Another British prime minister has resigned. Sir Keir Starmer is the sixth to quit since 2016 and the fifth to stay less than five years at No. 10 Downing Street, the official residence and office of British premiers.
The joke is that Larry the Cat, adopted by David Cameron in 2011 to deal with a rat infestation at No 10, has outlasted half a dozen PMs.
Cameron was the last British PM to complete a five-year term (2010-16) and remain in office for a year after winning a second term, until Brexit. Since then, the UK has had five PMs: Theresa May (2016-19), Boris Johnson (2019-22), Liz Truss, who served for less than 50 days in 2022, Rishi Sunak (2022-24), and Stamer.
But the irony is that Starmer led his Labour Party to a landslide election win in July 2024, handing the Sunak-led Conservative Party their worst-ever defeat.
Starmer’s exit was caused by his waning popularity within the Labour Party, mirroring public sentiment, due to many reasons. Most importantly, his poor judgment calls in political appointments—naming Peter Mandelson British ambassador to the US despite Starmer being reportedly aware of Mandelson’s links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Recent electoral losses also mounted pressure on Starmer, stoking fears of the growth in influence of the Reform Party and other hard-right groups.
Replacing him, most likely by mid-July, is Andy Burnham. He seems to have the required support of 20% Labour MPs, i.e., 81 of 403. Burnham also seems to have the backing of grassroots Labour Party organizations and affiliated trade unions, according to news reports. This smoothens his path to No 10.
The 56-year-old transitioned from Mayor of Greater Manchester to MP after winning a byelection last week. For Burnham, it was a case of third time lucky: he had made two unsuccessful bids to become Labour leader before.
As the next UK PM, he faces a number of challenges—not least reviving the economy, i.e., addressing job shortages, improving living standards, and easing pressure on public services. “The public expects change and its patience has been wearing thin,” said a BBC report this week. Welfare spending will have to be maintained; Starmer had to backtrack on planned cuts.
All in all, India may not be on his radar for the first six months, if not more.
Coincidentally, the political drama around the change of PMs came during a week when the UK marked 10 years since the Brexit referendum, in which it voted to leave the European Union, the world’s largest single market.
Unshackled as Britain thought it would be from the EU, the aim was to develop itself as “Singapore on the Thames”, i.e., a hyper-competitive, low-tax, and lightly regulated economy.
It was meant to keep immigrants out and make the UK prosperous. But a Guardian headline summed it up with this headline: “Britain’s lost decade after Brexit.”
“It’s neatly ironic that the 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote should have been marked this week by yet another prime ministerial resignation,” a Guardian report went on to say. “The two things aren’t directly related—the intense pressure put on Keir Starmer to step down was partly down to his own political flaws. But the rise in the polls of Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s populist right-wing party that morphed out of the Brexit-obsessed far-right Ukip (UK Independence Party founded in 1993), was a key factor,” it added.
On the economic front, the UK’s trade with Europe had marked an upward trend before 2016. Official figures now show that, compared with 2019, UK exports to the EU in 2025 were down 14% and imports were down 10%, according to a BBC report.
“And they've been getting worse. Last year, 2025, was the worst year for UK goods export volumes to the EU this century, apart from one year in the depths of the financial crisis,” it went on to say. Business investments were hit, and the currency, the Pound, hasn’t been doing well against the US Dollar and the Euro.
On the positive side, the UK managed to negotiate trade pacts, the BBC report said, pointing out the India-UK free trade pact as a case in point. “The UK also signed the first ‘deal’ to alleviate the impact of US President (Donald ) Trump's tariffs. The government itself calculates that the trade deals Britain has signed will only slightly boost economic growth, by fractions of a percentage point over decades,” the BBC report added.
One can safely assume Brexit has been a very unhappy experiment for the UK.
Back to the US-Iran tensions.
After some uncertainty, talks between the two countries seemed to have inched forward with the help of mediators—Qatar and Pakistan. The venue —the Bürgenstock Resort in Switzerland—is, by the way, owned by Katara Hospitality, a Doha-based hotel company backed by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, according to The National newspaper.
A viral picture from those talks showed Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani sitting next to US vice president J.D. Vance and apparently offering input to Vance, who was actively typing on a laptop. Standing behind the two was Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
News reports said the first round of negotiations to reach a final deal ended with "encouraging progress". A joint statement early Monday said the two had agreed to “a roadmap towards reaching a final deal within 60 days”.
“Oil and petrochem exports are waived, blockade lifted, some frozen assets released, and a major reconstruction and development plan launched for Iran,” Iran's foreign minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi posted on social media.
Main takeaways: a "communication line" to “avoid incidents and miscommunication with the aim of safe passage for commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz" and the creation of a "de-confliction cell" among the US, Iran, and Lebanon.
The US cleared the way for Iran to sell oil in dollars, including to US buyers for the first time in decades. There is confusion whether Iran agreed to allow nuclear inspectors into the country—the US said Iran had agreed; Tehran said no. Crude prices, however, softened, with Brent crude falling to $73.79 a barrel and US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude falling to $70.48 a barrel.
The end of the week brought back uncertainty with reports of Iran’s military striking a container ship in the Strait on Thursday. The ship, the Ever Lovely, came under attack near the coast of Oman and prompted the UN agency, the International Maritime Organization, to halt the evacuation of hundreds of ships stranded in the Persian Gulf. A Wall Street Journal report on Saturday reported rising tensions in the region.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio travelled to West Asia to reassure sceptical Gulf allies about Washington's regional security commitments.
A tribute to the victims of the Kanishka crash
This week marked 41 years since Air India Flight 182, with 329 passengers and crew, exploded mid-air over the Atlantic, killing all on board.
It will probably never be labelled as such, but to me, it remains one of the most horrific terrorist attacks in history, years before 9/11. It occurred three years before the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which the West describes as the worst act of terrorism before 9/11. (There are some eerie parallels between the two.)
AI 182 originated in Toronto but never reached New Delhi. The cause: a bomb planted in a suitcase by Khalistani terrorists. Most of the passengers were Canadians of Indian origin. In the Pan Am case, justice was swift; the perpetrators, linked to the then Libyan government, were caught, tried and sentenced. In 2003, the Libyan government agreed to pay $2.7 billion in compensation.
In the case of AI 182, India still awaits justice.
For more of her columns, read The International Angle.
Elizabeth Roche is an associate professor of International Relations at O.P. Jindal Global University, Haryana.