The Ben Mulroney Show - Britain is once again looking for a new PM. What sunk Keir Starmer?

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

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This podcast is brought to you by the National Payroll Institute, the leader for the payroll profession in Canada, setting the standard of professional excellence, delivering critical expertise, and providing resources that over 45,000 payroll professionals rely on. Let's move to, I believe, the top story in the Western world. I think that's fair. Beliegered Prime Minister of the UK, Kier-Starmour,

made an announcement this morning. We changed our party, ripping out the poison of anti-Semitism, restoring trust on the economy, defense, and national security, and becoming a party that once again stood proudly with, but against our national flag. But the party, even if you take everything he said at face value, has decided that Kier Starmer is not the man to lead it anymore. and he announced that he will be stepping down. He will be resigning by September as the Prime Minister, as the leader of the Labour Party in the UK. So you heard his spin on his legacy in the moment. Let's listen to an average Britain as to what they think his legacy is or how they feel about him.

My abiding memory of Kirstarmer will be that of an authoritarian dictator who brought about a ruthless crackdown on free speech, who increased taxes on millions of working people, despite promising not to, who allowed energy bills to rise, despite promising to freeze them, and who let down millions of pensioners, farmers, students, teachers, almost everyone you can think of in this country, Nick.

Good ridden, he had to go. And now there's someone whose name you've never heard before that you will be hearing often. Andy Burnham is now the overwhelming, favorite to replace him. I believe he is a local. I think he's from Manchester. And he calls himself a business friendly socialist. We'll dig into that a little bit later. But this next leader will become the UK's seventh prime minister in a decade. Let me say that again. Seven PMs in 10 years.

Britain is facing economic stagnation. Labor support is in the toilet and public criticism of Kier Starrmer's performance has pretty much started almost after he became Prime Minister. Yeah, I don't know that he's had a good... You might not have a good day here and then, but I don't think he's had a good week. And the stuff

that he's messed up on is Myriad. There was a winter fuel allowance for the poorest in the UK. He cut that. Not exactly on brand for labor. The thing that I thought, that a lot of people thought was going to end

his leadership of that country was when he appointed a person by the name of Peter Mandelson to be ambassador to Washington. But in the lead up to making this announcement, there was very uncomfortable evidence of a close relationship between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein. And when I say uncomfortable, it's not that he was mentioned in an email. There were photographs of Peter Mandelson. in a robe with girls next to him that looked suspiciously young. And he's stuck by Mandelson.

And he's stuck by that guy. He stuck by him. And so a lot of people thought that was it. Clearly that was a straw on the camel's back, but not the one that broke the camel's back. He's got a lot of other issues as well that he is responsible for. Let's not forget the fact that he has been, and this did not start on his watch, but he could have ended it on his watch. There was a lot of stonewalling. There was a lot of misdirection.

There was a lot of denials from his government on the grooming gang scandal. This what appears to be a coordinated and concerted effort by, and I'm just going to say what is said in the reports that I've read, majority Pakistani Britain. men to find young English girls, white, groom them, ply them with alcohol and drugs, and either keep them as sexual slaves, rape them repeatedly, and, and, I mean, they deny that those existed for the longest of time. Yeah. And some of them were sold.

It doesn't seem real. Some of them were out and out sold into sexual slavery. And it was easy to say, no, of course this isn't real, because it was so grotesquely, fantastical, that you didn't want it to be real. But real it is, apparently. I think there's a dispute in terms of the number, the last number that I saw was upwards of 250,000 young girls. That's insane. I mean, it's such a big number that your brain wants to dismiss it. But it is real.

We'll see how big of a problem it is. And look, let's also not forget the Henry Novak situation where he stayed silent during the entire thing after Henry Novak's murder, through the trial, and only after the murderer... Really quick about who Henry Novak is. Just a reminder of audience. He was a white guy, a white student,

university student who's out with his friends. and he crossed paths with a young sick man. And they had words, apparently. And the sick man stabbed him with his Kirpan, which is a weapon, it's a spiritual weapon, and is not intended to be used. And he stabbed him. And as Henry Novak was dying of his wounds, the police arrested him because the murderer and his brother falsely told the police that they had been subjected to a hate crime by Henry Novak.

So they arrested Henry Novak and he died in handcuffs saying the words, I can't breathe. That is to remind you of George Floyd, who Kier Starrmer took a knee for, but said nothing about Henry Novak until the parents of Henry Novak. came out and said, we don't want to politicize this. If there's one thing that he will be known for, what he will be responsible for is probably the first reform government in the history of the UK. The most right-wing party, in my memory, that will ever form government if the numbers bear out,

they could be headed towards a majority. That is a direct result of Keir Starrmer and the identity politics that have been pursued by his government. But that won't be for a couple of years. That won't be for a couple of years. I could change. This new guy could come in and change the dynamic. Our next guest is going to tell us all about that. Yes, indeed. We've got Mel Cap is joining us from the Monk School.

We're going to dig into what does it say about the UK, that they've gone through seven prime ministers in 10 years. That's coming up next on the Ben Mulrney show. Well, the news came out just a few hours ago that Kier Starrmer, the prime minister of the UK, the leader of the Labor Party, will be stepping down from both of those roles by September. And he joins a longer than usual list of prime ministers who had short 10 years. Over the last 10 years, the UK has seen seven different people at 10 Downing Street lead that country.

