Starmer is replaced as Labour leader today - and there is some trepidation as he leaves

Sir Keir Starmer will bow out as Labour leader today before stepping down as prime minister on Monday. 

That he chose to spend his last full day as his party's leader in Kyiv – he will be back in London shortly before Andy Burnham succeeds him later – is befitting of a prime minister who saw resetting Britain's place on the world stage as one of his crowning achievements.

Burnham to become Labour leader - follow live

For Starmer, Ukraine has been of particular importance.

He, together with Emmanuel Macron, set up the Coalition of the Willing to support Ukraine as the US stepped back and the EU struggled to step up and lead the charge due to divisions in the bloc.

For a prime minister wanting to secure his legacy before being booted out of office after just two years, there was a point in making a trip to Kyiv his final public act.

Do allies fear change of leadership?

When Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the gardens of the presidential palace in the centre of Kyiv, awarded Starmer Ukraine's Order of Freedom, the PM looked close to tears.

It was his second international honour of the week after he was given the Legion d'honneur at a final summit of the Coalition of the Willing in Paris on Monday. Starmer might not have been much liked at home, but among these leaders, he has been an ally and friend, and there is trepidation as he leaves.

Zelenskyy, when I asked him about these concerns about a new prime minister at the news conference in the gardens of the presidential palace, admitted that, of course, he was "afraid" of a change of leadership. Starmer, for his part, insisted that while he was standing down, the UK's support for Ukraine would endure.

"I would not have said what I said to President Zelenskyy, which is really important, if I wasn't confident about what I was saying," he told me when I asked him if he had assurances from Andy Burnham about support for Ukraine. "I believe Ukraine will win this war."

This was his final act as PM, and our conversation on the stands of a football ground where war veterans had been playing a match was his final interview as prime minister.

Starmer did not want to leave office and had insisted, even days before he announced he was standing down, that he would fight on.

Instead, having taken the party to victory in 2024, he is being turfed out of office after two years, with a party convinced that he is a winner no more.

He could be forgiven for feeling bitter, aggrieved, angry.

But the Starmer I encountered in our interview was none of those.

He seems to have come to terms, for now, with his fate, clear that while it was not what he wanted, his party had decided that he was not the right leader to take them into the next general election, and he had accepted that with "good grace".

Rejected by the party, he took the decision to end his own political career rather than fight a bloody leadership battle (which he would almost certainly have lost) and step down. He told me he took that decision with just his wife Vic and their children, and he did it because it was in the best interests of the country.

'I go with pride'

But where he is impervious is around his own record.

If his downfall was brought about through a toxic mix of bad decision-making – sending Peter Mandelson to Washington; cuts to winter fuel; poor party management (see welfare reform); the boys' club briefings; and an inability to set out a clear vision, how many resets were there? - and a beating at the ballot box in the local elections; he was not here to admit that.

"I go with pride," he said as he told me he had "saved the Labour Party" and made it electable again. I did do enough to prepare for office (his former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, said the opposite last week) and set the groundwork for Burnham to go on and win the next general election, he insisted.

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On the other side of the coin, his political career ends in failure.

He had a landslide and a five-year term that he lost because he lost the backing of his party.

For a politician who admits he "hates losing to anyone", this must be very painful. It is perhaps too soon after the drama of his downfall for Starmer to talk more openly about what he regrets and where he went wrong.

But where he did open up more was when it came to his family, as he gave a very open and honest account of the toll the job has taken on his wife and his kids.

"Through every step she (Vic) has been with me, the good, the bad... the really low moments, when somebody tried to burn our family house down, when my brother died, and the last few months, which haven't been easy."

He told me that his two teenage children, who have grown up with their father at the top of British politics, want him back, and he clearly means it when he says he takes comfort in swapping the biggest job in Britain for the most important one – being a husband to his wife Vic and a dad to his two teenage kids.

It is the side of Starmer – be it joking at PMQs on Wednesday or talking so openly about the choices he made and his motivations – that we haven't seen so much during his years as PM, and it is perhaps a side of him that might have garnered a more sympathetic hearing from a public and a party that have rejected him.

He was, after all, a hugely successful election winner who struggled in office. But as he leaves Ukraine and returns home, Starmer will hope that history will judge him more kindly than his party did.

(c) Sky News 2026: Starmer is replaced as Labour leader today - and there is some trepidation as he leaves