Keir Starmer

Starmer's fall began with the Labour NEC's 8-1 vote to block Andy Burnham from the Makerfield candidate list, a decision his own No 10 was widely perceived to have orchestrated. Four Labour PPSs resigned on 11 May, followed by four junior ministers the next day, stripping the government's payroll floor before Health Secretary Wes Streeting's Cabinet-level resignation two days later. By Thursday afternoon LabourList's tracker had 96 Labour MPs publicly calling for him to go against 103 defending him, leaving him technically SAFE but politically exposed.

He stepped down on 22 June, four days after Labour narrowly held Makerfield, telling colleagues he accepted the Parliamentary Labour Party's private verdict that he could not win the next election. He stayed on as caretaker prime minister until Burnham's confirmation on 17 July and formal handover on 20 July.

Starmer authorised US use of Diego Garcia and RAF Fairford for what his government called defensive purposes while refusing RAF Akrotiri for offensive strikes on Iran, a calibrated distinction that shaped Britain's early posture in the 2026 Iran conflict. His own attorney general, Lord Hermer KC, advised that the base operation did not accord with international law, a warning that ran alongside Downing Street's public framing of the arrangement as strictly defensive.

Days after the bases opened, a drone strike hit RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, testing the distinction Starmer had drawn between defensive and offensive use of British facilities. The episode became an early marker of the tension in his Foreign Policy between multilateral caution and the practical exposure of hosting US operations on British soil.