Keir Starmer held his final cabinet meeting as Prime Minister on 12 July 2026, one week before he left office BBC News. The BBC filmed ministers arriving at Downing Street for the meeting. After this, Starmer faced Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch for the last time in Prime Minister's Questions — the weekly debate where the Prime Minister answers the opposition leader Sky News.

Starmer's departure came after months of pressure from his own party. On 12 May, more than 80 Labour MPs had called for him to resign Reuters. That same day, four junior ministers resigned and publicly asked him to set a date for stepping down Reuters. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and at least two other cabinet ministers had also suggested he should consider his position Reuters.

At first, Starmer said he was not going to resign. But by 22 June, he changed course and announced he was stepping down Reuters. This means Britain will have its seventh Prime Minister in ten years Reuters.

Things happened quite quickly here: from the first calls for him to go in May to his final cabinet meeting in July was just over two months. This sort of pattern — where a Prime Minister first says he is staying, then leaves — has become fairly common in British politics recently.

What this pattern shows is that being Prime Minister has become increasingly difficult. Over the past decade, the job has changed hands six or seven times. This suggests the problems facing whoever leads the country are very tough to solve, and parties on both sides have found it hard to stick with one leader for long.

We do not yet know who will replace Starmer BBC News. Labour will need to choose a new leader. We also do not know if there will be a general election, or if Labour will simply choose a new Prime Minister from among its own MPs BBC News. These questions will be worked out in Parliament and inside Labour over the coming week.

When a Prime Minister leaves, the cabinet usually meets one final time. This meeting is mainly a formal occasion to look back at what the government has done and to say goodbye to the ministers who worked together. The cameras filming ministers arrive at Downing Street on 12 July signalled to Westminster — the area where Parliament sits — that the transition was almost complete. Holding the cabinet meeting and the final Prime Minister's Questions on the same day created a neat symmetry: an internal goodbye to his team in the morning, and a final public clash with the opposition in the afternoon.

The ministers who attended that final cabinet meeting may not stay in their jobs. When a new Prime Minister takes over, cabinet reshuffles are normal — new people get promoted, others move out. Because so many Labour MPs and ministers had called for Starmer to go, whoever replaces him will have to decide fairly quickly whether to keep things much the same or make significant changes.