标签： Europe

LONDON — A new chapter is set to open in British politics on Monday, when veteran Labour Party figure and widely popular former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham will formally take office as the United Kingdom’s next prime minister, succeeding outgoing leader Keir Starmer who stepped down from his role last month. Burnham stood unopposed in the Labour leadership race, as he was the only contender to meet the required threshold of backing from sitting Labour lawmakers. Since Labour holds a parliamentary majority, the party’s leader automatically becomes prime minister under the UK’s parliamentary system.

Official results confirmed that 349 of the 401 sitting Labour Members of Parliament threw their support behind Burnham, who was officially named the new Labour leader during a special party conference held Friday. Per constitutional convention, he will not assume the office of prime minister until Monday, when he is scheduled to meet King Charles III at Buckingham Palace to receive formal royal approval to form a new government. Outgoing prime minister Keir Starmer will remain in the role as a caretaker until the formal handover is complete.

This leadership transition comes just two years after Starmer led the Labour Party to a landslide general election victory in 2024, leaving many questioning the circumstances of this midterm change. Unlike a general election that replaces the entire government, the UK’s parliamentary democracy permits ruling parties to replace their leader mid-term, with the new party leader becoming prime minister without requiring a new national vote. This process is triggered when an incumbent prime minister resigns as party leader, or is removed through an internal leadership challenge. Under current law, the next scheduled general election does not need to be held until 2029, five years after the 2024 vote.

Starmer announced his resignation as Labour leader on June 22, ending a two-year tenure plagued by repeated political missteps. The most damaging controversy came from his decision to appoint a figure with close personal ties to deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein as the UK’s ambassador to the United States. Matters came to a head in May, when the Labour Party suffered heavy losses in nationwide local midterm elections, sparking widespread demands from within the party for Starmer to step down. When Burnham, who had long been viewed as a favorite among party members to lead, won a special by-election to secure a seat in Parliament, the pressure on Starmer became unstoppable, and he announced his exit.

Starmer’s resignation automatically triggered a leadership contest under Labour Party rules. The rulebook states that any sitting Labour MP can launch a leadership challenge if they secure the backing of at least one-fifth of the party’s House of Commons members. Burnham easily surpassed this threshold, and no other candidate chose to enter the race, leaving him the uncontested winner.

The ascent of Burnham means he will become the seventh UK prime minister to take office in just 10 years, a statistic that underscores the deep political turbulence that has followed the UK’s 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Far from an unprecedented scenario, midterm leadership changes through internal party contests have become the norm for UK politics in recent years: four of the six prime ministers who held office over the past decade gained the role through internal party leadership races, rather than a general election. In the 2010s, both Theresa May and Boris Johnson took the top job after winning Conservative Party leadership contests to replace predecessors who resigned mid-term. When Johnson resigned in 2022, Liz Truss won the Conservative leadership race to replace him, only to step down after just 49 days in office, paving the way for Rishi Sunak to take over through the same internal process. All of these successive leaders struggled, to varying degrees, to navigate the ongoing political and economic fallout of Brexit, contributing to the rapid turnover in the top office.

Monday’s handover of power will follow a decades-old well-worn constitutional ritual that Britons have become familiar with after years of repeated leadership changes. The day will begin with Starmer delivering a public farewell address, before traveling to Buckingham Palace for a brief audience with the King to formally tender his resignation. After Starmer’s departure, Burnham will arrive at the palace, where King Charles will formally invite him to form a new government. This traditional private ceremony is known as the “Kissing of Hands,” a historic title that does not reflect the modern reality: no kissing of hands actually takes place, and the pair typically exchange a standard handshake.

Once Burnham leaves the palace, he will officially become the 59th prime minister of the United Kingdom. He will then travel by motorcade to 10 Downing Street, the official residence and workplace of British prime ministers, where he is expected to deliver his first public address as the country’s new leader. The entire constitutional sequence will be broadcast live across major UK television networks, and the full transfer of power will be completed within a matter of hours.

In the latest crackdown on the shrinking remnant of domestic political dissent within Russia, two prominent critics of the Kremlin have been targeted with detention and legal restrictions designed to bar them from political participation, just weeks before the country’s September parliamentary elections. The simultaneous actions against former Putin supporter turned dissident blogger Ilya Remeslo and veteran pro-peace politician Boris Nadezhdin mark the newest chapter in a years-long campaign to eliminate organized opposition to the Kremlin’s domestic and foreign policies.

The detention of Remeslo, once a high-profile pro-Putin commentator, marked a striking capstone to his dramatic political reversal earlier this year. Last March, the blogger published an explosive blog post on Telegram titled Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin, in which he labeled the sitting president a “war criminal and thief” and called for his immediate resignation. The public about-face shocked Russian political circles, as Remeslo had spent years backing Putin’s leadership, supporting the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and publicly denouncing opposition figures, including the late Alexei Navalny.

