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My son is eleven days old. After a week off, I came back to this week’s episode of Across the Pond sleep-deprived, fresh off a diaper change, and somehow more energized than I have been in weeks. Becoming a dad has made me the happiest I’ve been in my life, as I wrote in a Father’s Day post on Sunday. This community has been so patient and supportive, so I couldn’t wait to come back and chat with James and you all. And it was right on time. Because the week I was gone, UK politics did not pause for anyone.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced his resignation. Andy Burnham won his by-election for parliament by more than nine thousand votes, making him eligible to become the next Prime Minister. And just like that, the political landscape of one of America’s closest allies shifted in a matter of 48 hours. BBC News and Sky News Contributor James Matthewson was on the ground for all of it, and he brought the full picture.
We talked about what Starmer’s resignation actually means, how it happened, and why it matters that people made genuinely self-sacrificing decisions to defend democracy against far-right authoritarianism. We got into who Andy Burnham is for those in the US who are less familiar, what he has to do now that the opportunity is in front of him, and what the Farage-Trump network is already plotting to undermine him. We also had some real talk about the economic challenges Burnham inherits and what a genuinely progressive policy platform could look like from day one.
It was a shorter episode than usual. A newborn will do that to you. But James and I got all our key analysis in.
I appreciate those of you who tuned in live and contributed so much to the conversation. This is truly the best community on Substack. If you’re just catching it now, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.
You can watch our full conversation above and read key takeaways below. And, as always, thank you for supporting independent media.
Keir Starmer Did The Right Thing
What happened in the UK over the past week was a series of decisions by people who put the pro-democracy coalition ahead of their own positions. The result is a genuine opening for the Labour Party heading into the next general election.
Andy Burnham won his by-election by over nine thousand votes, and that number changed everything. James had predicted a majority of around one thousand. The actual result was nine times that, with Reform and Restore, the two far-right parties, not even close to beating him when their votes were combined. James made the point plainly: after that result, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Burnham could defeat Reform without copying their stances on immigration. That is the whole argument in one data point. He did not move right. He won anyway. Decisively.
The day Burnham was sworn in as an MP, Starmer stood outside Downing Street and resigned. James described the scene vividly: two helicopters following Burnham’s train into London, journalists on the platform when he stepped off, two hundred Labour MPs behind him for a selfie, the “king of the north” coming south. That same day, Starmer made an emotional speech, teared up talking about being a father and a husband, hugged his wife, and said the party and the country wanted something different. James’s read is that Starmer spent Father’s Day weekend at the Prime Minister’s country estate, and something clicked. The power was not worth what it was costing the movement.
For US audiences, the closest analogy is if Biden bowed out after the 2022 midterms if Democrats did badly. That is the frame I offered on the live: what if, after a shellacking at the ballot box, a sitting president had the self-awareness to step aside and hand the mantle to someone with more energy and a fresher mandate? That is essentially what happened here. Starmer lost badly at the local elections, recognized the threat Farage represented, watched Burnham show up with a show of force that made the message undeniable, and made the call. James compared it to the frustration Democrats felt about Biden, the good and honorable guy you want to shake because his decency sometimes reads as passivity. Starmer was that. And then he did the right thing. In Biden’s case, Democrats did better than expected in the midterms, so Biden didn’t face pressure at the time. But one wonders how that moment would’ve been different if Democrats saw massive losses in 2022.
Multiple people made self-sacrificing decisions to make this moment possible. Burnham’s friend and MP Josh Simons vacated his own seat early to trigger the by-election and give Burnham a path back into Parliament. Burnham ran a local campaign talking about streetlights and closed shops when he knew the stakes were national. Starmer stepped aside without triggering a divisive leadership contest, giving Burnham two to three weeks to put his ducks in a row before the deadline for Labour leadership nominations. I said on the live that this is what it looks like when people do the right thing for democracy, and it is worth naming that clearly because we do not see it often enough.
Andy Burnham: The “King In The North” Comes South
For those in the US who are less familiar with Burnham, James gave the full picture. The short version is that he is exactly the kind of candidate this moment demands, an anti-establishment figure with real governing experience, a track record of standing up to the right, and the communication skills to make the progressive economic case without alienating the people who need to hear it.
Burnham built his reputation in Manchester by standing up to Boris Johnson during COVID. James laid out the history: Burnham has been Mayor of Greater Manchester for years, the center of the north, revolutionizing public services and becoming a genuinely popular figure. During the pandemic, he took on Johnson’s government over lockdown policy and its impact on Manchester’s hospitality sector. He stopped wearing suits, started showing up in black t-shirts with a suit jacket, and earned a nickname: the King in the North, taken from Game of Thrones. It reflects something real about how the north of England perceives him as someone who actually fights for them.
