Keir Starmer has informed King Charles III of his intention to depart 10 Downing Street. By September, the U.K. will have its seventh prime minister in the span of a decade. It¡¯s all but certain now that the man taking the helm of the good ship Great Britain will be Andy Burnham.
There are many reasons Burnham may struggle to do much better than Starmer leading a country that, since the Brexit referendum a decade ago, has come to be described as almost ungovernable. Those problems have been examined in great detail in recent days. But it feels churlish to dwell on the impediments today. Why not focus on the many opportunities that, with a fair wind, mean Burnham could actually turn out to be a success?
First, there¡¯s the manner of his victory. Famously, the Labour Party finds it far more psychologically difficult to rid itself of a failing leader than do the rather more ruthless Conservatives (responsible for all but one of the personnel changes at No. 10 in the last decade). In acting decisively, Labour has shed a leader in Starmer who, perhaps unfairly, the public never took to and by the end had come to loathe.
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