Starmer Out, SpaceX Stumbles, and Europe's Brutal Heat

Maya: Good Morning. You're listening to the Morning Rundown. I'm Maya, here with David, and we have got a packed one for you today. David: Yeah, we do. Big news overnight out of the UK. Maya: Huge. Keir Starmer is out, resigned as Prime Minister and Labour leader. The BBC confirmed it this morning. Local election losses and internal mutiny? David: Wow. Maya: It moved fast. David: And Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, is already the name everyone's saying. thing. The question is whether this leadership race is actually a race or just a formality. Maya: Yeah, we'll get into that. Also, SpaceX. David: Oh, SpaceX. They dropped a bond sale on Wall Street, and the market was not happy. Stocks slid 23% from its high in three days. Maya: And there's a weird Bitcoin angle in there, too. I mean, come on, only Musk can make crypto news without crypto really moving. David: It's a talent. Maya: And then Europe. France recorded its hottest night ever, and Reuters is reporting at least 13 drowning deaths as people rush to find water to cool off in. David: 40 deaths across the continent total. It's bad. Maya: Really bad. Alright, let's start with the UK, because this Starmer story is moving fast. So Keir Starmer is out, the BBC confirmed it this morning. He's stepping down as UK Prime Minister and as Labour leader, and honestly, this didn't come out of nowhere. David: No, it really didn't. The Washington Post had been tracking this for weeks. Labour got absolutely crushed in the local elections, and that triggered what you can only describe as an internal mutiny. Maya: A mutiny. I mean, that's the word, right? His own party turned on him. David: And once that starts, it's hard to stop. The party reads the numbers, the numbers are bad, and suddenly everyone's doing the math on who comes next. Maya: So who does come next? Because the name flying round right now is Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester. David: Right. AP News reported he actually won a special by-election last week, specifically so he could position himself for this. That's not subtle. Maya: Wait, he ran for a seat just to set this up? David: That's the read. He needed to be in Parliament to be eligible for the leadership. So he ran, he won, and now nominations open July 9th, close July 16th. Maya: That is a tight window, so he's the front-runner, but is this actually a contest? David: Maybe not. AP News flagged that if Burnham's the only serious candidate, it could just be a coronation. But the BBC is reporting that at least two senior Labour figures are considering jumping in specifically to prevent that. Maya: Because they don't want him to just walk in unchallenged. David: Exactly. And look, from a governing credibility standpoint a coronation looks terrible. You just had a PM resign under pressure. Maya: Right. David: The last thing Labour needs is to hand the keys to someone who didn't have to fight for them. Maya: That makes sense. I mean, this is a party that came into power with a big mandate not that long ago, and they've already burned through it. David: And that's the part I keep coming back to. It's not just that Starmer lost support, it's how fast it collapsed. Local elections go badly, the MPs start circling, and within weeks you've got a resignation. That's a confidence crisis, not just a policy disagreement. Maya: So who is Burnham, though? CBS News described him as the, and I love this, the King of the North, like a Game of Thrones title. David: I mean, Greater Manchester is not the Iron Throne, but I get the vibe. He's been Mayor there, he's popular regionally, he has a working class appeal that Starmer kind of never cracked. Speaker 3: Cracked. Maya: And that's exactly what Labour needs after this, someone who can reconnect with voters they lost? David: That's the pitch, but the question is whether he can actually unite the parliamentary party. Popularity outside Westminster doesn't automatically translate inside it. Maya: Right, right. And if Labour MPs are already talking about challenging him before he's even formally in, that tells you there's already friction. David: The internal dysfunction is real. And look. Look, if you came into this already sceptical of Labour's ability to govern, nothing about this sequence changes your mind. A leader pushed out by his own people, a replacement who might not even face a real race-it doesn't inspire confidence. Maya: No, it doesn't, and now Burnham is walking into Downing Street (if he gets there) with a party that clearly has some fractures to patch up. David: When institutions handle a confidence crisis like this, it tells you a lot about what happens next. What's next? And speaking of things the market votes on... Maya: Oh, you're going somewhere with this. David: When a rocket company goes public, announces a bond sale, and the stock drops twenty-three percent from its high in three days, is that a market misreading the moment, or is the market telling us something? Maya: Shifting gears, SpaceX had a rough few days in the market. David: Yeah, and it started with something that sounds boring on paper, a bond sale. Maya: Wait, their first ever, right? David: First ever. Barron's covered it. SpaceX launched its