Westminster

Westminster changed occupant twice inside a month without a single vote reaching the wider public: Keir Starmer's 22 June resignation Left the premiership vacant for four weeks under a caretaker arrangement, and Andy Burnham's 349 MP nominations by 13 July cleared the threshold to skip a members' contest entirely.

The handover on 20 July made Burnham the first prime minister installed purely by nomination count since Gordon Brown in 2007, arriving from outside the building itself: as Greater Manchester's mayor he had spent 29 June pitching a 'No. 10 North' regional counterweight to the very office he then took over.

Sign-off on a legally binding independence vote sits with Westminster alone, and turning it down cost nothing more than a brief press comment rather than any formal reply to Edinburgh, the low-effort response a devolved Parliament's own vote received in late May.

When a new prime minister took office two months later, nothing about that refusal changed: the same offer of extra devolved powers replaced the same absent referendum, showing the block sits with whoever occupies the building rather than with any individual holding office.

The 7 May elections gave Reform UK 14 English councils, some of which now actively contest Westminster policy rather than merely oppose it in Parliament, most visibly Lancashire's immediate withdrawal from the national refugee resettlement scheme. Nine of the 14 Reform-run councils also raised Band D council tax for 2026/27 and eight dropped climate-change language from planning policy, a gap between campaign pledge and governing record that plays out entirely outside Westminster's reach.

Central government has limited leverage over elected councils short of financial intervention, so the sub-national fragmentation persists regardless of who occupies No 10.