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We’ve had so many prime ministers here in the U.K. in recent years that I have to count them off on my hands to make sure I’m not forgetting anybody, and I’m running out of fingers. Keir Starmer, who took the post two years ago, ending 14 years of Tory rule, announced his resignation on Monday, almost 10 years to the day that Britain voted to leave the European Union. He was our sixth PM in a decade.

It’s not surprising that Starmer has gone, but it is surprising that he only lasted two years. His election was supposed to mark the end of the revolving door at the top of government. Alas, it seems this is just how we do politics here now.

The reason he’s going has to do with a byelection in a suburban area of Wigan called Makerfield. Andy Burnham, until recently the mayor of Greater Manchester for the past nine years, has been making noises for a while about wanting to take over leadership of the Labour party. He’s run twice for Labour party leadership before, in 2010, where he came fourth out of five candidates, and again in 2015, when he lost to Jeremy Corbyn. To make a bid for party leadership, he needed to become an MP, and so he ran in Makerfield. Burham won the Makerfield by-election on Thursday by 55 percent, which is important because it means he beat not only Reform UK but also the entire right-wing vote combined, in an area where the demographics skew older, whiter, and not in white-collar jobs. The byelection was a petri-dish that Labour had been watching closely, because if Burnham could beat Reform on that stage, it might signal that he could beat Reform in a general election. The number of MPs who had pledged their support for Burham’s leadership........

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