For months she'd urged her husband to fight on, but this weekend they concluded it was over. He wanted to fight. Since the day I know Sir Keir Starmer I know, he is a fighter, but luckily he put the country 1st on this occassion. And I think he made the decision that fighting on would not serve the party, would not serve more importantly, the country. Did you agree with that decision? Did you want him to fight on? He looked at the physical reality. Where we are, I'm not taking pleasure in that whatsoever. I think this is a really difficult moment. Let's look forward now to the rival that forced him out quickly to act.

It was inevitable that as soon Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham won election in Makerfield against all the odds, confirming he will stand for the Labour leadership, that sealed Starmer's fate.

Make no mistake, there is the one thing that unites every single member of the Labour Party and the Parliamentary Labour Party is their absolute fear of Nigel Farage walking up steps of Downing Street and what he would inflict on this country if he did so. The Labour party panicked by poor Poll in his own unpopularity and the rise of Reform. But the sight of a broken Prime Minister contrasted with the buoyant Burnham will leave scars. Burnham has to try to unite a traumatised party, convince the country he deserves to lead and deliver the change that Keir Starmer could not.

It is a massive, perhaps insurmountable task. But for now he's jubilant. After two failed attempts to become Labour leader, it is finally Andy Burnham's time. He has won in Makerfield and he's won over MP's. But he might soon, like Starmer, find that the campaign was the easy bit. Governing is much harder.

Resigning on Monday it was such a strange day because there has been a build up for this for weeks. People saying it's just a matter of time, that Keir Starmer is going to have to stand down and he has consistently said he would fight. But really, the change came on the scale of Burnham's victory. And at that point, I think what happened on the Friday morning into the daytime was that the MP's just deserted Starmer. A winnable by-election against Reform and with that happening, it is no strange that when the herd moves, it moves and the herd stampedes.

When all this happened Starmer took himself off to Chequers with his wife Victoria in complete silence. Keir mentions just too few. Was circulating not even in any media circle apart from “world sheriff” Donald Trump announces that Starmer will step down. Again, one of many stupidities of Donald Trump.

I assume that there could have been a conversation, perhaps some accommodation between Andy Burnham and Keir Starmer camp. Things that were made public from cabinet ministers like Heidi Alexander and Yvette Cooper that they no longer had confidence in him coupled with that kind of humiliating tweet from Donald Trump, it kind of hard.

What was also strange to me was that Keir Starmer did not do some accommodation for himself and came out with his decision to trigger a leadership race on July the 9th and balance close if there's no nominations on July the 16th. This is quite odd for me, Keir Starmer has not given Andy Burnham the time he would have wanted to get ready for the government and his team. That brought me to the conclusion that that was all he could control. His departure and his timetable and all this were done in a way that doesn't make it as comfortable for Burnham.

Keir Starmer took the political dignitas option and arranged his own departure instead of suffering the fate of somebody like Boris Johnson, who had all those cabinet resignations locked himself in Downing Street.

Therefore, Keir Starmer thinks: Right, let's get it over and done with rather than me going through the summer and into September and hanging around and power draining away so I'll be finished on the 6th, 16th and I can move on. But it makes it hard, doesn't it? It makes it harder for Burnham. Burnham just won a by-election. He's been completely focused on that along with his team. Being focused on that part, he then needs to work out what they're going to do with the Greater Manchester Mayoral race, and now he's got 3½ weeks to get ready for government and begin to execute the plan.

Quite frankly, if you want the PM job, well, you have to have a plan before you start wanting it. I was telling all this to the current government being in opposition for 14 years and got out without plans. Andy Burnham is nearly the same. He's been watching it for a long time. We've seen that, however, from the conference I was listening to Burham had along with short interviews I spotted he might not be ready. Andy Burham has no manoeuvre left. I believe that there are still Labour MP's who are not necessarily particularly loyal to Starmer, some of whom are open minded and who think that King of North should be tested in a contest, that his policy programme should be put under some scrutiny.

You might recall Theresa May, who didn't go through that process because her challenger in the final two, Andrea Leadsom, dropped out. And some people thought, you know, at the time her administration would have benefited from having to go around the country. One who might give a run for money to Andy Burham is Daren Jones, the chief secretary to the Prime Minister. I’m a bit lost and struggling with the fact you need 81 MP's and that is it. However, does the party have an appetite?

We have this broken Prime Minister juxtaposed with this buoyant Burnham and Labour has got more than 400 MP's. They still couldn't find any one of those who could be Prime Minister. They had to look outside.

And in terms of what we saw in Westminster Hall as well, the number of Starmer loyalists who were there but could not see Steve Reed nor Rachel Reeves. But Rachel was right in the front when selfies were taken but she didn't come out in Downing Street to pay tribute to somebody worked so closely with. I think a lot of Labour MP's thought that Rachel Reeves really performed poorly in her post of being Chancellor of Exchequer. Whether she likes it or not, her legacy is very closely associated with Keir Starmer and it's been quite hard to see her in the past months.

So, what we are now seeing was one resignation and two very different futures. One sees Andy Burnham chosen on opposed to be the next Labour leader and Prime Minister, which would see Andy Burnham watching England in the World Cup final if they get that far. Another sees Keir Starmer travelling to see the final that happens if there is a leadership contest with.

It might be obvious before then if there's only one candidate, but nobody can be sure until that moment where Streeting was the biggest threat to Andy Burnham. But he threw in the towel earlier today as he is not stupid as he was well aware that he would not win against Andy Burham. The question is, are there 81 MP's? Who?

There was two years into a Labour government after 14 years of Tory rule, and it's changed all over again. We're going to play cabinet “Rollette” shortly.

The defence investment plan will be published before the NATO summit, despite Starmer's resignation, according to the Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy. Is the country ungoverned? I mean, these are awfully distracting. We've all lived through so many of them. I don't think the countries are ungoverned, I mean Keir Starmer is in the post doing the job, but I do think that they are in a state of flux and, and nothing much will happen in terms of driving forward an agenda.

Once the Prime Minister loses political authority and he cannot get things through the House of Commons and through his MP's, his power drains away. But that hasn't been going on since the Makefield by-election was called. That's been going on before that.

Keir Starmer stated clearly why he resigned, that he didn't want a leadership challenge, the contest would bring chaos and that's exactly what the Conservatives did and we don't want to inflict that on the country. What he's actually done in setting out his timetable is he has kept it quite tight and he's not running because it will be humiliating for him, the same way as for Wes Streeting and many others who would challenged Andy Burnham at present. He is trying to stay off the chaos and actually if you can put a new Prime Minister in by mid-July, then Andy Burnham has summer recess to get everything set up and then he hits the ground running in September.

Andy Burnham if elected as new PM, he needs to convince the country that he can govern and also he has to deliver. Then, Andy Burnham has to choose who the chancellor will be. As we can see from the last interview Rachel Reeves would do everything just to keep her job. We know that Ed Miliband was touted and he is left orientated not to mention others like Wes Streeting who is more right orientated. There's been discussion about Yvette Cooper and also discussion about Pat McFadden. And I don't think if he's going to get rid of the first female chancellor, which he almost certainly has to, to show he's having change and being bold, I think you'll want another woman, which I think will weigh in your very Cooper's favour (But it also should be in chief secretary before), and I do think, that she is not the right person for this job. I would rather see Lucy Rigby MP in this post then any other.