The transatlantic anti-establishment wave is real, and Burnham is the UK’s version of it. This is the frame I kept coming back to on the live: what we are seeing with Mamdani in New York, with working-class first candidates winning primaries across the US, has a direct parallel in what Burnham represents in the UK. The anti-establishment energy is not specifically left or right. It is the energy of people who want someone who is actually fighting to improve their material conditions. Burnham has that energy, and he has been building it for years. The question is whether he can carry it from the mayor’s office to the Prime Minister’s office without losing what made it work.
James is thrilled and nervous, and both feelings are justified. James was on a panel with a spokesperson from Restore, someone he described plainly as a neo-Nazi, when Burnham’s result came in. The far-right panelists went stone-faced and immediately reached for the Trump playbook, claiming an establishment stitch-up. Watching that was satisfying. What makes James nervous is the temptation Burnham will face: not being radical enough with his policy platform, appointing the same establishment figures around him, and staying within fiscal constraints that need to be challenged. The coalition that backed Burnham, Green Party voters, Liberal Democrats, people who do not normally vote Labour, came together because they believed he was different. They will not give him unlimited patience if the rhetoric does not match the substance.
The lesson from Mamdani and Obama applies directly to how Burnham should move. I made both points on the live. From Mamdani: get in and show momentum immediately, big and small, day by day, so people feel that something is actually changing. From Obama: the lesson is less for Burnham than for his coalition. Obama was doing genuinely progressive things under enormous structural constraints, and people were frustrated because the pace felt too measured. Burnham’s supporters need to be patient with a man who has inherited decades of Brexit damage, an economy that is not growing the way it was promised to, and a bond market that he will need to manage carefully. You do not fix that overnight. What you can do is signal direction clearly and move fast on the things within your immediate power.
Farage, Trump, And What Burnham Has To Navigate
The good news is that Farage is on the rocks. The bad news is that he will not stay there if Burnham does not deliver. And Trump is already intervening in UK politics in ways that signal exactly how the MAGA-Reform network intends to create trouble for a Burnham government.
Trump threatened UK semiconductor access, and it is not an isolated move. James explained the context: the UK government has invested heavily in chip and semiconductor production, which Trump sees as competition to his promise to deliver a US monopoly on that industry for his tech billionaire allies. Trump is starting to throw his weight around on this. James made the point that it is better for everyone globally if chips are produced in multiple places rather than concentrated in one country, but that is not the calculation Trump is making. How Burnham handles Trump is already the second biggest question people in the UK are asking, right after domestic economic policy. James’s read is that Burnham is calm and rarely gets fiery, but he will not take nonsense, and that is going to be a fascinating dynamic to watch.
The MAGA and Farage networks are actively coordinating to undermine a Burnham government before it even starts. James was direct about this: the people around Trump have every incentive to help Farage by driving a wedge between Burnham and the British public. Trump already set the groundwork by claiming Starmer had to go because of immigration policy and too many windmills. That framing was not an assessment of what actually happened in the UK. It was pre-loading a narrative that Burnham’s government is out of touch on immigration, so that Farage has something to run on. The international far-right collaborative network is real. James and I have covered it extensively on this show, and we are watching it operate in real time again.
Farage is rattled right now, and it is worth watching. James pointed to a compilation put together by the UK charity Hope Not Hate: every media interview Farage did in the past twenty-four hours had someone asking him about a five-million-pound gift he received from a tech crypto billionaire. James said his skin is as thin as Trump’s when that question comes up. He deflects, dismisses, says nobody cares. The UK media is not tolerating it and is pressing him to explain himself. That is a real vulnerability. The caveat is that all of that evaporates if Burnham underdelivers, because Farage’s entire pitch is that the establishment cannot be trusted, and a Burnham government that fails to improve material conditions hands him exactly the evidence he needs.
James’s specific policy ask: legalize cannabis and put the revenue toward children’s mental health. This was one of the most concrete moments of the conversation. James said he wants to see left-wing red meat from Burnham early, something that signals genuine direction without requiring massive borrowing. His specific proposal: legalize cannabis, ring-fence the tax revenue from regulating it, and use it to guarantee every child under sixteen access to a therapist before they turn sixteen. I backed the cannabis point immediately: the industry in the US has generated real tax revenue and kept young people, disproportionately young Black men, out of prison for something that never should have been a criminal offense. James’s broader point is that Burnham can talk to the bond markets and still do genuinely transformative things, but he needs to show people early that he means it. The rhetoric without the substance will not hold the coalition together.
Bottom Line
Keir Starmer made the right call. Andy Burnham has a genuine opportunity to make meaningful change and stave off a Reform Party challenge in the next general election. The coalition that put him here is broad, motivated, and watching closely. What he does in the first weeks will set the tone for everything that follows. Farage is weakened but not finished, and the Trump-Reform network is already working to make Burnham’s job harder. The UK is at an inflection point, and this show will be covering every turn of it.
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