The Rest Is Politics

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546. Keir Starmer Resigns: What Happens Next?

Explore episode Jun 22, 2026
News
Russia, MAGA, and the Kremlin-Trump Nexus

546. Keir Starmer Resigns: What Happens Next? · Jun 22, 2026 News

Trump posted about Starmer's departure before it happened, framing it as a firing. One of the first people to repost it approvingly was Kirill Dmitriev — Putin's key envoy and the man described as 'the Steve Witkoff of the Kremlin'. The alignment between MAGA and Moscow is now visible in real time.

Where this was said

Domestic Policy Dilemmas: Growth, Tax, and the Triple Lock

At 46:37 · chapter starts 45:00

Stewart frames the central domestic dilemma with uncomfortable clarity: Labour has not had real economic growth since 2008, and many of the country's deepest problems flow directly from that. Burnham will inherit a fiscal position that makes income tax rises politically explosive — yet ruling them out forces bizarre workaround taxes and heavier borrowing. The triple lock pension guarantee is the elephant in the room: universally acknowledged as fiscally unsustainable, universally untouchable for any party that wants to win an election. Stewart asks whether Burnham, arriving on a wave of momentum after the by-election, has a brief window of political capital in which to confront pensioners with difficult truths. Campbell is refreshingly honest: he doesn't know. What he does know is that first impressions and first decisions are decisive — the Blair government's Bank of England independence move in 1997 set the tone for an entire era, while Starmer's winter fuel reversal did the opposite.

Government
The Triple Lock and the Courage Test

546. Keir Starmer Resigns: What Happens Next? · Jun 22, 2026 Government

The triple lock pension guarantee costs billions, is widely acknowledged inside Westminster to be fiscally indefensible, and has been untouched by every government for years. Burnham arrives with a brief window of political momentum. Does he use it to do the thing nobody else has dared to?

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