by Stephen Fisher, 15^th July 2026 

Many people are somewhat bemused by Keir Starmer’s resignation as prime minister. Some quite like him and struggle to understand why others do not. Some were unimpressed but did not think he was quite so bad, especially under difficult circumstances. Other prime ministers left office after much more obvious failings or dishonesty, or after having been around for too long. Starmer’s resignation is harder to attribute to any particular mistake. It was ultimately, if not purely, because he and his government had become too unpopular, too quickly, with no sign of recovery. For Labour to have a chance of winning the next election, Starmer had to go.

In his resignation statement Starmer, said, “the question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question. And I accept that answer with good grace.” 

It will never be clear exactly when Labour MPs ran out of patience with a prime minister that was presiding over disastrous polling and election results. But to understand why Starmer was forced to resign we have to understand why he became so unpopular so quickly with the voters. 

This post examines the trajectory of Labour’s support in the polls and elections over the last two years to try to identify which events did the most damage. The large majority of the most controversial developments had no discernible impact on Labour support. Indeed, those after October 2025 happened when Labour were essentially flatlining in the polls. Before that there were essentially three main phases: a brief honeymoon with a +3 point bounce in July 2024; a -12 point drop in Labour support from July to December 2024; and a further -7 point drop from December 2024 to October 2025. Both drops involved remarkably smooth and steady decline, rather than a series of downward steps. That suggests gradually mounting dissatisfaction from those who voted Labour, or a drip feed of disappointing news, rather than a few particular events driving down support for Labour. Even though the impact of events on public opinion typically take a while to be fully realised, major events have immediate as well as gradually incrementing effects. There were no such major events with a measurable immediate impact on Labour support in the polls, with one major exception.

That exception, and what ended the July 2024 honeymoon for Labour, was the announcement that Winter Fuel Payments would be restricted to the very poorest pensioners, but also, on the same day, the Southport murders and subsequent riots. Those events were followed by an immediate 3 to 4 point drop in Labour support and marked the start of an unprecedentedly fast and steep decline. That then translated into poor election results, including the loss of 66% of the seats they defended at the May 2025 local elections. That summer, there was sufficient discontent for Andy Burnham to publicly discuss a leadership challenge. Starmer was still powerful enough within the party to thwart Burnham’s first attempt to return to parliament. But ever since Labour were pushed into third place by the Greens and Reform at the Gorton and Denton by-election, in February 2026, there has been a long drawn-out process of leadership change. First there was a wait for the elections in May, where Labour suffered their worst ever Scottish Parliament result, their first election loss in Wales since 1935, and lost 58% of the councils and 58% of the council seats they were defending in England. Then there was a wait for Burnham to return to parliament in June. After that, the game was up for Starmer. 

Since most of the decline in Labour support was so relentlessly steady, it is essentially impossible to pin the blame for it solely on the events at the starting point or any particular subset of the numerous persistent and chronic difficulties for the government and the country as a whole. Perhaps the government could have recovered from their early mistakes, but I leave it for others to judge whether Starmer was ever capable of doing so or whether there was something in the international, economic, fiscal, public service, party political, parliamentary, media, social media, and other circumstances that would have stymied even the most charismatic, visionary, and competent prime minister.

The next section reviews the circumstances of Starmer’s election victory and inheritance before examining the trajectory of support for Labour over the last two years. The penultimate two-sections discuss the period from the May 2026 local elections to Starmer’s resignation and the immediate aftermath of that resignation. The final section briefly discusses some of the challenges and prospects for Andy Burnham. 

The starting point

Keir Starmer led Labour to an extraordinary election victory on 4th July 2024, more than doubling their seats from 31% of the House of Commons to 63%. But within a year support for Labour in the polls dropped from 35% of the GB vote at the election to 23%. That twelve-point drop is the worst for any government ever. Moreover, three-quarters of that drop happened between August and December 2024: the fastest rate of decline for any government.

