Keir Starmer resigns: what now?
6/22/202635 min
An emotional Keir Starmer announced his resignation as prime minister and Labour leader on Monday morning, less than two years after he won a huge majority at the general election. The question now is who will replace him: will Andy Burnham sweep into No 10 uncontested? And can he make a difference where Starmer failed?. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/politicspod
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First 90 secondsMax Rushton0:01
This is The Guardian.
Keir Starmer· Soundbite0:02
[pensive music] 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.
Pippa Crerar· Host0:34
I'm Pippa Carrera.
Kiran Stacey· Host0:36
And I'm Kieran Stacey.
Pippa Crerar· Host0:37
And you're listening to Politics Weekly.
Kiran Stacey· Host0:40
For The Guardian.
Pippa Crerar· Host0:40
So Kieran, the moment that we've been talking about for months has finally arrived. We both came into work early this morning because it was our understanding that Keir Starmer was about to announce he would stand down as prime minister, and we wanted to be here obviously to see all of that unfold. There was a huge amount of uncertainty still early, very early this morning, about whether he would actually announce today or whether, whether it could drift, uh, what exactly he would say, whether he would leave immediately or there would be some sort of transition. But we started hearing properly that this was on the cards over the weekend, didn't we?
Kiran Stacey· Host1:22
Yeah. I mean, it seems to have been quite an extraordinary weekend by all accounts because on Friday, Keir Starmer was telling everybody he would stay and