Raf Baer

In the whole of British history, as far as I'm aware, it's not entirely unprecedented.

I must say this isn't my speciality, but I believe in the 1760s, there was a period of great turbulence.

And I read that

Between 1827 and 1837, there was a 10-year period where there was a lot of chopping and changing.

But no, I mean, obviously, the last seven or eight years in particular have felt extraordinarily febrile.

And I think the measure of that is the sense that that point where the lectern is brought out and put in front of Downing Street and the prime minister steps up and makes one of these resignation statements, as we've seen this morning,

has started to feel like a regular ritual in British politics.

Everyone knows the routine, everyone even recognises the people who come and install the lectern.

So that in itself is just a measure of...

quite how narrow, how short-wave the cycle has become.

To an extent, it was quite standard and boilerplate in the way of these things.

I think most people want to give a resigning prime minister an element of dignity and to give them the opportunity to say what they want to say.

And he said the sorts of things you'd expect a prime minister to say, which is, I was elected to do certain things.

I've actually achieved quite a lot, open brackets, a lot more than you people seem to think, close brackets.

The inevitable concession where you say, although, open brackets, I think I could have carried on and actually would have been much better at this.

And you realise, close brackets, it appears that I can't.

He did that with a lot more dignity than, for example, Boris Johnson, who, when he did his resignation speech, effectively said, well, you're all just sheep and you're following a media herd.

And frankly, this is a terrible mistake, but so do you.

All for that matter, David Cameron, who ambled back into number 10 whistling a happy tune to himself, which felt vastly inappropriate for the gravity of the moment.

Whereas Starmer, what really struck me was how uncharacteristically emotional the prime minister was at the very end.