The prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, has resigned but will stay on while a new leader of the Labour party is elected, who will then take over in September.  

The PM announced his resignation in a speech at Downing Street on Monday morning. It comes after leadership hopeful Andy Burnham, who has made no secret about his ambitions to be PM, won the recent by-election in Makerfield. Burnham’s healthy majority over the candidate for Reform UK has provided the Labour party with a sense that he will be able to see off Reform at the 2029 general election, after the right-wing party surged in popularity at the May local elections. 

“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,” said Starmer, who became PM when he won the 2024 general election for Labour.  

Nominations for a possible Labour leadership contest will open on 9 July and be completed by the summer recess just a week later.  

“In the case of a contest, this will ensure a new leader is in place before parliament returns in September. I will remain in post until the contest is complete, and I will do everything I can to ensure an orderly handover of power,” Starmer said. 

Burnham is seen as the favourite for the leadership, and former rival Wes Streeting has today given him his backing. Burnham has been vague about what his future policies would involve, perhaps for fear of spooking bond markets after a previous remark about being "in hock" to bond markets. 

He has reportedly rowed back from a statement that could be seen as being in favour of compensating 1950s-born women for the government's state pension age comms blunder. Burnham is seen as a supporter of taxing wealth, which could include pensions.

For now, it is still unclear what Starmer’s resignation means for pensions, but with chancellor Rachel Reeves and work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden both being his allies, there will likely be changes in who holds these as well as more junior ministerial posts in their respective departments. 

There could, therefore, be a new pensions minister, a role that currently sits partly in the Treasury. The incumbent, Torsten Bell, is a fervent advocate of reforms largely devised by the Treasury, such as consolidation of the Local Government Pension Scheme and of defined contribution providers.  

Bell has repeatedly argued that longevity risk should be shared and that the incoming rules on guided retirement can address this, which require trustees to offer access to regular income in retirement. Providers are expected to seek to comply by offering collective defined contribution or ‘flex-then-fix' retirement options. 

However, aside from guided retirement, the ongoing reforms mainly bring to a close policy and regulatory changes set in motion years ago, some aimed at boosting the economy through use of pension capital, others to address market developments. 

While these ongoing reforms have market impact, Labour has so far not made any radical changes to pensions that a left-leaning government might have considered, for example rolling out CDC, outlawing pure DC, increasing contributions or making employer contributions non-contingent. It has even refrained from implementing the recommendations of the 2017 Automatic Enrolment Review that had been promised for the mid-2020s, and has ruled out raising minimum contributions in this parliament. Instead, its efforts have been focused on taxation, with pensions being brought into inheritance tax from 2027 and salary sacrifice schemes no longer benefitting from national insurance relief from 2029.

Bell was initially also against creating a new Pensions Commission to consider adequacy, and appears to differ with Baroness Jeannie Drake, one of the commissioners, on things like how to close the gender pensions gap.

The MP for Swansea West is the second pensions minister in the Labour government, succeeding Emma Reynolds in January 2025, when she replaced Tulip Siddiq as economic secretary to the Treasury.

Under the Conservatives there were six pensions ministers – Paul Maynard, Laura Trott, Alex Burghart, Guy Opperman, Richard Harrington and Baroness Ros Altmann – while Sir Steve Webb served in the 2010 coalition government. Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the pensions minister post changed eight times after the initial appointment and was twice held by Stephen Timms.

In 2016, when Theresa May appointed Harrington, she downgraded the role from minister to parliamentary under-secretary.