Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom has announced his resignation. Beset by poor polling and the election to Parliament of a leadership challenger, Andy Burnham, Starmer knew his time was up. Starmer will leave office on Sept. 1, following the Labour Party’s selection of a new leader and prime minister (in the U.K. system, the party with a majority in Parliament can select a new prime minister without needing to hold a new election). But with former leadership challenger Wes Streeting now having endorsed Burnham, it is near certain that Burnham will become the next prime minister.
What might the ascension of the former mayor of the northern English city of Manchester mean for the U.S.-U.K. special relationship?
Before we answer that question, it’s first important to note that the special relationship is in trouble. President Donald Trump has undermined British confidence by deriding British military sacrifices in Afghanistan (though he later backtracked), and by threatening Danish sovereignty over Greenland (Denmark is a reliable U.S. ally that lost the U.S. population equivalent of 2,152 soldiers fighting alongside the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan). Trump’s preemptive announcement over the weekend that Starmer would resign, and his simultaneously classless (if broadly accurate) criticism of Starmer’s policies, further degrades U.S.-U.K. trust.
At the same time, however, the U.K. also bears the blame for the special relationship’s present struggles.
The U.S. believes London has become too close to China and that U.K. defense spending is wholly inadequate. Starmer also caused great upset in the Trump administration and Pentagon by slow-rolling and restricting U.S. military basing requests related to the war in Iran.
Burnham is unlikely to prove much better. He previously adopted a deferential relationship toward China as Manchester mayor. In 2018, the then-mayor stated that he recognized the “strategic importance of forging closer ties with China.” And when, in October 2022, Chinese diplomats attacked protesters outside of the country’s Manchester consulate, Burnham supported the U.K.’s tepid response to that outrage.
Nor should we expect bold action to fill in the U.K.’s $38 billion defense gap. When Starmer recently abandoned defense budget increases, his defense minister quit in protest. But Burnham will enter office with a strained budget and Labour parliamentarians who would much rather spend money on boosting the unions, increasing welfare spending, and nationalizing industry.
Still, Burnham must be cautious. The U.K. is heavily reliant on the intelligence, military, and economic benefits provided by its American alliance. But the special relationship simply is not sustainable if America’s supposedly closest ally is unwilling to match even German levels of percent-of-GDP defense spending (let alone the soaring Polish/Baltic defense expenditures). The U.S. needs to reallocate some military resources from Europe toward the Pacific. This means that close allies such as the U.K. must take on a greater burden for NATO security. But that can’t happen if the money doesn’t flow to the warfighters (I’ll write later this week on the collapse of British naval readiness born of two decades of investment neglect).
The fundamental problem facing Burnham and the U.K. is quite simple.
Namely, that the country has followed too far in the footsteps of France in redistributing resources away from its most productive citizens to its least productive. Rather than reduce bloated welfare spending and punitive taxes, Labour has doubled down on a tax-and-spend strategy. This is restricting economic growth, hampering living standard improvements, deterring prospective investment, and causing growing fear in the debt markets.
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But with Burnham being a populist to the left of Starmer and claiming the debt markets deserve less deference, it is highly unlikely that necessary economic reforms will occur at least until the next election (which must be held by Aug. 15, 2029).
In short, then, the special relationship looks to be sailing toward new turmoil.