Sir Keir Starmer in Downing Street earlier today (Monday)

IT ended with his voice cracking with emotion, a pledge to his children and a hug from his wife. Then Sir Keir Starmer disappeared back through the doors of No. 10 Downing Street.

He had just announced that his time in Downing Street was now limited, after a speech in which the Holborn and St Pancras MP resigned as leader of the Labour Party. In doing so, he cleared the way for a successor to be installed, either by contest or coronation.

All eyes are now on Andy Burnham, the man Mr Starmer had once supported in the now former Mayor of Manchester’s past leadership bids. Friendships are not forever in the dog-eat-dog world of UK politics.

The speech marks the end of a curious era for residents in the south of the borough who have had the UK’s leader as their representative in the House of Commons.

Selection for the ‘safe’ Labour seat of Holborn and St Pancras has only come up once in the last 48 years, when Mr Starmer replaced the retiring Frank Dobson in 2015. He has not yet said whether the end of his premiership will lead to a decision to step down as an MP, either early in the current parliamentary term or at the next general election.

Past prime ministers have held differing views about the experience of returning to the backbenches after once holding the highest office in the land.

If he did decide to withdraw from politics completely, there would be an instant queue of Labour figures interested in standing in his constituency, including current and former councillors, as well as faces from further afield.

Mr Starmer was welcomed onto the campaign trail during May’s council elections and has had a supportive relationship with the organisers of the constituency Labour Party in Camden. Many were in Downing Street, applauding and waving flags, on the day he became Prime Minister two years ago.

Some local figures have been hired into his constituency office or as special advisers, and former Camden councillor Tommy Gale was among the aides who were clapping him at today’s more painful speech.

Despite the warm relationship, however, there have been recent worries among local campaigners about Mr Starmer’s ability to turn around poor poll ratings and concern for the man himself, who has had a front-row seat to Mr Burnham’s growing move against him.

There was a shudder among some when Mr Starmer insisted he would stand in a leadership contest if the Makerfield by-election winner was to challenge him, with the prospect of a destructive internal battle for control too much for even some of his long term supporters to countenance.

But today Mr Starmer said: “I know the question being asked now is not who was best placed to change the Labour Party, to take us into power, and to begin the vital work of improving lives for millions of people. Those questions have been answered.

“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question. And I accept that answer with good grace.

“Every decision I’ve taken has been about putting the country I love first. That is why I will resign as leader of the Labour Party. I have spoken to His Majesty the King this morning to inform him of my decision.”

Mr Starmer’s version of the Labour Party has faced being outflanked on both sides, with the growth of the Green Party under Zack Polanski and Nigel Farage’s Reform threatening to take power when the country next goes to the polls.

He was accused of deflating the excitement that came with the arrival of a new government in July 2024 by immediately insisting tough times were ahead. With Chancellor Rachel Reeves, he removed the winter fuel allowance for pensioners, cut back on support for people with disabilities and refused to lift the two-child benefit cap at the first opportunity — regularly cited as the single most powerful measure for tackling child poverty. The latter was eventually removed, but not before the government had been accused of failing to soothe the cost-of-living crisis for those struggling to get by.

There will be further inquests over how the issues of foreign wars, Gaza, immigration and even personal choices over expenses and freebies were handled when the drafts of history are written and rewritten about why the forensic lawyer who was supposed to end the merry-go-round at Westminster has lasted only two years in the job.

His choice of advisers will probably require a chapter from the biographers too.

A key blunder of his own making had been hiring Peter Mandelson to become the UK’s ambassador to the United States, when this notorious peer had already been fired from past governments twice and had a well-reported friendship with a paedophile financier. He didn’t even seem to like Mr Mandelson, unlike other senior Labour figures.

A more recent hammer blow was the resignation of John Healey, the Defence Secretary, who stepped down last month insisting the budget was not big enough for the UK to defend itself.

Nevertheless, Mr Starmer insisted in his speech today (Monday) that he was leaving the country in a better state than he found it, telling the assembled reporters that people’s “wages [were] rising faster than inflation in every single month since we came to power.”

His list went on: “Investment secured, infrastructure being built. An end to austerity, with the fastest fall in NHS waiting lists for 17 years. The biggest improvement in rights for workers and renters in a generation. The biggest uplift in defence spending since the Cold War.

“Small boat crossings falling, asylum hotels closing, protecting young people from social media, and half a million children being lifted out of poverty because of the choices that I made.”