Oliver Wright

think it's um accepting the inevitable he has done as much as he possibly could uh to fight this to fight on but i think it became really clear on friday that he had lost the support not only of a majority of his mps but also um of his cabinet and in such circumstances it really is impossible uh for a prime minister to go on i mean you know listeners will have

Seen this story before, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, you know, when the party moves against the prime minister, really, you know, political gravity intervenes and they have no choice.

That's the question, isn't it?

I think Britain is becoming increasingly hard to govern.

Absolutely.

You know, the succession of problems that have faced British prime ministers really sort of stemming back to the 2008 financial crash.

Then you had Brexit.

Then you had COVID and the Ukraine war.

All of those have become sort of existential problems, one on top of the other, that have made it very hard for, you know, prime ministers to sort of

do what voters want, because frankly, there isn't much money.

Yeah, that's right.

Nominations will open on the 9th of July.

They'll close around the 15th, which is when Parliament rises.

Now, if no one stands, if West Street does a deal with Andy Burden or decides he doesn't want to stand.

And if nobody else stands, then you could expect Burnham to be in Downing Street by the time of summer recess.

But if there is a contest, it will be quite a swift contest.

And Starmer has indicated it will be over by really the start of September when Parliament returns.

So whatever happens, a reasonably swift transition of power.

I think it's a bit hard to tell.

There is certainly an element of the parliamentary party that feels that Burnham has not been tested, that they don't really know what he stands for.