Andy Burnham is set to become the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years. But there have been other periods when leaders changed frequently, writes Kiran Moodley.

Keir Starmer will give his final speech from Downing Street before Burnham arrives and is appointed as new PM Good morning. Today we are getting a new PM. It is the sixth time this has happened in just over a decade (Theresa May replaced David Cameron on 13 July 2016), and so in some respects there is nothing very new or surprising about this. Yet the process has been unusual. In the past, when parties in power have replaced a PM, generally they have opted for someone popular with their own MPs, but less popular than their predecessor with the public at large (Liz Truss, Theresa May, Gordon Brown), or for someone more popular with the public, but less liked by their own activists (John Major, Rishi Sunak). At the start of the year, anyone looking at polling would have concluded that the logical choice for Labour would have been to replace Keir Starmer with Andy Burnham. Labour is not always noted for taking decisions that will be electorally beneficial, but in this case that is what it has achieved. It has replaced a PM who had become an electoral millstone with one of the most admired politicians in the country, and with someone – for the moment at least – with his whole party behind him. That may not be the case by the end of the day, after Burnham has named his cabinet. We’ll have to see. Here is Rowena Mason’s overnight story about what to expect today. This week [Burnham] will tell us of his “ten-year plan for the country”. Perhaps his premiership won’t last that long, he conceded. “I’m not saying that means I’m setting out to say I’m going to be here for ten years … it’s more that we’re not in the right place structurally, we’re not in the right place as a country. I think people can feel that.” One thing I heard most on the doorsteps in Makerfield was frustration about the personal allowance, frozen at £12,570 … [That complaint] lodged in my mind. They’re just characterising me as a tax raiser. Well, again, it’s never that simplistic, is it? Continue reading...

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