Some say Labour won a “loveless landslide” or “sandcastle majority” that could “easily be swept away.” In 2005, Tony Blair won a comfortable majority with 36% of the vote: just one point more than Starmer achieved. Blair was still polling in the mid to low thirties a year later. There was nothing inevitable about the speed and scale of Starmer’s collapse based purely on the starting level of support for Labour. However, Starmer started with net negative favourability (-18 points) and the most common reason for voting Labour was simply to get rid of the Conservatives. With so little positive feeling for Labour at the start, perhaps we should not be surprised that things turned sour very quickly.

The previous Conservative government was comprehensively rejected at the 2024 election, securing the party’s worst result since they were founded nearly two centuries ago. Healthcare, the economy, immigration, and inflation were the main public concerns going into that election. The new Labour government inherited a substantial set of problems to fix including the longest hospital waiting lists on record, people struggling to access GPs, prisons near capacity, local authority bankruptcies, standards of living lower than they were five years prior, public sector debt over 80% of GDP, budget plans from the previous government with an historically low headroom, projected large real term cuts for unprotected government departments, persistent low economic growth, declining public services, prolonged pay disputes, and tens of thousands of irregular migrants arriving by small boats crossing the channel. Many of those problems arguably had their roots in or were exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis, Brexit, and the Covid pandemic. 

Where did it all go wrong?

There were only two polls in July 2024 after the general election. They were the only two polls to ever record more than 35% support for Labour under Starmer in government (giving Labour 39% in 11-12 July and 36% in 25-26 July). They need to be treated with caution as they are only two polls and they came from We Think who only did one further poll, in early August 2024. Since the 33% for Labour in that poll was in line with the findings of the only other polls conducted in early August (from BMG Research 33% and Stonehaven 32%), and since poll figures from those organisations were broadly in line with those from other organisations later on in 2024, we can have some confidence that Starmer’s government had a honeymoon period in July 2024 after their landslide victory.

There were two major developments on 29^th July 2024. Rachel Reeves surprisingly announced on 29^th July 2024 that around 10 million pensioners would no longer receive Winter Fuel Payments, which would be restricted to those on means-tested benefits. On the same day, far-right anti-immigration riots were sparked after three young girls were killed in a knife attack at a dance party in Southport. Although polls around this time are sparse there was a clear 3 or 4 point drop in Labour support from what it was immediately before the announcement to the three polls within the subsequent fortnight.

The first poll to ask about both issues, by BMG Research from 5-7 August 2024, suggests some dissatisfaction with the government among Labour voters regarding both developments. Only 44% of 2024 Labour voters supported the means testing of Winter Fuel Payments, while 33% were opposed. The government’s handling of the riots received stronger support among Labour voters, with 53% saying Starmer and Cooper handled the riots well, but still 19% saying they handled the riots badly. However, a YouGov poll from 5-6 August 2024 showed that most Labour voters blamed social media, the news media, and Nigel Farage for the riots. Only 13% of them attributed much responsibility to the government. 

Disapproval of limiting Winter Fuel Payments to the very poorest pensioners seems to have grown over time (partly because of the way the debate was framed) and resulted in longer lasting disapproval of the government. In October 2024, Savanta found that more 2024 Labour voters disapproved than approved of the policy and YouGov found that was the policy change which voters were both most aware of and most negative about. The legislative process and legal challenges to means testing continued into November 2024, prolonging the controversy. After the government partly reversed their decision in June 2025 to extend the payment to pensioners with incomes of £35,000 or less, Ipsos found 71% support and just 9% opposition. Popular though that U-turn may have been, it did not lead to any rise in support for Labour. Later in June 2025, almost a year after the announcement, More in Common found people overwhelmingly pointed to “Winter Fuel Allowance” as “Labour’s biggest failure”. So, while the initial drop in Labour support was just 3 or 4 points, the full effects of the Winter Fuel Payments announcement seemingly took some time to develop and be reflected in vote intention (as apparently happened after the ERM crisis in 1992).

