Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Monday, 22 June, that he will resign as leader of his party & as prime minister. This sets the stage for the United Kingdom’s seventh prime minister within a decade.
Starmer said on Monday, 22 June, that he had already spoken to King Charles, offering to remain in office until a successor was chosen from within his Labour Party.
Speaking further, outside 10, Downing Street, Starmer added that the question my party asks now is whether I’m best placed to lead the Labour Party into the next general election. He added that he had heard his parliamentary party’s response to that question and that he accepted it with good grace.
Starmer has led Labour since 4 April 2020. He was subsequently elected to lead the country in a general election two years later. His replacement’s expected to be chosen by the Labor Party shortly.
Starmer said that he had asked party leaders to open nominations for a successor on Thursday, 9 July ’26. He didn’t indicate a date for his departure from 10 Downing Street. However, he said that he expected a new prime minister to be in place by September ’26. This is when Parliament is scheduled to return from its annual summer recess.
This resignation announcement followed months of turmoil for Starmer. Some of his own party members openly criticized his leadership. They expressed their collective view that Starmer had not been able to deliver the rapid change needed after taking office. This was after 14 consecutive years of Conservative Party rule in Britain.
Many in Starmer’s Labour Party had written to Starmer, requesting him to step down. The resignation followed local elections in May ’26, which witnessed the party lose more than 1,000 seats in local councils. British voters widely interpreted these results as a repudiation of Labour’s performance under the prime minister’s leadership.
