Even the top job has a succession plan problem

When Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday, he handed the country a familiar problem: who takes over, and how. Less than two years after one of the largest election wins in modern British history, the Prime Minister was gone, and the Labour Party was left scrambling to work out what happens next. Nominations to replace him open on 9 July and, if there’s a contest, a new leader won’t be confirmed until 1 September. In the meantime, Starmer stays on as caretaker – running the country he’s already agreed to leave.

Whatever you think of the politics, the mechanics should make every business owner pause. Because the single most powerful office in the land has just shown us what happens when a transition is forced rather than planned; a leadership vacuum, a rushed timetable, a caretaker holding things together, and an outcome decided by events instead of design.

It’s a problem we see constantly, just on a smaller stage.

The succession gap

Most business owners I meet have built something genuinely valuable. What very few of them have is a clear, written answer to a simple question: if you stepped back tomorrow, who runs this, and how does the value transfer?

The honest answer is usually some version of “we’d figure it out”. Exactly the position Labour is in now – figuring it out, live, under pressure, with the clock running. It works far better when the work is done in advance.

The parallels are uncomfortably close. Starmer’s party has no agreed successor (though most eyes are already turning to one man, Andy Burnham), so it’s running a contest in the middle of a crisis. Plenty of businesses are the same; the owner is the business. They hold the key relationships, the supplier terms live in their head, the staff look to them for every decision. Remove that person and you don’t have a company worth a premium, you have a gap. Buyers see that gap immediately, and they price it in.

There’s also a timing lesson. Starmer didn’t choose his moment – the moment chose him, after a bruising set of local and regional results and a run of scandals that wore down his own MPs. By the time he moved, he had almost no leverage over how it played out. Owners fall into the same trap when they wait for a forced exit – ill health, burnout, a falling-out between partners/spouses, a market that turns. The best time to plan your departure is when you don’t have to. The worst time is when the decision has already been made for you.

What “prepared” actually looks like

Succession planning sounds like a corporate abstraction, but in practice it’s a handful of concrete, unglamorous tasks that quietly add value:

• A second layer of management who can run the business without you in the room. Buyers pay more for a company that doesn’t depend on one person, and they walk away from ones that do.
• Documented relationships and processes – the supplier agreements, the customer contacts, the way the work actually gets done – written down rather than carried in your head.
• A realistic understanding of what the business is worth today, not what you hope it might be worth after “one more good year”. That number is your starting point for every decision that follows.
• A timeline you control; even a loose one beats no plan at all. It’s the difference between choosing your successor and having a contest break out around you.

None of this is dramatic, and that’s the point. Good succession is boring precisely because it removes the drama from the moment it matters most.

Don’t wait for the resignation speech

Starmer’s exit will dominate the headlines for weeks, and the Labour Party will spend the summer doing in public what it should have prepared for in private. Your business probably won’t make the news. But the underlying lesson is the same, and it’s one you can act on while you’re still firmly in control; the value you’ve spent years or decades building is only fully realised if you can hand it over cleanly.

A landslide win didn’t protect Starmer from a messy exit. A strong order book and a loyal team won’t protect you either, unless the transition has been thought through long before you need it.

If you’re a business owner, the most useful thing you can do this year isn’t selling, it’s getting ready to. That starts with an honest conversation about where your business stands, what it’s worth, and what a clean exit would actually take. Meet your local partner for a confidential chat. No pressure, no obligation – just clear, honest advice from someone who understands what’s at stake.

Because the best exits don’t happen in a crisis. They’re planned long before anyone needs to know.

The political commentary in this article is used for illustrative purposes only and does not reflect any political affiliation or endorsement on the part of Business Partnership. This insight is intended as general information, not formal advice. Every business and exit is different, so please seek tailored professional guidance before making any decisions.