From August 2024 to December 2024, support for Labour dropped one or two percentage points every month, and by an average of 1.5 points a month. The very consistent and steady rate of decline was not disrupted by any particular events in that period, but the increasingly negative attitude to Starmer and the government may have been compounded by various developments, including: Starmer’s speech, on 27 August 2024, warning of “tough” times, “short term pain” and how “things will get worse before they get better” (see commentary here); news in September 2024 that Starmer and other senior Labour figures accepted and apparently failed to declare gifts from Lord Alli including clothing, glasses and tickets to concerts and sports events, some £6k of which Starmer was forced to pay back; mistakes and concerns regarding the early release of prisoners; resignation of Sue Gray as Starmer’s chief of staff on 6 October 2024 and corresponding concerns about the effectiveness of government; increases in employers’ National Insurance and Capital Gains tax at the 2024 Autumn Budget; farmers’ inheritance tax protests in November 2024; and the resignation of Louise Haigh as transport secretary after the revelation of a fraud offence.

Autumn 2024 also roughly marks the start of negative market expectations and worsening interest rates for government borrowing. Although the Labour manifesto pledged to prioritise growth, the CBI’s measure of net expectations of private sector companies has been consistently and substantially negative since September 2024. 

As well as various controversial policy choices in late 2024, the government also developed a narrative of blaming others for things going wrong that had limited acceptability from the public. Labour blamed the previous Conservative government for leaving a “mess”, including a contested claim that there was a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances. On 5 December 2024, Starmer apparently blamed the civil service for the government’s failure to deliver substantial change saying that too many in Whitehall were, “comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline.” 

There were positives for the government over this period, including the resolution of strikes and pay disputes with train drivers, junior doctors, and nurses and healthcare staff; ending of the riots, introduction of legislation to establish GB Energy, the record-breaking renewable energy auction, the Employment Rights Bill, the Budget Responsibility Act to prevent another Liz Truss style mini-Budget without an OBR assessment, rail renationalisation, introduction of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, higher levels of capital investment through revised fiscal rules, and increasedhealth, education and transport spending. However, as Peter Kellner explains, voters did not credit the government with the successes. When asked by More in Common in June 2025 what, “has been Labour’s biggest achievement in government” a large majority said, “nothing”. 

There are some signs that Kemi Badenoch’s election as Conservative Party leader on 2 November 2024 contributed to Labour’s declining support as there was a 0.9-point average swing from Labour to the Conservatives (including a 0.75-point average drop in the Labour vote) based on four pollsters who conducted surveys both shortly before and shortly after Badenoch’s election. But Conservative support subsequently fell again by the end of 2024, at which point YouGov reported that familiarity with Kemi Badenoch “has bred contempt”. So, her leadership did not clearly contribute to the decline of Labour.

There is similarly no sign that Peter Mandelson’s appointment, on 19 December 2024, as ambassador to the USA had any effect on Labour’s support in the polls at the time. 

Labour ended 2024 at 26% in the polls, down a record -9 points from 35% at the general election. According to YouGov, Starmer then had a net favourability of -41 points (down from -18 immediately before the election), with 66% expressing a negative view of the prime minister, including 36% of Labour voters. The same poll found the economy continued to be the biggest concern among all voters, including 55% of Labour voters. Most 2024 Labour voters were by this point saying they thought the government was handling key issues badly, especially the economy (51%), the NHS (55%), and immigration (50%). 

It was not just the polls showing dissatisfaction with Labour in the middle of last year. Between August 2024 and April 2025, Labour’s -35 net losses at local by-elections amounted to 32% of the seats they were defending. At the local elections in May 2025, Labour lost 66% of their seats and control of the one council they were defending. They only won 98 seats, little more than the 79 secured by the Greens. The BBC Projected National Share of the local election vote put Labour on just 20%, down from 34% in 2024. That was the lowest level for Labour since the 2009 local elections which were held in the aftermath of both the financial crisis and MPs’ expenses crisis and heralded Labour’s loss at the 2010 general election. 

On the same day, Labour narrowly lost the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election to Reform, a seat that Labour had won with a majority of 34.8 points over Reform at the general election less than a year before. 

