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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned after months of pressure from his own party.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
His likely successor is the popular mayor from Manchester. Will he fare any better than six previous leaders who didn’t last long?
INSKEEP: I’m Steve Inskeep with Michel Martin, and this is UP FIRST from NPR News.
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INSKEEP: U.S.-Iran talks almost fell apart in Switzerland over the weekend when President Trump threatened new strikes. The first round ended with a 60-day roadmap for a final deal, but Iran says the real test of the agreement is stopping the war in Lebanon.
MARTIN: And the deal with Iran is facing scrutiny from the president’s own party. Trump is struggling to sell it to his MAGA base, and Republican war hawks say the agreement is too weak. NPR’s Mara Liasson breaks down the political stakes as the midterm elections loom. Stay with us. We’ve got news you need to start your day.
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MARTIN: A revolving door of seven prime ministers in just 10 years. That’s the state of politics in the United Kingdom. The latest Keir Starmer has just made this announcement.
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PRIME MINISTER KEIR STARMER: 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.
INSKEEP: This means he eventually steps down as U.K. prime minister, though his party remains in power for the moment. His likely successor is Andy Burnham, the outgoing mayor of Manchester, England.
MARTIN: For more on how that transition happens and why, let’s go to NPR’s Lauren Frayer in London. Lauren, good morning.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: So why has Starmer resigned?
FRAYER: Yeah. He was elected two years ago with a landslide majority in Parliament, and now he has the lowest approval ratings of any prime minister in U.K. history. Part of it is scandals you may have heard about – his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as the U.K. ambassador to Washington. But part of it is Starmer’s failure to connect with people and to deliver real change that he promised after 14 years of austerity under the previous Conservative Party rule, you know, improvements on cost of living and such. His own Labour Party lawmakers, his parliamentary party, began turning on him in recent weeks. And here’s what he said from behind a lectern at 10 Downing Street moments ago. At some point, his voice cracking and breaking with tears and emotion.
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STARMER: 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.
FRAYER: Starmer said he will stay on as a caretaker prime minister, and then nominations for his successor will open on 9 July, so it will be a summer of politics here.
MARTIN: Tell us about his likely successor.
FRAYER: Yeah. So Labour MPs seem to be coalescing around Andy Burnham. He’s the popular outgoing mayor of Manchester, England. He was an MP in the past – a member of parliament – then returned home to northern England to serve as mayor in his home region. He brought economic development to post-industrial Manchester as mayor. He won a special election to parliament last week. He’s actually being sworn into Parliament this afternoon, after which he will be eligible to challenge Starmer. He’s seen more as sort of folksy, able to connect with voters in a way that Starmer did not, perhaps slightly to the left of Starmer, more likely to sort of robustly defend a welfare state. But he will face the same headwinds – you know, rising global energy prices, strained public finances. So in a way, this is a change in personality at the top, rather than policy. You know, both Burnham and Starmer are from the same party with roughly the same politics.
MARTIN: But Burnham would be the seventh British prime minister in 10 years. Has that revolving door had an impact?
FRAYER: Yeah. I spoke this morning with a former political secretary to former Prime Minister Tony Blair. His name is John McTernan. And he reminded me, actually, tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote, when Britain voted to exit the European Union. Prime Minister – then-Prime Minister David Cameron resigned the very next day. Brexit ultimately hurt the British economy, you know, triggered 10 years of political turmoil that we are still experiencing now.
MARTIN: That is NPR’s Lauren Frayer in London. Lauren, thank you.
FRAYER: You’re welcome.
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MARTIN: The U.S. and Iran had a long first day of negotiations in Switzerland with a goal of permanently ending the war.
INSKEEP: President Trump was not there but was close to his phone and made bellicose remarks on social media that threatened to upend the talks just as they were starting. The two sides have agreed previously to a roadmap and have 60 days to resolve a host of issues.
MARTIN: For details, we’re joined by NPR’s Greg Myre, who is in Tel Aviv. Greg, hello to you.
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: Hi, Michel.
MARTIN: So they’ve given themselves 60 days. How did Day 1 go?
MYRE: Well, it was pretty rocky. Vice President JD Vance led the U.S. delegation in Switzerland and sounded an upbeat note, but President Trump threatened in social media posts and in interviews to again attack Iran. At one point, the Iranian media said the country’s delegation was walking out because of Trump’s comments, though that didn’t actually happen. The talks lasted into the early hours of Monday. The two countries mediating the talks, Pakistan and Qatar, put out a statement saying there was encouraging progress, and the U.S. and Iran have agreed to a roadmap. This includes a working group on the war in Lebanon, which will clearly be a key part of these talks. They also set up a line of communication to deal with the Strait of Hormuz, and lower-level working groups are now set to continue meetings all week.
MARTIN: OK. Can we – I’m going to ask you about all these things. I’ll take them one by one. First, what is happening with the war in Lebanon?
MYRE: You know, yesterday was a good day. U.N. peacekeepers said they did not record shooting by either side Sunday, the first such day since the fighting erupted on March 2. It’s now midday here today, and so far, it remains quiet. But it’s still very combustible. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the first real test of this peace effort is the Lebanon war. There was very heavy fighting Friday and Saturday. Israeli troops remain miles inside southern Lebanon. The Israeli leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, says Israel will keep troops there for as long as it takes, he says, to protect northern Israel. Hezbollah is also defiant, saying the war will not be settled until Israeli troops leave Lebanon.
MARTIN: OK. Let’s turn to the Strait of Hormuz. Is oil still flowing today?
