British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will mark his second anniversary in office on July 5. He won't see a third. Starmer has announced he will resign as soon as Labour, the party he leads, chooses his successor.

Starmer's fall has been swift. Labour won the 2024 general election with a majority to rival Tony Blair's in the late 1990s, but voters weren't endorsing Starmer. They were evicting a Conservative government that had worn out its welcome after 14 years. Starmer offered sober, law-abiding competence and little else: no vision or emotional pull.

His popularity collapsed after race riots broke out across England in August 2024, and it never came back. His net approval rating sank and stayed there, with nothing on the ledger to offset it. Minimal economic growth, a rising tax burden, a spiraling welfare bill and grandiose but empty promises on defense spending gave him little respite.

Initially, Starmer was protected by the lack of an obvious alternative among his colleagues. That changed when Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, signaled he wanted the job.

Burnham served in the last Labour government before returning home to North-West England in 2017 to become Greater Manchester's first mayor. He's now in his third term, a popular, charismatic figure seen as........

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