When Keir Starmer, the Labour Party’s top politician, took the reins of 10 Downing Street in July 2024 after a resounding election victory over the Conservative Party, there was a sense that Britain was finally leaving behind its dysfunctional politics and economic stagnation. Starmer, a lawyer who used to be Britain’s top prosecutor, was all business and was ready to make the tough decisions the country required.

Two years later, Starmer has been booted out by his own members of Parliament, who feared an electoral thumping in the 2029 election if he retained the reins of power. Now, the United Kingdom has another bespectacled prime minister, a lifelong pol from the north of England who is saying all the right things.

“Many feel as though they’re still in decline, and they don’t have the ability to turn things around,” former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said in his inaugural speech on Monday. “And that’s why we will change politics, to make it more collaborative, more about problem-solving than point scoring.” 

Good luck to him, because that’s what the last guy hinted at too.

Burnham steps into the prime minister’s residence with a U.K. that is, if not in decline, then at least stuck in a decadelong rut. Prime ministers have been recycled like water bottles (Burnham is the seventh in 10 years), the cost-of-living crisis has fueled populist political parties such as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, and the country’s traditional allies in the United States and Europe........

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