suffered a series of early missteps.

2:21Edward Evans:Nobody was quite clear what the policy was, what the big picture was.

2:24Wendy Benjaminson:Then this May, Starmer's Labour Party had a disastrous showing in local elections. That prompted about a quarter of his party's MPs to call on him to resign. That resignation leaves the UK facing its seventh leader since the country's Brexit vote 10 years ago.

2:44Wendy Benjaminson:This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Wendy Benjaminson, in for David Gurra and Sarah Holder. Today on the show, how did the UK get here? Who's next in line to replace Starmer? And can Britain's next PM hold on to the top spot longer than he did?

3:06Wendy Benjaminson:Less than two years is not a long time to last as Britain's prime minister, But Edward Evans tells me Starmer's downfall has been underway from the beginning.

3:15Edward Evans:Very quickly he came in and there were a series of early missteps that really started to undercut his authority. There was an attempt to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners, which he put through, which was incredibly unpopular with many in his party, particularly on the left. But it was then subsequently reversed. There was also an attempt to cut benefit payments, again, later reversed. So you saw at that point, you know, blood was in the water. Its political authority was starting to drain away. Then, of course, more recently, we had the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK ambassador to the US.

3:50Edward Evans:Mandelson, as it subsequently emerged, was a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein. That was particularly damaging for Starmer because this was an appointment that Downing Street had particularly gone out of its way to put through. And it's one of the most, if not the most, senior post in the diplomatic service and one that's absolutely crucial right now with Donald Trump. Then you fast forward to the local elections, a disastrous result for Labour, and many in his party in Westminster were extremely nervous at that point about their own seats if the party continued on that course. And then more recently still, he lost his defence secretary over a dispute over increased defence spending.

4:25Edward Evans:And then, you know, above all this, you know, this fiscal straitjacket that the government's been operating under, a set of rules essentially imposed by the Chancellor, and they hold that the Chancellor must balance day-to-day spending with tax revenues by 2029-30 and reduce debt as a share of GDP by the same point. There's very little room to increase borrowing. There's very little room to increase spending. And squaring that circle has proved impossible for Starmer with his own party.

4:54Wendy Benjaminson:You mentioned the Peter Mandelson appointment, which I'm interested in where it ranks in all of these problems that Starmer had in his term. Because as you know, in the United States, almost no one has faced any consequences for their relationships with Epstein. And this has not only cost Peter Mandelson his job, but now Keir Starmer as well.

5:13Edward Evans:I think the point with Mandelson was it's a political appointment and it was made clearly by Downing Street. So this was very much on the prime minister's own judgment too. it came out over a period of days and weeks, and you had the drip, drip, drip of news. And Parliament took the unusual step, actually, of forcing Downing Street to release a lot of the papers surrounding the appointment of Peter Mandelson. So again, that dragged the whole process out even further.

5:41Wendy Benjaminson:So the favourite right now to lead Britain is Andy Burnham, who was just sworn into Parliament today. Who is he, and why has he become a major player so quickly?

5:49Edward Evans:I think the first thing to say, he's a long-term figure in the Labour Party. This is not someone who's a stranger to Labour. He's grown up in the Labour movement and has been active in it since the days of the Blair governments. He was, I think, most recently known for being mayor of Manchester. And I think that was the really, you saw the political reinvention of Andy Burnham. He came out colloquially known as the King of the North and the emergence of this thing called Manchesterism, which is essentially a mix of state control. He nationalised the local buses in Manchester, mixed with working with business to promote development.

6:25Edward Evans:And, you know, if you look at Manchester skyline over recent years, there has been a huge, huge change there. Before Manchester, he was a Labour MP for many years. And it's important to note this is someone who he ran for the Labour leadership in 2010 and lost. He ran in 2015 again and lost to Jeremy Corbyn. So this is somebody who's no stranger to the Labour Party.