There was little sign of an increase in support for Labour in the polls after Starmer successfully persuaded US president, Donald Trump, to reduce tariff on some UK cars and metals on 8 May 2025. Nor was there in June 2015 when Trump putthe first part of the UK-US tariff deal into effect. Similarly, none of the changing positions of the Trump administration on the transfer of sovereignty over the Chagos Islands from the UK to Mauritius (ultimately resulting in the deal being shelved) made any clear difference to levels of support for Labour in the polls.

Late May and June 2025 saw a series of government U-turns: on Winter Fuel Payments (21 May); a full national statutory inquiry into grooming gangs (14 June); and planned cuts to disability benefits (26 June). Also, on 27 June, Kier Stamer publicly regretted saying that the UK risked becoming “an island of strangers” in a speech about immigration on 12 May 2025.  As with later U-turns, on the two-child benefit limit (26 November) and compulsory digital ID (14 January 2026), there is no sign that any of these U-turns had immediate effects — either positive or negative — on support for Labour in the polls. It is unclear to what extent those U-turns affected Labour support by contributing to broader narratives about government competence and the power of Labour back benchers. By the time the May and June 2025 U-turns were announced Labour were already as low as 23% in the polls. Perhaps they contributed to the 2-point drop between June and September 2025. U-turns after October 2025 were all accompanied by Labour polling that remained flat until Starmer resigned. Certainly none of them can be said to have yielded a recovering even if they may have helped hold off further decline.

At the end of June 2025, as the government’s first birthday approached, More in Common asked those who voted Labour 2024 but were not minded to do so again why they no longer intended to vote Labour. The most frequent responses mentioned by at least 20% were: they have broken/U-turned on too many of their promises in government 36%; they haven’t reduced my cost of living in government 31%; their changes to the winter fuel allowance 27%, they haven’t done enough to control immigration 23%; they haven’t improved the NHS in government 22%, and their changes to the benefits system 20%. Some of those are more specific sources of dissatisfaction than others, some are more left-wing and some are more right-wing concerns, and even the most frequently mentioned was only identified as a reason to leave Labour by 36%. The diffuse and diverse set of reasons — some of which may have only been what came to mind when the respondent was asked to rationalise their switch from Labour — suggests more a general and ambiguous collective dissatisfaction with the government rather than a focus on a particular problem. A year later (15-24 June 2026) YouGov conducted a similar exercise with somewhat similar results, except that “changes to the winter fuel payments” was mentioned by just 5% of Labour defectors. Both surveys fit with Lord Ashcroft Polls finding that there was a substantial decline from mid 2025 to mid 2026 in the numbers mentioning Winter Fuel Payments when asked to recall actions by the Labour government.

Looking across the whole of the period from December 2024 to September 2025, the rate of Labour’s decline in the polls slowed to 0.6 points a month on average, from the 1.5 points a month that it had been between August and December 2024. In both periods the decline was very steady. In the second period, Labour either dropped by a point or stayed steady each month, without either dropping two months in a row or staying steady two months in a row. 

On 2 September, self-described “eco-populist” Zack Polanski became leader of the Green Party of England and Wales vowing to “lower bills,” “renationalise the water companies” and for the Green Party to “replace” Labour. On 5 September, Angela Rayner resigned as Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary after a long-standing dispute over underpayment of tax on her purchase of a flat. On 11 September Peter Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to the USA after the Foreign Office said that recently published emails revealed “additional information” showing Mandelson’s relationship with the late convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, was “materially different” from what had been known at the time of appointment. On 12 September, Labour MP Clive Lewis said that Starmer “doesn’t seem up to the job.” Around the time of the Labour Party conference at the end of September 2025, Andy Burnham gave an extended interview to the New Statesman and publicly discussed how he had been contacted “throughout the summer” by Labour MPs about replacing Starmer.  

Despite so many potentially harmful events for Labour in September 2025, comparing the average of five pollsters with polls at the end of August and at the beginning of October there was no net change in support for Labour over September 2025, and just a one-point rise for the Green’s in the first month of Zack Polanski’s leadership. 

