BBC Breakfast presenter Jon Kay abandoned the studio this morning and headed down to wait outside Downing Street, likely for Sir Keir Starmer’s impending resignation. The prime minister is expected to hand in his notice as soon as this morning, with his potential successor Andy Burnham heading down to London in the meantime.
Breaking News Halts Programme
The programme halted for breaking news which looks catastrophic for the PM, as chief political correspondent Henry Zeffman told Jon: “Throughout the weekend, I was hearing from all sorts of people at different levels of the Labour Party, right up to pretty senior figures at the top of this government, who believe that the prime minister this morning is going to resign. He’s going to become the sixth prime ministerial resignation that we see outside that famous black door in the course of just 10 years.”
Caveats and Uncertainties
He added the caveat: “However, the prime minister spent his weekend at Chequers with his wife, Victoria, and his family. With any prime minister, when they spend time with their spouse at a moment of political difficulty, it’s a bit of a black box. You don’t necessarily know, even if you’re their closest advisers, what the prime minister is then going to come out and decide to do. So look, while it is looking like the end game for Sir Keir Starmer, I think we should emphasise we don’t know that it is.
“If he were now to say, ‘Actually I’m not resigning’, I think there’d be an awful lot of shock in the Labour Party and an awful lot of people who would try to make him resign, and that’s the political reality that Peter Kyle, the cabinet minister yesterday, said that he was facing up to.”
Potential Successor Arriving
Jon added: “The political reality, especially to the timings, is that Andy Burnham could be arriving at Euston Station in London to take his place in Westminster within the next few hours.”
