Football-mad Burnham will be the ultimate tap-in PM

Future students of British history in the first decades of the 21st century may have some difficulty in answering this essay question: “Why did Keir Starmer resign in 2026 after two years in power?

- SEAN O'GRADY

Anyone looking for a decent mark would be wise to start with all the reasons why he didn’t resign. Contrary to wild social media rumours and a hostile media, and in stark contrast to some rivals and counterparts, he was not caught up in sexual scandals. He was not corrupt. He paid his taxes.

He did not lie to parliament. He did not break the rules. He did not crash the economy. He did not take the wrong side in some foreign war. He did not call a random voter a bigot.

He stood for the rule of law, traditional social democratic values, and rescued his party from what he rightly called the “politically, financially and morally bankrupt” state his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, had left it in 2019.

What’s more, he delivered Labour into power with an historic landslide majority in four short years, albeit with the help of his Tory opponents. He was not idle in office, nor indifferent to poverty and inequality. As the professionally outspoken Labour MP Jess Phillips puts it, rather patronisingly, the Starmer government usually came to the right conclusions “in the end”.