However, the same pollsters show a 2-point drop in the Labour vote and a 4-point rise in the Green vote over October 2025. This may have been due to a mix of indications from the chancellor that there would be tax rises in the forthcoming budget, the Chinese espionage allegations, the Manchester synagogue attack, Starmer discouraging pro-Palestinian protests on 7 October anniversary and ceasefire negotiations. Renewed prominence of the Gaza conflict in particular may have contributed to the October 2025 swing from Labour to the Greens given the Green Party’s long-standing criticismsof Israel and the sensitivity of the conflict to many of Labour’s (former) voters.

By the end of October 2025, Labour had sunk to 19% in the polls. That is little more than half the share of the vote the party achieved at the 2024 general election. That month they were pushed into third place (with just 11% of the vote) by Plaid Cymru and Reform at the Senedd by-election in Caerphilly, a place Labour had won for over 100 years.

Between October 2025 and May 2026, Labour essentially flatlined in the polls, averaging either 18% or 19% each month. Through that period Reform were at least 8 points ahead of Labour every month and the Conservatives were also hovering at 18% or 19%. The November Budget, including the scrapping of the two-child benefit cap, and various other initiatives in this period failed to generate any recovery from Labour’s dire position in the polls. 

When, on 22 January 2026, Andrew Gwynne resigned as the MP for Gorton and Denton on health grounds, then Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, declared an interest in running as the Labour candidate to return to the Commons. Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) blocked that bid. The Green Party won the subsequent by-election, on 26 February, pushing Labour into third place behind Reform. Labour lost half of the 50.8% of the vote they had achieved in the constituency in 2024. 

While that was a terrible result that might reasonably have provoked an immediate leadership challenge, Labour MPs effectively decided to wait until after the results of the May 2026 devolved and local elections before publicly starting a leadership contest. 

On 28 February 2026, the USA and Israel attacked Iran. There are indications of a very short lived 1-point boost in Labour support in early March, perhaps because people agreed with Starmer keeping Britain out of the initial attacks. But estimating the size of any effect on Labour support is difficult because of the timings of fieldwork dates for polls. Whatever modest boost to Labour support there may have been in early March, it was apparently gone by the end of the month. 

On 16 April 2026, Foreign Office permanent secretary, Sir Olly Robbins, became the fourth senior government appointment in less than three months to be effectively sacked, apparently to divert blame away from Starmer for things that had gone wrong, especially regarding the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the USA. The other three were chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney (8 February), director of communications, Tim Allan (9 February), and cabinet secretary and head of the Civil Service, Sir Chris Wormald (12 February). There is no sign that any of those departures had any effect on support for Labour in the opinion polls, which had been fluctuating around 18% or 19% for the entire December 2025 to May 2026 period. 

The results of the elections on 7 May 2026 were dreadful for Labour:

• Despite being the largest party in Scotland at the 2024 general election with 35% of the vote, Labour came joint second on seats with Reform, winning just 19% of the constituency vote and 16% of the regional list vote. 
• Despite having won all elections in Wales since 1935, Labour came third (behind Plaid Cymru and Reform) with just 11% of the vote, losing some 80% of the seats that they were notionally defending under the new electoral system.
• In the English local elections, Labour lost 58% of the seats they were defending (-1498 net losses) and 58% of the councils they were defending (38 out of 66). That was in addition to having lost 76% of the seats they had defended in local by-elections since the previous round of local elections. Their BBC Projected National Share (PNS) dropped to 17%, down 3 points from 2025 and their lowest ever share. 

Not only local and devolved elections, but also seat projections from opinion polls heralded disaster for Labour at the next general election unless anything significant changed. There were only two multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) seat projections published in 2026 before May, both using data primarily from March. More in Common put Labour on 101 seats with Reform just short of a majority on 324. Electoral Calculus put Labour on 86 seats, behind the Conservatives on 159 and Reform on 188 (a combined total of 347 so a comfortable majority between them).

On 11 May 2026, YouGov found 50% of people thought Keir Starmer “should stand down and be replaced by a new Labour leader and Prime Minister”. Just 29% thought he should remain as Labour leader and PM, with the remaining 21% saying “Don’t know.” However, among those who voted Labour in 2024 there were more who wanted Starmer to stay on (45%) than wanted him to step down (40%).

