It is over. On Monday 22 June, Keir Starmer stood up and resigned as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party, asking his party's National Executive to set the timetable for choosing his replacement. Less than two years after winning a landslide majority, the man who promised "stability" has presided over one of the fastest collapses of authority in modern political history. This is not a tragedy. It is the inevitable consequence of a government with no plan, no purpose, and no connection to the people it governs.

A Government That Fell Apart From the Inside

You do not need to take Reform UK's word for it. Look at who walked out the door. Health Secretary Wes Streeting went on 14 May. On 11 June, Defence Secretary John Healey resigned over a defence settlement he said left our armed forces under-resourced in the middle of a war in the Middle East - and the Armed Forces minister and a parliamentary aide went with him. By the time Starmer fell, his own cabinet had stopped pretending to believe in him.

When the people closest to a Prime Minister decide they would rather resign than defend him, the country has already reached its verdict. A government cannot lead the nation when it cannot even hold its own front bench together.

This Was Never About One Man

Westminster will now spend weeks pretending this is a story about personality - that the problem was Starmer's style, his communication, his "narrative". It is not. The problem is the policies. Frozen tax thresholds dragging working families into higher bands. Borders that remain wide open. Energy bills climbing again this summer. A cost of living crisis that two-thirds of households say is getting worse, not better.

Starmer did not lose the country because he explained Labour's agenda badly. He lost it because the country understood that agenda perfectly well, and rejected it. Swapping the salesman does not change the product.

A Coronation Is Not a Mandate

Now the talk is all of Andy Burnham riding in to "reboot" Labour. Let us be absolutely clear about what that would be: a Prime Minister installed by Labour Party members and trade unions, not chosen by the British people. Nobody outside the Labour selectorate will have cast a single vote. The British public voted for a Parliament in 2024. They did not vote for a revolving door of unelected leaders chosen in backroom deals.

We were told twice in recent years that a change of Prime Minister mid-term without a general election was an affront to democracy. That principle did not expire because it is now Labour doing it.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK's position is simple and it is the same position the public instinctively holds: when a government implodes this completely, the answer is to ask the people. We would call for an immediate general election so that voters - not party activists - decide who runs the country. Britain deserves a government with a fresh mandate, a clear plan to control immigration, cut taxes on working people, and bring energy bills down. It does not deserve another leader smuggled into Downing Street through the side entrance.

Labour has had its chance. It squandered a historic majority in record time. The honest, democratic course is to let the country have its say.