Within days of publishing his critical post, Remeslo was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital for a month, a move he has decried as retaliation for his views. Just hours before his court appearance on Friday, he was arrested at his home in St. Petersburg and transferred to Moscow for processing. A judge has since ordered he be held in pre-trial detention for two months on charges of spreading false information about the Russian military, an accusation routinely used to target dissenting voices in the country. On the eve of his arrest, Remeslo published one final Telegram post warning that domestic conditions for the Kremlin were deteriorating rapidly, pointing to an ongoing national energy crisis fueled by repeated Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure that have sparked fuel shortages as far as the Moscow region, and growing friction among Russia’s ruling elite. He argued that even a small disruption could lead to the collapse of Putin’s hold on power.

In a separate, coordinated crackdown on political opposition, former Duma candidate Boris Nadezhdin, a 63-year-old pro-peace politician who gained international attention for his 2024 anti-war presidential bid, has been convicted of “displaying extremist symbols” in a ruling that strips him of his last legal path to run for September’s parliamentary election. Nadezhdin first attempted to run for the Russian presidency two years ago on an explicit anti-war platform, but was ultimately barred from the ballot after electoral officials claimed signature gathering irregularities invalidated his candidacy.

Last week, Nadezhdin was formally designated a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities, a label that typically disqualifies individuals from running for public office. A last-minute legal loophole still allowed him to collect signatures to qualify for the ballot, however, a path that was closed off by Friday’s extremist symbols conviction. The charges stem from a 2023 video Nadezhdin reposted that briefly showed an image of Alexei Navalny, the most prominent Russian opposition leader, who died suddenly in an Arctic penal colony in February 2024. While Russian authorities maintain Navalny died of natural causes, the United Kingdom and four major European nations have confirmed they believe he was poisoned with a lethal toxin. Nadezhdin was also detained earlier this week and barred from leaving the country.

During Friday’s court hearing in his hometown of Dolgoprudny, just north of Moscow, Nadezhdin—who lives with chronic high blood pressure and diabetes—briefly collapsed and required emergency medical attention. He has rejected all charges against him, telling the court the ruling is an open political retaliation intended to silence him and prevent his candidacy for the Duma. He added that he cannot pay the 1,000 rouble ($13 USD) fine levied against him because Russian authorities have already frozen all of his financial accounts. Nadezhdin retains the right to appeal the conviction, though political analysts say an overturn is highly unlikely.

The crackdown comes as new public opinion polling shows Putin’s national approval rating has fallen to its lowest point since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Two separate Russian pollsters released data this month showing a measurable decline in support: the independent Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) recorded a five-point drop over one week ending July 12, pushing Putin’s approval rating to 66%, while state-run pollster VTsIOM recorded a more modest decline that still put his rating at 65.1%, the lowest in more than four years. Today, nearly all major genuine opposition figures in Russia have been forced into exile, imprisoned, or killed, leaving almost no open space for anti-government or anti-war political organizing inside the country.

On Thursday, thousands of demonstrators filled central Kyiv’s streets, their anger simmering after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky removed the popular, reform-minded Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov in a sweeping cabinet reshuffle. The decision has split the country’s military community, sparked open accusations of authoritarian drift from critics, and raised urgent questions about the future of Ukraine’s military innovation agenda amid ongoing war with Russia.

For many of Ukraine’s frontline soldiers and wounded veterans, the removal of the 35-year-old Fedorov feels like a personal betrayal. A disfigured infantry soldier, recovering from combat injuries ahead of scheduled reconstructive surgery, captured the widespread despair in a viral Telegram video. “I hope when I wake up after the anaesthetic, Fedorov will be back at the Ministry of Defence,” he said. “Otherwise, everything I was fighting for will have been in vain.”

Maryna, an active-duty soldier who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid disciplinary action, called the decision a deliberate insult to all Ukrainian service members. “It is a blatant slap in the face to all service members,” she told reporters. “It is truly difficult to put this into words without venting in frustration.” Like many critics, she fears the reshuffle signals a growing authoritarian turn in Kyiv: “A dictatorship is already unfolding here, with its own petty tyrants who think they have caught God by the beard.”

Military leadership has reportedly ordered rank-and-file soldiers to avoid public political commentary, forcing most serving personnel to speak only under pseudonym. Opinion even among soldiers is not uniform: Natasha, a frontline servicemember stationed near the Donbas front, noted that daily Russian multiple launch rocket system attacks on Ukrainian positions leave little bandwidth for political outrage over cabinet changes. Even so, she acknowledged widespread respect for Fedorov’s work, and blamed entrenched old-guard military leadership for his ousting. “If you can’t come to an agreement with the old fossils, they’ll eat you alive,” she said.