The endgame

A week after the local elections, on 14 May 2026, Wes Streeting resigned as Health Secretary with a devastating critique of Starmer’s leadership. Streeting said, “where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift. … It is now clear that you will not lead the Labour Party into the next general election and that Labour MPs and Labour Unions want the debate about what comes next to be a battle of ideas, …. It needs to be broad, and it needs the best possible field of candidates.” That last bit was understood to mean that a future leadership election should include Andy Burnham. 

The next day, on 15 May 2026, Makerfield MP Josh Simons stepped down so that Andy Burnham could stand for election. Despite having blocked Burnham standing in Gorton and Denton, the NEC immediately gave Burnham the go-ahead. Starmer no longer had sufficient power within the party to block Burnham.

The resignations, on 11 June 2026, of John Healey as defence secretary, and Al Carns as armed forces minister, over defence spending were damaging for Starmer, but more for his legacy than his chances of staying in office. At that stage, in the middle of the Makerfield by-election campaign, Labour MPs, including ministers, were waiting to see if Burnham could win rather than trying to pressure Starmer into resigning before the by-election outcome. While Starmer had a higher rate of ministerial resignations (outside reshuffles) than Johnson, May and Sunak over their second years in office, Starmer did not stay on to the point that ministers needed to resign in large numbers to force him out. Starmer suffered 20 ministerial resignations in total, but May saw 41 and Johnson 48, including 30 in his final five days. 

Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election on 18 June 2026, increasing the Labour share of the vote by 10 points, at a time when Labour were down 17 points in the polls since the general election. That was apparently achieved by a tactical squeeze on the Greens and Liberal Democrats (whose vote share drop to less than 1% each). There was supposedly also evidence of Conservative to Burnham tactical voting to stop Reform. That said, the combined vote for Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Greens was, at 55.9%, slightly down on the 56.4% achieved by those parties collectively in the constituency at the general election.

The result of the by-election was widely interpreted as an extraordinary personal success for Andy Burnham. But it was more a success under extraordinary circumstances. The voters of Makerfield were effectively given a choice between two main candidates. The Reform candidate, with a history of controversial social media posts, had no clear prospect of being able to achieve anything in particular as a possible ninth Reform MP. The alternative, in Andy Burnham, was someone with a good chance of becoming prime minister and so capable of delivering on his various campaign promises, including a library, investment and safer streets in Ashton, flood defences in Platt Bridge, community health services in Orrell, infrastructure before further development in Hindley, and using “rail renationalisation to reduce those train fares [between London and Wigan]”. Since that choice was not comparable to the choice at any other previous by election, the result does not provide any clear indication of the prospects for a Labour government under a Burnham leadership.

The day before the Makerfield by-election, Wednesday 17 June, Keir Starmer repeated his claim that a leadership contest would be wrong for the country and that he would contest any challenge. 

Immediately after Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by election, on Friday 19 June, YouGov found that 47% of 2024 Labour voters thought Starmer should contest a Labour Party leadership election if there were to be one. At that point, three days before Starmer resigned, just 35% of Labour voters thought he should step down in the event of a contest. Only 13% of Labour voters thought Starmer was a better prime minister than Burnham would be. But nonetheless, more Labour voters thought Starmer should fight on than thought he should quit. If that is somewhat indicative of the mood in the party more broadly at that point, then Labour MPs may still have been somewhat cautious about abandoning Starmer three days before he resigned. 

The next day, Saturday 20 June, under the title “Talk of Starmer staying on to fight is fading – fast” the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg wrote that, “with 100 [Labour] MPs now calling for Starmer to go and support for him to stay in the cabinet fading, one senior party figure predicts “he’ll realise this weekend that he can’t keep the Cabinet and ministers together and will have to go”.” For his part, Andy Burnham gave Starmer the weekend to reflect on his position.

