When it comes to weather, some prime ministers get all the luck.
There was a sunny interlude of barely an hour from London’s downpours on Friday just as Britain’s new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer arrived to enter 10 Downing Street. He gave his first address from the spot where six weeks previously his doomed predecessor had called the election in rain-soaked ignominy.
“Whether you voted Labour or not – especially if you did not – I say to you directly: my government will serve you,” said Starmer as he began his premiership. “Politics can be a force for good. We will show that.”
And so the Labour era began. Starmer retreated into Number 10 to appoint his cabinet. There were few surprises. It was a near-complete transplantation of his shadow cabinet team, including Angela Rayner as deputy prime minister, Rachel Reeves as the first woman chancellor of the exchequer and Hilary Benn as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
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The only exceptions related to Emily Thornberry, who was Starmer’s shadow attorney general, and Lisa Nandy, who was appointed culture secretary because Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow incumbent, lost her seat. Starmer passed over Thornberry for the role of attorney general, which went instead to barrister Richard Hermer, who is to be made a peer.
Afterwards, the new prime minister also had a call with US president Joe Biden, in which both men pledged to protect the Belfast Agreement. He also spoke to Taoiseach Simon Harris and Northern Ireland First and Deputy First Ministers Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly. Harris and Starmer will meet in Downing Street on July 17th.
Earlier, outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak had vacated Number 10 with his wife, Akshata Murty, following the Conservative Party’s thumping election defeat. Just as he had done so ominously six weeks before, Mr Sunak gave a speech at the Downing Street lectern. This time it was more dignified: he wished Starmer well; and it stayed dry.
“I have heard your anger,” Sunak told the voters who had delivered his party’s chastening defeat. “I take responsibility for this loss.”
He confirmed he was standing down as leader of the Conservative Party but would remain in place until his successor was chosen. The straitened field of possible candidates includes former business secretary Kemi Badenoch and former home secretary James Cleverly.
In the North, counting of votes continued into the morning. When it had finished, Sinn Féin held seven seats and, by dint of DUP losses, returned the largest number of MPs of any of the Northern parties. It was the first time a nationalist party had held the most seats at all three levels of government, Westminster, Stormont and local councils.
The North’s Sinn Féin First Minister Michelle O’Neill said her party’s victory showed it was “time for us to be able to take control of our own fortunes here at home”.
The big loser was the DUP, which dropped from eight to five seats, with the shock of the night the defeat of Ian Paisley jnr by the Traditional Unionist Voice leader Jim Allister in North Antrim, the first time in more than 50 years that seat has not been held by a Paisley.
Yet as shocking as Paisley’s defeat was, it was eclipsed in England by the defeat on Friday morning of former prime minister Liz Truss, who lost to Labour in South West Norfolk. She once had a 26,000 majority in what was considered a supremely safe Tory seat. Yet in this election, such things did not exist. Truss suffered the humiliation of being the first former British prime minister to lose their seat at an election since Herbert Asquith in 1918.
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