the “King in the North” has officially assumed the new position, the inglorious Starmer era ends. Here are the challenges that the new British Prime Minister will have to face.
Today marked yet another handover at 10 Downing Street. Andy Burnhama 56-year-old former mayor of Manchester nicknamed “the king of the North”, has in fact become the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding to Keir Starmer leading the government and the Labor Party.
The handover
The handover began during the morning, when the outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer went to Buckingham Palace to see the King Charles III to formally tender his resignation.
Shortly afterwards, the King received Andy Burnham, giving him the official task to form the new government. Burnham thus became the 59th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the sixth in the last ten years.
At the end of the meeting with King Charles, Burnham headed to 10 Downing Street, residence of the British Prime Ministers, to deliver his first speech to the nation as Premier and begin the appointment of his cabinet ministers.
“Politics was centralized and the economy privatized“, Andy Burnham said in front of Downing Street, presenting himself as a “switch” capable of interrupting a decade of political instability.
The problems of Labor and the United Kingdom
After a troubled season to say the least, Keir Starmer’s premiership therefore comes to an inglorious end. The former Prime Minister boasted one of the lowest approval ratings ever, with just 14% of Britons indicating they liked his work.
The economic situation in the United Kingdom certainly manages to explain Starmer’s disastrous approval rating, struggling with a phase of economic stagnation And price pressures renewed after the dual Ukrainian and Middle Eastern crises.
The conflict in the Middle East has already made its effects felt on British energy prices: in March inflation had risen to 3.3%, driven by a monthly jump of 8.7% in fuel pricesthe most marked since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with repercussions on airfares and food supplies as the cost of living in the UK had started to rise again, driven by a sharp increase in petrol and diesel prices after the outbreak of war in Iran.
In the following months the consumer price index temporarily cooled, but given the rekindling of tensions, a new increase is expected in the coming months. inflationary flare-upwith the cap on energy prices likely to rise by 13% and a central scenario indicating a return of inflation to 3.7% by the end of the year, up to a possible 6.2% in 2027 in the worst case scenario.
On the growth front, the picture remains rather fragile, with the IMF and OECD forecasts for 2026 indicating a very limited expansion, around1%a far cry from the rates observed before the pandemic.
I’m worried an increasingly retreating pound as an international currency And interest rates on bonds growing rapidly (just think that the interest on the British ten-year bond is 4.99%, the Italian one is 3.98%), signs of a more structural distrust towards the British public finances.
Burnham’s recipe
The new prime minister has promised a more courageous reading of Labour’s 2024 programme, as confirmed by the deputy prime minister in pectore Lucy Powellaccording to which the government intends to move in a “more daring and ambitious” compared to the many slowdowns of the Starmer era, with measures with “immediate social impact” such as bill cuts and the return of essential services to public control.
Among the first acts already announced is the definitive abandonment of the mandatory electronic identity cardconsidered alien to the British tradition and seen as one form of invasive digital control.
The expected funds, approximately 1.8 billion pounds, they will be diverted to interventions for the cost of livingincluding free buses for young people aged 11 to 16 and discounts on energy bills. In circles close to Burnham, the hypothesis of nationalizations in sectors such as water and energy has also been circulating for some time, in the name of what his loyalists call “business friendly socialism“.
On the economic front, to reassure the markets after the turbulence of the pound and government bonds, the Finance box should go to Shabana Mahmood45 years old, until now Minister of the Interior and known for her hard line on immigration, preferred to the City over the more radical Ed Miliband.
The latter would be destined for the Foreign Office: continuity is expected from him on the Ukraine and European Union dossiers, together with a clearer posture on Gaza crisisa topic on which Burnham himself spoke of the need to “do more” after a judged Starmer response “not up to par“.
The most controversial choice, however, concerns energy, where the new Prime Minister does would be preparing to reopen oil drilling and gas in the North Sea, reversing the line of the 2024 manifesto, a move welcomed by Donald Trump but which risks splitting Labor between the pragmatic wing and the environmentalist wing.
