Keir Starmer Resigns: What Andy Burnham Means for UK Tech and AI

Keir Starmer announced his resignation as UK Prime Minister on June 22, 2026. He is the seventh person to hold the office in ten years and the second consecutive Labour leader to resign under pressure without losing a general election. Andy Burnham, former Mayor of Greater Manchester, is the frontrunner to succeed him, with political risk firm Eurasia Group projecting he takes office on July 18 or 19.

For developers, infrastructure teams, and anyone building in or around the UK tech ecosystem, the change matters: the UK AI Safety Institute, the UK-US tech relationship, and London's regulatory posture toward AI companies are all now in transition.

## Why Starmer Resigned

The immediate trigger was a coordinated cabinet confrontation: Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, and Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander met with Starmer to demand a departure timeline. Behind them was a Labour parliamentary party increasingly convinced the government cannot recover from its polling position.

The structural cause was the rise of Reform UK. Nigel Farage's party has absorbed much of the Conservative vote and is pulling working-class voters from Labour in northern England — the same constituency that gave Labour its 2024 landslide. In the May 2026 council elections, Reform UK became the largest single party by council seats outside London. Labour lost more than 400 council seats in a single night.

Starmer's response to Reform UK was to shift Labour toward tighter immigration controls and more fiscally conservative spending positions — moves that alienated the party's progressive base without winning back Reform voters. The result was a party that satisfied neither wing. When Miliband and Mahmood both concluded Starmer was the problem, not the solution, his position became untenable within 72 hours.

## Andy Burnham: Who He Is

Burnham served as Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 to 2026 — nearly a decade. During that period he turned Greater Manchester into one of the most coherent regional technology and digital policy experiments outside London. He negotiated a landmark devolution deal with Westminster that gave Greater Manchester more control over transport, housing, and economic development than any other English city-region.

On technology specifically, Burnham has a track record:

- **Digital NHS**: Led one of the most ambitious regional health data integration projects in England, connecting 10 NHS trusts under a unified data architecture that uses AI for patient triage and resource allocation
- **Manchester Tech Ecosystem**: Oversaw Manchester's emergence as the second UK city by venture capital investment, behind London
- **Gig economy regulation**: Pushed Westminster to extend worker protections to platform workers (Uber, Deliveroo) in Greater Manchester before national legislation caught up
- **AI ethics stance**: Has been publicly sceptical of unregulated facial recognition deployment and pushed for algorithmic accountability in public procurement

He stepped down as Mayor last week, won the Makerfield by-election, and entered Parliament as an MP. The Labour Party will hold a leadership vote; Burnham is the only major candidate who has not yet faced a national campaign and lost.

## What Changes for UK AI Policy

### The AI Safety Institute

The UK AI Safety Institute (AISI) was set up under Rishi Sunak in 2023 and survived the transition to Starmer. Its core function is frontier AI evaluation — running safety testing on models before and after deployment. The AISI has published evaluations of Claude, GPT-4o, and Gemini and maintains a formal cooperation agreement with the US AI Safety Institute.

Burnham is not hostile to the AISI, but he comes from a tradition that prioritises industrial policy over pure safety research. The risk is that AISI gets repositioned as a competitiveness tool — focused on helping UK companies deploy AI faster — rather than maintaining its current mandate as an independent evaluator. That would weaken the UK's credibility as a neutral third-party evaluator, which is currently its main leverage in international AI governance conversations.

### The UK-US Tech Relationship

The Starmer government signed a technology framework agreement with the Biden-era US government in 2024 covering semiconductor supply chain cooperation, AI research exchanges, and cybersecurity information sharing. The Trump administration has renegotiated most of these bilateral agreements under the "America First Tech" policy.

Burnham will inherit a relationship that is already being renegotiated. His instinct is toward greater European cooperation — he has spoken favourably about rejoining EU research programmes — which puts him in direct tension with Washington's preference for bilateral arrangements that exclude Brussels.

### London's Startup Ecosystem

The structural constraints on London's startup ecosystem are not primarily political — they are regulatory (financial services, data protection) and macroeconomic (sterling weakness, higher cost of equity than San Francisco). A change of PM does not move those levers quickly.

Burnham's likely positive contribution is industrial policy: he is more comfortable with direct government co-investment in deep tech than Starmer was. His Manchester model involved government-backed venture funds co-investing alongside private capital. Applied nationally, that's a meaningful shift from Starmer's more hands-off approach.

The negative risk is that Burnham's political instincts are protectionist. His track record in Manchester included pushing for public ownership of transport assets and regulatory pressure on US platform companies. Scaled to national policy, that approach could create friction with US tech companies operating in the UK.

## The "7th PM in 10 Years" Problem

The deeper issue for UK technology policy is continuity. The UK has had seven prime ministers since 2016: Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, and now Burnham. Each transition brings a reset on digital economy priorities. The AI Safety Institute survived from Sunak to Starmer; whether it survives from Starmer to Burnham depends on Burnham's first Cabinet appointments.

Long-term infrastructure decisions — data centre planning permissions, spectrum allocation for 6G, the AISI budget — require at least four years of stable policy direction to execute. The UK has not had that since 2019. Foreign direct investment in UK tech infrastructure reflects this: UK data centre investment growth has lagged Ireland and Germany since 2022, partly because planning permission timelines are unpredictable and partly because the policy environment changes every 18 months.

## Our Analysis

Burnham is a more capable political operator than Starmer and has a better relationship with the trade unions and the northern working-class voter base that Labour needs to survive. He is also more interventionist on economic policy, which matters for tech: he will spend on industrial strategy where Starmer was reluctant to.

The risk for UK AI specifically is positioning. The AISI's value to the world is that it is credible as an independent evaluator — not a competitiveness agency, not a lobbying vehicle for UK AI companies, and not a US government proxy. If Burnham repositions it to serve his industrial strategy goals, the UK loses its main differentiator in international AI governance discussions.

For developers: nothing changes in the next 90 days. The regulatory environment, GDPR implementation, and ICO enforcement posture are all career-civil-service functions that do not shift with prime ministers. The medium-term signal to watch is who Burnham appoints as Technology Secretary and whether the AISI's independence is written into statute.

## Key Takeaways

- **Starmer out June 22** — Reform UK surge + catastrophic May council election results ended his leadership after MPs and cabinet ministers coordinated to demand his departure
- **Andy Burnham likely PM by July 18-19** — Former Manchester Mayor, interventionist on industrial policy, more pro-EU than Starmer, strong digital health record
- **7th UK PM in 10 years** — Policy continuity is the core problem; data centre investment and AISI budget decisions need stability that the UK has not had since 2019
- **AISI at risk of repositioning** — Burnham's instinct is industrial strategy over independent safety evaluation; watch his first Technology Secretary appointment for the signal
- **London startup ecosystem** — Co-investment model from Manchester may arrive nationally (positive); platform regulation instincts may create US tech company friction (negative)
- **For developers** — No immediate change; medium-term signal is whether AISI independence gets statutory protection in the first Burnham Queen's Speech