6:45Wendy Benjaminson:So, Edward, last week, Burnham won a seat in Parliament during a by-election, which is a special election to fill an empty seat representing Makerfield in northwest England. Why was that significant?

6:56Edward Evans:Well, firstly, it was extraordinary. There was a by-election in the first place. In the previous MP, you know, just being elected, Simons had to step down to clear the way for Burnham to do it. Normally, by-elections caused by the resignation or the death of somebody in office. This was essentially somebody stepping aside to create room for Burnham. You can't be party leader unless you're in Parliament here. The vote itself was interesting. I mean, Makerfield, the constituency, it's a northern seat. It's very close to where Burnham grew up. It's an area he knows. The fight there was against reform.

7:31Edward Evans:Now, this is Nigel Farage's party. They did very well at the local elections very recently in the local elections in Makerfield. They had great hopes with their candidate. Now, obviously, Burnham beat him and beat him by a much bigger margin, I think, than people had expected. So I think, you know, for that election, I think there have been question marks now about, you know, Farage and peak reform. But for Burnham, it's really a sign that many in Labour are taking it as a sign as somebody who can energise the electorate and can bring political support and popular support that's been lacking.

8:04Wendy Benjaminson:And maybe some parallels to the upcoming U.S. midterm elections. But tell me about Burnham's possible path to Downing Street from where he is today.

8:13Edward Evans:There is a process. Nominations for party leadership will open on July the 9th and close on July 16th. Assuming nobody else runs, Burnham could then become prime minister, essentially. If it does go to a vote, if another candidate does emerge, and I must stress at this point that looks unlikely, one a possible contender where streeting fell in line behind Burnham earlier today, But it is possible somebody else comes out of the woodwork. Then it would go to a vote of Labour members and you would see a result in early September. Starmer, it's important to note, would obviously remain prime minister until the new leader is appointed by the party.

8:54Wendy Benjaminson:And if Burnham does become PM, he'll be able to appoint his own cabinet. That will include the chancellor of the exchequer, which is equivalent to the U.S. Treasury secretary.

9:04Edward Evans:I think that's going to be a really big moment. It will send a big signal about the direction of the government. Is he going to go more radical? Is he going to go and be continuity? Now, there are two names that are in all sorts of names in the frame. Obviously, Ed Miliband has been name has been suggested. Wes Streeting's name, I think, has also been suggested to potentially very different paths. The question for Burnham is how much of a break is he going to represent with Starmer? And if he is going to break with Starmer's government, the difficulty he's got is that he has not won a general election and won a mandate from the electorate.

9:42Edward Evans:And so there are questions about, you know, does he then possibly go and call another general election? He's been quite careful not to rule that in or out today. He's been a bit cagey around that. We talk about him being elected prime minister. He's being appointed essentially by his own party. He hasn't faced a popular vote. And without that, does he have a popular mandate?

9:59Wendy Benjaminson:Edward, you mentioned a general election. Britain has to call the next one by August 15th, 2029. So the next PM could actually be in the job for quite a while.

10:08Edward Evans:The general election date, that's the last date it can be held by. But the prime minister has the power, obviously, to call a general election at any point before then. It's a tremendously useful political power if you're prime minister. The question for Burnham is, does he go long? Does he wait for something to improve? Does he bet that things will turn around over time? Or does he say, look, I want to do something more radical. We've got to break free of these fiscal rules that were set by previous governments and adopted by the previous Labour government. You know, I want to take a more radical line on things like Brexit and the relationship with the European Union.

10:41Edward Evans:And to do that, I need to take that to the people. Again, that's really his political, one of his early big political calls he's going to have to make.

10:49Wendy Benjaminson:After the break, how a new PM might handle Trump and how Starmer's downfall reflects the changing British Party system.

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13:55Edward Evans:British politics can be famously brutal at times.

14:00Wendy Benjaminson:That's Bloomberg's Edward Evans, about yet another British prime minister forced to resign.