Keir Starmer's Legacy Plans in Disarray as Leadership Transition Looms

Keir Starmer’s plans to cement his legacy have been thrown into disarray, with promises to bolster defense spending and reset EU relations now looking highly uncertain as he enters a transition period before handing off to another Labour leader.

The outgoing British prime minister will travel to international engagements with the responsibility of office but none of the power, while a question mark hangs over the intentions of his likely successor, Andy Burnham.

Starmer announced Monday morning he would step down as premier and leader of the Labour Party, saying had “heard the answer” of his party to the question of whether he was the right person to lead them into the election.

Burnham, who has taken his seat in Westminster after winning last week’s Makerfield by-election, is expected to succeed him in both roles in mid-July, barring any surprise bid for the leadership from an outsider.

This sets up a short window in which Starmer will seek to make his final mark on the world stage as a lame-duck prime minister. But the draining of power from his position was already evident as the European Commission announced that the EU-U.K. summit planned for July 22 has been canceled — with a glaring hole at the top of British diplomacy in the meantime.

NATO drumbeat

Starmer is expected to press ahead with a visit to Berlin on Wednesday to meet his French, German, Italian and Polish counterparts. A spokesman for German leader Friedrich Merz said: “The E5 meeting is part of the preparations for the NATO summit, and we expect it to proceed as scheduled.”

He is also likely to take part in the NATO summit in Turkey on July 7, two days before nominations close for candidates to lead the Labour Party. If Burnham is unopposed, he will become leader and prime minister shortly after that.

Before Starmer can even get to Ankara, however, he will have to make a call on whether he can still publish the long-awaited Defence Investment Plan (DIP) and in what form. He has led his party towards a more hawkish position on defense spending over the last few years, and yet faces criticism that he has not managed to find an adequate settlement for the armed forces as part of the DIP.

A government official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters like others in this piece, said the Ministry of Defense is still working towards launching the DIP before the NATO meeting.

Others raised doubts about that plan, with one defense industry representative pointing out he now lacks any authority to make the spending cuts needed across wider departments, while a second said: “It’s quite hard for him to go to Ankara with it, knowing the next PM is likely to do better.”

Simon Case, a former Cabinet Secretary, told POLITICO: “Keir Starmer will go to the NATO summit, and sadly, he will be irrelevant. No other foreign leader is going to be remotely interested in Keir Starmer as a representative of the United Kingdom.”

Pointing to issues around the Middle East and the transatlantic relationship, he added: “What you now need is the lame duck period to be as short as possible so that the U.K. has a prime minister that the system, both domestically and internationally, thinks it can rely on.”

A senior European defense official said uncertainty over defense investments in the U.K. and shifts in personnel were both cause for concern, while acknowledging that Britain was likely to maintain its most important alliances, whoever is in charge.

Born ready

Two U.K. officials involved in planning for the NATO and EU summits said the rapid evaporation of Starmer’s political capital showed why Burnham urgently needed to nominate a point person to coordinate on foreign policy with the outgoing administration.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has been discussing foreign affairs with Burnham, and former Starmer foreign policy adviser Donjeta Miftari is also assisting him.

Nonetheless, one U.K. official said: “Partners want a Burnham contact with experience who they can speak to today, and who can work informally with civil servants to understand the options being worked up as we speak.”

An ally of Burnham rejected this, claiming it was “ridiculous” to expect him to have engaged on this level “within minutes of Starmer resigning,” and that any such discussion on foreign policy would not be possible until access talks begin.

Bye bye Brussels

Starmer’s ambition to reimagine the U.K.’s relationship with the EU is also in tatters, as the planned EU-U.K. summit was abruptly canceled on Monday, with key elements on youth mobility and agrifood rules still to be agreed.

As one former government adviser said: “There was a lot of reluctance on the part of the EU to negotiate with an outgoing prime minister.”

Part of the problem is the uncertainty surrounding the arrangements for access talks. Unlike the U.S. presidential system, a changeover in No. 10 Downing Street does not involve a built-in transition period.

Instead, access talks — where neutral civil servants help prepare potential incoming parties for the challenge of power — normally take place before a general election to ease the passage from one administration to the next.