So to talk about Keir Starrmer as well as what to make of the last 10 years, and is this the new normal in the UK, were joined. by Mel Cap, Distinguished Fellow at the Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. He's also senior fellow at Massey College, University of Toronto. You must have a very busy business card, Mel. Yeah, I know. Who uses business cards? Good point.

Busy QR code then. Your first thoughts with Kier Starrmer announcing his resignation? Well, I mean, in a sense, this is the new normal, but not the new normal in politics. it's the new normal in the UK post-Brexit. Starrmer is a victim of Brexit in effect because the performance of the British economy is in the tank. The people feel bad. His capacity to solve problems is reduced

because income is so low, he's giving up something like 40 billion pounds worth of revenue in government because incomes are roughly four, to 6% lower than they would otherwise have been. But from what I hear, and please correct me if I'm wrong, my impression was things aren't that much better in the block of EU countries that the UK left. I'm not suggesting I was a fan of Brexit at all, but it's not as if the UK is untethered

from an economic rocket ship. No, that's true. I mean, both France and Germany, Germany being the driver of the EU economy, are not performing as well as they wanted, although there's a big dispute going on now among economists. Paul Krugman is pointing out that the performance of the European economy is far better than people are measuring, whereas the performance of the U.S. economy looks good on the surface

but is not as good as it seems to be. So there are controversies going on there. The key thing is, though, that for four years, Britons were negotiating what the future without the EU was going to be. And in those four years, who would invest in the United Kingdom? Nobody knew what the rules were going to be. So they went through a period where the uncertainty was just too great. And it continues, to this day, in effect.

And then with all the turmoil of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and Liz Truss, remember her, I mean, those are the kind of uncertainties that are unhealthy. helpful to the performance of the economy. Well, yeah, we got David Cameron, 429 days in office. Theresa May, 1,100 plus. Boris Johnson, 1,100 plus. Liz Truss didn't even make it 50 days. Rishi Sunak, 619.

And now Kier Starmor 717 plus the remaining days until he passes the baton. If we stick with the whole Brexit thing for just a moment, you know, one of the driving forces that saw the leave side win was they wanted to control immigration. And it feels that since then, the stories that come out at least on this side of the pond are unchecked immigration or unchecked migration. Is that a fair assessment? Because Keir Starrmer presented, even though he was laborer, he presented during the last election campaign, if I'm not mistaken, as to the right of the conservatives on immigration.

On immigration, that's true, and he was going to get it under control. In fact, over the past 10 years, immigration is up considerably, even though Brexit was to give them control to restrict immigration. And the difference is that it used to be free migration of EU citizens into the EU. And now the source countries are mostly India, Pakistan, and a bit of the Caribbean. So it's the former colonies. that are the source of most of the immigration and migration to the UK, and the numbers are actually up. So did it work? Not much. Mel, this Keir Starn, feels like people had buyers' remorse for electing him and his labor government almost immediately. It does not feel like he had much of a honeymoon. I mean, the difference between the difference between the honeymoon that will never end,

he, in Canada with Mark Carney and Kierre Stomers, Stark. Quite so. Look, I think the problem has been, there's two problems. One is he doesn't have the capacity to solve these problems that the Britons feel, and that's because of the financial circumstances he finds himself in. But the second problem is that he himself is fairly indecisive. and he's technocratically competent. But, you know, we saw in Mark Carney, somebody who was technocratically competent, and we thought he wasn't going to be a good politician.

And he seems to have grown into the political role a lot better than Keir Starmard did. Yeah, I agree. I agree. So if we can, I mean, we could look to the past. If you had to tell me of the prime ministers that we listed, who had the most turbulent time in office? And who was given the least, the worst hand to play, meaning I'm sure in that group, there were some fine leaders who just did not have a chance to prove themselves. Well, we could dispute that. But indeed, look, it wasn't an equal footing. But the own goal of Brexit was partly a construct of Boris Johnson. And he got what he deserved in some respects. But the own goal of Liz Truss was her budget, where she basically went after all the poor people. And guess what?

They didn't like that. And she got pushed out. So, you know, it took a long time for Margaret Thatcher to get pushed from within her party. Well, it didn't take long for Liz Truss. And it turns out it didn't take long for Kirstarmer for the other party. And let's end on an eye to. the future because it seems like we're all going to have to get to know this name Andy Burnham, who's, you know, he's floated high tax, high spend ideas in the past. He says he's a business

friendly socialist, whatever the heck that means. But who knows? His leadership style, if he does, if he does win the leadership, he could change the dynamic moving forward. There's still a lot of road to hoe between now and the next election in the UK. And right now, reform is, is, is, uh, positioned to form quite a substantial majority. What do we know about Andy Burnham? And is he someone who could turn the tide and restore confidence in this labor government? Well, look, Andy Burnham spent something like 16 years as an MP in Parliament. And Gordon Brown put him in the cabinet.

So he's had a bit of experience in Westminster. On the other hand, he's never been prime minister. And that is a different kettle of fish. He spent six years as mayor of the Greater Manchester area, and apparently did very well. And he did very well fixing blood holes and traffic lights and that kind of thing. And that matters to people. But can he then translate that into the big picture items that Kier Starrmer was incapable of doing? And I don't know.

We'll see what happens and whether Burnham is able to share a vision and really make the future where he thinks Britain should go. Mel Cap, thank you so much for joining us. I mean, UK elections and UK politics always exciting, but they have not had a rotating cast of leaders like this in my lifetime. So all the more exciting. I thank you for joining us today. Pleasure.

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