That old guard, in the view of many of Fedorov’s supporters, is led by 60-year-old Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, a veteran officer shaped by the Soviet-era top-down military system. Once celebrated as a national hero for leading the 2022 defense of Kyiv, Syrskyi has become increasingly unpopular among frontline troops for his human-cost-heavy approach to warfare, earning him derogatory nicknames like “General 200” (a reference to the Soviet military code for combat casualties) and “The Butcher.” Still, some military insiders defend him: Andrii, a former frontline soldier now serving on the General Staff, argues there is currently no qualified replacement for Syrskyi’s experience leading large-scale combat operations.

What is undeniable is that the rift between Fedorov and Syrskyi had grown unresolvable ahead of Zelensky’s decision. Zelensky himself acknowledged the two men could no longer even share a room, while Fedorov has openly blamed Syrskyi for systematically blocking all his military reform and modernization efforts. “It was snowballing. Everyone knew about it. Zelensky had to make a decision,” Andrii said.

The generational and ideological clash between the two men encapsulates a broader divide running through modern Ukraine. Military analyst and former intelligence officer Ivan Stupak framed the divide in starkly technological terms: “Fedorov is an iPhone 16, Syrskyi is a telephone from the 1980s. You know, the same purpose but with different approaches.”

Fedorov first rose to prominence as Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, where he built a reputation as a relentless innovator committed to modernizing Ukraine’s public and military institutions. During his six-month tenure as Defense Minister starting in January 2026, he delivered a string of high-impact wins: he negotiated with Elon Musk to cut Russian frontline forces off from Starlink satellite internet, a move that disrupted Russian command and control and helped Ukrainian forces repel major Russian advances. He accelerated the integration of artificial intelligence and low-cost drone interception systems to defend Ukrainian cities from Russian drone attacks, and launched a sweeping bureaucratic overhaul of the Ministry of Defense to cut red tape and speed up weapons procurement. His signature “Army of Drones: Bonus” program, which offered frontline units financial incentives for destroying Russian equipment and personnel, was widely credited with boosting troop initiative and accelerating innovation in drone warfare, a capability that has allowed Ukraine to gain an edge over its much larger Russian adversary.

But even before his removal, Fedorov faced deep institutional resistance from the decades-old military bureaucracy. Stupak described the Ministry of Defense as a “swamp” resistant to change: “It’s made of very solid material and it’s very difficult to establish new technologies because lots of people have been there for decades and they don’t share his vision of digitalisation.”

Critics and observers now warn that Fedorov’s departure risks halting his ambitious modernization agenda entirely, despite Zelensky’s public assurances that reforms will continue. With autumn and winter approaching, Russia is widely expected to launch a new large-scale assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving the country more vulnerable without Fedorov’s leadership on drone and air defense innovation. Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Centre, called the decision a devastating setback for Ukraine’s war effort. “I’m very upset that all this progress, which was built by Fedorov, will be just destroyed and reversed in one of the most critical periods of the war,” she said. She also argued the move reveals a troubling authoritarian streak in Zelensky’s leadership, saying it sends a message that the president does not care about public opinion and rejects independent, effective leaders within his government: “That is very destructive for Ukraine.”

The decision to oust Fedorov fits a pattern of Zelensky sidelining or removing popular, effective officials, leading many critics to accuse him of concentrating power and moving toward authoritarian rule. Stupak noted the irony: as a comedian before entering politics, Zelensky built his career lampooning the authoritarian, self-serving post-Soviet political elite. Now, Stupak says, he has adopted the very traits he once mocked: “He’s collected all the factors which were the subject for his jokes. Maybe it’s because he’s been in his position for seven years.”

For activists like Kaleniuk, the recent street protests evoke a strong sense of deja vu. Exactly one year ago, massive anti-government protests – the first since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion – forced Zelensky to backtrack on a bill that would have gutted the power of two leading Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies. Today’s protesters are hoping for a similar reversal, even though Zelensky has already appointed acting Security Service head Yevhenii Khmara as interim defense minister.

While current protests are smaller in scale than last year’s demonstrations, Kaleniuk says the stakes are far higher: “These events are even more dangerous, because they directly impact our war effort.”

Maria Berlinska, founder of an NGO that trains volunteer aerial reconnaissance teams, summed up the widespread fear among reformists that even the most successful, loyal leaders are not safe from political sidelining. “You can become a key architect of the strategy of technological victory over the enemy,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “No matter how cool you are, it will not help you. At some point, you will simply be removed from the field.”