Britain could have a new Prime Minister as early as mid-July after Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday, June 22. The announcement came amid widespread discontent with Starmer’s policies and mounting calls for him to step down. Newly elected parliamentarian Andy Burnham, former mayor of Greater Manchester, is widely expected to replace Starmer as both prime minister and Labour Party leader.
Left and progressive critics have denounced the Starmer administration for failing to address working-class concerns and endorsing Europe’s regional military buildup. Beyond economic policy, they have also emphasized Starmer’s support for Israel throughout the Gaza genocide – including his government’s refusal to implement an arms embargo on Israel and their crackdown on the Palestine solidarity movement and civil rights in general.
“Keir Starmer could have ended child poverty, homelessness and the grotesque levels of inequality in this country,” Your Party’s Jeremy Corbyn – whom Starmer helped oust from the Labour Party – wrote in reaction. “Instead, he abandoned those in need, destroyed our civil liberties and facilitated genocide in Gaza. That is how this Prime Minister will be remembered – and that is the legacy of moral and political bankruptcy he leaves behind.”
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Corbyn’s party colleague Zarah Sultana highlighted Starmer’s involvement in several high-level scandals that have shaken the Labour Party recently, including the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States despite his close association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “A man who gave the top diplomatic job to the ‘best pal’ of a convicted pedophile, said Israel has the right to cut off water and electricity to Gaza, rolled out the red carpet for Israeli war criminals, and kept the weapons flowing to the Israeli military as it committed genocide,” Sultana wrote of Starmer.
“Ultimately, Starmer will go down as one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers in British history,” the Peace & Justice Project echoed. “In less than two years, he has gone from a historic landslide to a Labour government on the brink of political extinction.”
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Over the past two years, Starmer’s cabinet has also walked back many pledges from the 2024 campaign, cutting welfare, continuing the privatization of health services, and failing to take decisive action on the cost-of-living crisis. When progress was made – such as scrapping the two-child benefit cap – it only happened under intense pressure from both Labour members and the public.
In the context of economic policy, left-wing analysts point to Starmer’s continuation of austerity-driven policies previously advanced by Conservative governments. “Starmer and his Chancellor are playing the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetuated by the City of London, throwing in for good measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a ‘Strategic Defense Review’,” wrote former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. “It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers.”
As a result, trade unions that have backed Labour for decades have recently expressed extreme discontent, signaling they might cut ties with the party and consider backing others as a more progressive alternative to the far-right Reform and other right-wing options.
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Looking ahead, several trade union leaders emphasized that the new Prime Minister must honor promises to bring services like transport and water into public hands and oppose anti-migrant and racist rhetoric.
“The next Prime Minister has an opportunity to break with tinkering around the edges and deliver a complete transformation of this country, permanently shifting wealth and power to working class people,” stated Andrea Egan, head of the public services union UNISON. “Schools, hospitals, councils and transport – and the public service heroes working in them, keeping our country running – must be the fiscal priority, not the military and foreign wars.”
“Whoever replaces Keir Starmer needs to be clear that the status quo has to change,” said Fire Brigades Union leader Steve Wright. “The reason we find ourselves with yet another PM standing down is that, like May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak before him, Starmer failed to break with the perceived wisdom of attacking public services, failing to tackle wealth inequality, whilst letting privatized public utilities rip off the people of this country. A new Labour leader needs to learn that lesson and learn it fast.”
Ana Vračar , June 24, 2026
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