Keir Starmer faces up to reality – POLITICO

LONDON — The last dregs of Keir Starmer’s authority were draining away even before his likely replacement could board the Monday morning train to Westminster.

Britain’s prime minister is widely expected to announce a timetable for his exit on Monday, less than two years after a landslide election victory returned his center-left Labour Party to power after 14 years. His putative successor — Andy Burnham, the outgoing mayor of Greater Manchester — would become Britain’s seventh leader in a decade.

Burnham will travel down from Makerfield, northwest England, and swear in as an MP on Monday afternoon after he won a special election for the parliamentary seat. The dressed-down, left-leaning politician beat his opponent from Nigel Farage’s poll-topping right-wing Reform UK party decisively and inspired hope in many of Labour’s dejected MPs, who fear losing to Reform at the next general election in 2029.