How will Keir Starmer’s exit affect the US-UK ‘special relationship,’ support for Ukraine?
“I don’t see how he’s going to improve relations with Donald Trump at all,” said Pablo Calderon Martinez said of Starmer’s likely replacement.
The resignation of U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer injects new uncertainty into British foreign policy as Downing Street seeks to balance continued support for Ukraine, maintain strong ties with Europe and navigate a delicate relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Starmer, who leads the governing Labor Party, announced on Monday that he would be stepping down as prime minister, marking the seventh time that the UK has changed leadership in the past 10 years. Andy Burnham, the popular former mayor of Greater Manchester, is widely expected to succeed Starmer, observers of British politics say. But he lacks experience on the world stage, raising the stakes of how he will maneuver through the taut global landscape.
Key among the challenges will be managing Britain’s relationship with a White House that has taken a more skeptical view of Europe and transatlantic partnerships, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, experts say.
That may prove complicated as Trump has, at times, aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his view of the war, driving a wedge between the U.S. and its European allies — though the two leaders’ relationship has cooled more recently. A newcomer to international affairs, Burnham will inherit a relationship that has become increasingly strained over Ukraine, experts say.
To some, it doesn’t bode well.
“I don’t see how [Burnham’s] going to improve relations with Donald Trump at all,” said Pablo Calderon Martinez, an associate professor of politics and international relations based in Northeastern’s London campus. “I think things are only going to get worse.”
For all of the dissatisfaction with Starmer at home, Martinez credited the outgoing prime minister’s management of international politics and the U.K.’s “special relationship” with the U.S. On the one hand, he noted that Starmer courted Trump effectively soon after Trump took office in January 2025. But the prime minister’s willingness to break with the U.S. president on his war with Iran and his support for Ukraine earned Starmer some plaudits among analysts, Martinez said.
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The new labor prime minister is expected to maintain the U.K.’s stance on Ukraine, but uncertainty could arise over the need to prioritize domestic needs over channeling resources to support a foreign nation’s war efforts.
The leadership change could also have broader implications for Britain’s relationship with Europe, including its links to regional partners, said Colin Brown, an associate teaching professor of political science at Northeastern, who studies Western Europe.
Brown noted that the decade-old Brexit decision means that Britain no longer benefits from the economic and political ties that bind European Union (EU) member states. Operating outside the EU and European Economic Area — a common market arrangement that allows the free movement of goods, persons and services across much of Europe — the U.K. government has greater latitude to reshape its relationships with major trading partners; but that flexibility also requires that individual governments devote more attention to managing those ties and can make long-term regional alignment more difficult, Brown said.
Leadership changes “definitely matter more for the U.K.” now, Brown noted, “since their connection to their biggest trading partners is more dependent on their own policies and less clearly institutionalized like it is for EU member states.”
A tumultuous decade
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Starmer’s departure underscores the striking degree of turnover that has characterized U.K. politics since the country’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016. Six prime ministers have held the premiership since, a stretch of time that has reshaped both major parties and tested voters’ patience with Westminster politics, experts say.
The turnover is all the more notable given the significant electoral victories some prime ministers have enjoyed over the 10-years since Brexit — including Starmer himself, who in 2024 defeated then Conservative Party leader Rishi Sunak in a landslide. Sunak had served as prime minister since 2022.
Prior to Sunak, Boris Johnson was forced from office less than three years into his tenure amid a series of scandals that ultimately sank his government. Johnson had led the Tories to an 80-seat parliamentary majority in 2019, the party’s largest since the 1980s.
Martinez said Starmer’s departure also reflects deeper divisions in British politics. Ideological factions have long battled for influence within the Labour Party, he said; but such differences were historically tempered by a shared opposition to the Conservative Party. As the political landscape has shifted, and newer right-wing movements such as Reform UK and Restore Britain have emerged to “eat into the traditional bases of support,” he said those internal tensions have become harder to contain.
“There was always a sense that the left wing and the right wing of the Labor Party could agree on one thing: that they hated the Tories more than anything else,” Martinez said. “That sort of common enemy united them. That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore, as there seems to be a lot more division within political parties.”
