BREAKING: UK Gets New Prime Minister As Starmer Finally Resigns And Burnham Takes Over
Andy Burnham has become the UK’s Prime Minister today, replacing Keir Starmer.
The day began outside a busy 10 Downing Street where Starmer made his final address as PM, before he and Burnham visited King Charles in Buckingham Palace.
Andy Burnham becomes Britain’s seventh Prime Minister in a decade, succeeding Keir Starmer who quit two years after leading the Labour Party to a large parliamentary majority.
Burnham was elected leader of Britain’s governing Labour Party unopposed on Friday.
Starmer made a short farewell speech before formally tendering his resignation to King Charles, who then invited Burnham to be Prime Minister.
In his Downing Street address, Burnham pledged a new model of government and said he would set out measures to tackle the cost of living.
The new Prime Minister then gave his own speech in Downing Street saying he wants a “circuit-breaker for Britain” and bring some of the biggest changes that country has seen in 40 years.
Burnham spoke to reporters hours after he entered Downing Street.
He pledged to “use some of my political capital” on an issue close to his heart: the nation’s social care.
Burnham spoke about his father having Alzheimer’s disease and how often those people who should be looked after in a social care setting were using an already stretched public health service for help.
The former mayor of Greater Manchester has long spoken of the need to reform social care and find ways to pay for it.
Social care, unlike the state-run National Health Service (NHS), is not free for most people.
“I think the country needs to step back here and say, ‘How have we let a situation kind of just roll on, where we know it’s a major issue, and yet no one’s got the courage to fix it?’ I just think that’s quite damning … of my generation of politicians,” he said.
Successive prime ministers have looked at measures, including providing caps on its cost, but struggled to win support for what would be a pricey policy.