On the morning of the resignation, while it was still unclear whether or not it would happen, Stephen Bush of the Financial Times said, “Don’t forget that about two-thirds of sitting Labour MPs were elected in 2017, 2019 and 2024 (when more than half of them were first elected). They do not know Burnham well but the size of his by-election win has created the sense in the minds of many that he is a winner.”

After Starmer’s resignation

Immediately after the resignation had been announced on 22 June 2026, the mood in the Labour party was emphatically behind Burnham, as around 200 Labour MPs cheered him into parliament and posed for a selfie with him after he was sworn in that afternoon. Having previously said he would enter any leadership contest, Wes Streeting announced he would be backing Burnham without having been promised anything in return. 

When nominations for Labour leader opened on 9 July some 322 out of 403 Labour MPs backed Andy Burnham. That number increased to 349 and, as the only candidate, he will become Labour leader by 17 July and prime minister on 20 July. 

We will never know how many Labour MPs positively preferred Burnham to Starmer or other possible leaders at each stage over the last year. It was not inevitable that Burnham was going to be the one to replace Starmer, or even, despite how unpopular he and his government were, that Labour MPs would force Starmer out. Some may have only been persuaded once they saw how well Burnham won in Makerfield. Some maybe came on board only when they felt that the Burnham bandwagon was unstoppable. As Boris Johnson said when he resigned, “as we’ve seen at Westminster, the herd instinct is powerful and when the herd moves, it moves.” 

Also in the afternoon of 22 June after Starmer’s resignation, YouGov found 62% of people, including 52% of 2024 Labour voters, thought it was right for Starmer to resign. Just 19% said it was wrong for him to resign. The plurality for him to fight on (that YouGov found in their poll three days earlier) had vanished. Labour voters endorsing the resignation after it had happened is perhaps best interpreted as polite acceptance of Starmer’s personal decision rather than a sign that, in advance of the announcement, they thought he ought to go. 

In the same poll, only 33% of 2024 Labour voters thought Starmer had done a good job as PM, while some 14% said he had been “poor” and 10% said he was a “terrible prime minister.”  Such a mixed and equivocal verdict is bad coming from the people that had voted him into office.

What next?

It will now be for Andy Burnham and his supporters to see if they can revive Labour’s fortunes. The failures of the last two years and the fear of future failure may have concentrated minds within the Labour Party. 

But the challenges that dogged Starmer’s government are mostly still there. According to The Economist tracker, overall government performance improved consistently throughout Starmer’s two-years in government, but only very slowly and not in all areas. While waits for hospital admissions, energy bills, crime, sewage spills and breakdowns due to potholes dropped, small boat arrivals increased, pay growth and house building declined.

One apparent lesson from the rapid decline in Labour support between July and December 2024 is that governments should try to keep any spirit of hope and optimism alive for as long as possible. Former transport secretary and close colleague of Burnham’s, Louise Haigh, has recently said, “the government never really recovered from the mood music and our positioning as soon as we won the general election, from winter fuel to the twenty-two billion black hole to and the things can only get worse speech.” That suggests Burnham’s team will not take the classic approach of getting painful policies out of the way early to enable pre-election generosity. But government spending in unprotected departments is scheduled to drop in real terms towards the end of this parliament. Lots of money will need to be found at some point if Burnham wants spending to increase, rather than decrease, in the run up to a 2029 election. 

There is some evidence that Burnham will generate more enthusiasm for Labour. For example, between 15 and 19 May, both Deltapoll and More in Common asked people how they would vote if Labour were led by Andy Burnham. Both found that Labour would again be the largest party, narrowly ahead of Reform, by 1 and 3 points respectively. If repeated at a general election, Labour would lose their majority but probably lead the government. Relative to their regular vote intention figures from the same polls, the hypothetical polling question suggested a Burnham leadership would raise Labour’s poll rating by +8 and +7 points respectively. A more recent assessment by YouGov found 41% of those who defected from Labour since 2024 would be willing to consider voting for Labour again. That would amount to a +5 point rise in Labour’s poll. Those figures are above The Economist’s +3.8-point estimate of the average poll boost for a new prime minister taking over mid-term (see also this from Peter Kellner). We shall see what happens.