MYRE: Yeah, Michel. It’s a hard one. It’s kind of unclear at the moment. Iran said over the weekend it was closing the strait because of the fighting in Lebanon, but that was before the fighting died down in the last day and a half. Now, U.S. Central Command says the strait remains open. Quote, “Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz.” Traffic continues to flow. Now, according to groups monitoring shipping traffic, dozens of ships passed through the strait Saturday. This was one of the busiest days, maybe the busiest day, since the waterway was closed nearly four months ago. But the traffic slowed down sharply on Sunday. We’re keeping watch today, trying to see what’s happening.
MARTIN: And of course, the big issue remains – Iran’s nuclear program. Was there any movement on that front?
MYRE: So a U.S. diplomat who is not authorized to speak publicly said there were, quote, “robust discussions on all elements of the nuclear deal.” Now, the statement by the Pakistan and Qatar mediators mentioned the nuclear issue as one of several discussed but gave no details. It seems the immediate focus is these urgent questions, like the war in Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. certainly expects to address Iran’s nuclear program in depth and wants a deal, but it may not be the top of the agenda right now.
MARTIN: Interesting, since that was the stated reason for starting all this. So that is NPR’s Greg Myre in Tel Aviv. Greg, thank you.
MYRE: Sure thing, Michel.
MARTIN: As Greg mentioned, Vice President JD Vance flew to a Swiss resort over the weekend, working out the details of a tentative peace plan between the U.S. and Iran. Here is the vice president before talks began.
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JD VANCE: The question before us now is, how much more can we accomplish together? Can we turn over a new leaf? Can we change relations in the Middle East permanently?
INSKEEP: Raising those questions, Vance sounded tentative about the answers, which is also true of the memorandum of understanding that the two sides signed last week. It leaves a lot to negotiate.
MARTIN: With Congress coming back to Washington this week, NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson is with us now to tell us more about the political stakes for Trump in this moment. Good morning, Mara.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: How is this memorandum of understanding playing in the U.S. so far?
LIASSON: Well, Trump is struggling to sell it. He’s getting criticism from both wings of his own party. There are some in the Make America Great Again, MAGA, base who are angry that he went to war in the first place. Many of them voted for him because he promised not to get involved in any more foreign wars, and they don’t feel like the U.S. has achieved anything of value so far. Then there are conservative Iran hawks in the GOP who feel the deal is weak, that it doesn’t do any better than a deal made by former President Barack Obama, which Trump has criticized bitterly. And they also say that Trump’s stated goals in the war haven’t been met. There’s certainly been no unconditional surrender, no regime change. Iran gets hundreds of millions of dollars in unfrozen assets, and so far, there’s nothing to stop Iran from enriching uranium or building a nuclear weapon.
MARTIN: Has Trump responded to this criticism? How is he taking this?
LIASSON: Well, he’s not very happy about it. He called his critics stupid and bad people. He was particularly angry about a New York Times headline that he actually reposted on social media. The headline said, quote, “What Changed After Almost Four Months Of War? Analysts Say Not Much.” And Trump went on to say that the Iranian air force is gone. Its military is decimated. Its leaders were killed. And all that is true, but it also appears that Iran took a beating, but the regime is still in place, arguably, more hard-line than the previous one, and Iran has been able to deploy a powerful new weapon they never used before – closing the Strait of Hormuz. And that’s given them leverage over the world economy.
MARTIN: So why make a deal now? I mean, what is at stake for President Trump and his party?
LIASSON: The short answer is the U.S. economy. The economic pressure, once the Strait of Hormuz was closed and prices went up, seems to have pushed Trump to make this deal. And when he signed it last week in France, he said he didn’t want to be like former President Herbert Hoover. Here’s what he said.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: So rather than possibly going into a depression, rather than having your favorite president be Herbert Hoover, who was always the one I didn’t want to be.
LIASSON: So Trump is being very transparent. He doesn’t want to seen – be seen as responsible for inflation rising. He’s basically telling the world and his opponents what his pain point is, which is $4-a-gallon gasoline.
MARTIN: So just in the couple of minutes we have left here, Mara, what greeted Trump back in Washington when he returned from signing that tentative deal with Iran?
LIASSON: Well, one thing he found was the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial was full of green, slimy algae and peeling blue paint. That happened maybe because the pool is now absorbing more sunlight and heat after Trump had its bottom painted dark blue. So you could see that green algae and peeling blue paint as a metaphor for Trump’s troubles getting the world to follow his orders, or you could see it as just a temporary blip, as he makes Washington, D.C., more beautiful.
MARTIN: At least in his eyes. That…
LIASSON: In his eyes.
MARTIN: That is NPR’s Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you.
LIASSON: You’re welcome.
MARTIN: Before you go, don’t forget to listen to The Sunday Story from UP FIRST. Cyber scams cost Americans more than $20 billion last year. But who are the people doing the scamming?
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SHUAIB: I never knew the job that I was going to be doing.
MARTIN: On The Sunday Story, an exclusive two-part series on Cambodia’s scam industry from the point of view of the scammers themselves. Listen to it wherever you get NPR’s UP FIRST podcast.
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MARTIN: And that’s UP FIRST for Monday, June 22. I’m Michel Martin.
INSKEEP: And I’m Steve Inskeep. Today’s episode of UP FIRST was edited by Tina Kraja, Anna Yukhananov, James Doubek, Mohamad ElBardicy and John Stolnis. It was produced by Ziad Buchh. Our director is Christopher Thomas. We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis, and our technical director is Carleigh Strange. Join us tomorrow.
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