first bond offering, and Wall Street basically said, no thanks. Shares dropped 23% from their high. Three straight sessions of losses. Maya: Twenty-three percent. That's not a dip. That's a f***. Speaker 4: The fall! David: I mean, come on, the average investor who got in near the top, those gains are basically gone. Maya: NBC News had the number, shares closed below the June 12th IPO price after dropping 16% in a single day. David: Right, and the market logic makes sense if you follow the money. A bond sale means debt. Debt means obligations. Investors who bought into the growth story start asking, wait, is this still a rocket company or is it a financing vehicle? Maya: Yeah, that makes sense. David: And then there's the Bitcoin angle, which I did not see coming. Maya: Okay, so this is the part that got me. CoinDesk reported that Speaker 5: - Maya: As reported that the SpaceX sell-off, that $600 billion drop in market cap over three days, wiped out nearly half of Bitcoin's entire market cap in the same window. David: Wait, really? Half? Maya: Nearly half. David: And Bitcoin itself barely moved, fell less than 1%. So Bitcoin didn't crash. Its market cap shadow just shrank because SpaceX shrank. Maya: Which tells you something about how tightly these assets are woven together now. Same investor pool, same risk appetite. David: When one big growth asset sneezes, the numbers across the whole space shift, even if the underlying asset holds. Maya: That's wild to me. Like, Musk's rocket company moves and crypto benchmarks move, not because crypto did anything. David: Welcome to 2025. Maya: Seriously. David: But I want to be fair here. This is a market-correcting story, not a Musk-imploding story. He launched a bond sale. So markets reacted. That's how it's supposed to work. Maya: Right; the mechanism functioned. David: And Musk hasn't stopped moving. Ars Technica had a piece out today on Speaker 5: Musk's next project. Maya: On Starfall, SpaceX's new orbital cargo concept, the idea is global goods delivery through space, like point-to-point freight from orbit. David: That's okay. I mean, that's either insane or it's 10 years ahead of everyone. Maya: Probably both. The bond drama doesn't change the ambition. David: So even while the stock is getting punished, they're still swinging big. Maya: That's kind of always been the move. The market catches up or it doesn't. David: All right, so you've got financial turbulence, SpaceX, crypto ripples, bond jitters, and Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. David: then there's what the actual planet is doing right now, which, uh, France had its hottest night recorded. People are drowning trying to cool off in rivers. Speaker 3: Yeah, that one hits different. David: We've got that next. Okay, shifting gears. Europe is in serious trouble right now. Speaker 3: Yeah, France specifically. And it's not just uncomfortable heat. People are dying. David: Al Jazeera reported at least 40 people drowned across Europe trying to cool off in rivers and lakes. France alone? 13 deaths. Speaker 3: 13 people in rivers because it's the only way to get relief. David: And Reuters confirmed France just recorded its hottest. Ever night; not hottest day, hottest night, which means there's no break, no cooling down after sunset. Maya: That's the brutal part: your body needs night time to recover from heat stress; if the temperature doesn't drop... David: You just don't recover, yeah. Maya: So what does the infrastructure picture look like? Because France doesn't really do AC, right? David: Correct, and now, according to the Associated Press, France is actually talking about widespread red AC adoption, like seriously talking about it, a country that has culturally resisted air conditioning. Maya: I mean, there's something kind of remarkable about a country changing a decades-long cultural position because people are literally drowning in rivers to stay cool. David: Right? And about a third of France was under a red alert on Sunday. The AP noted temperatures hit 104 degrees Fahrenheit in some areas, and Monday was forecast to be to be even hotter! Speaker 3: Okay, so 104 degrees, no AC, hottest night on record. That's not just uncomfortable, that's a public safety emergency. David: It really is! And Spain and the U.K. were also breaking records, according to Al Jazeera. This isn't a localized thing. Speaker 3: The grid pressure alone. France runs heavily on nuclear power. You get a heat event this extreme, and river water used to cool reactors gets too warm. Maya: form. That's a real constraint. David: Wait, seriously? Maya: Yeah, it's happened before. Rivers run warmer, the cooling capacity drops, and you're managing a heat crisis while also watching your power generation get squeezed. Rough situation. David: So the thing you need most-power for fans and future AC units-gets harder to deliver right when demand spikes. Maya: Exactly. I mean, the AC debate in France isn't just cultural anymore, it's practical. Speaker 3: Pickle. You don't build that infrastructure overnight. David: And in the meantime, people are jumping into rivers. Forty of them didn't make it back out. Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the number that stays with you. David: It really does. I don't know, David. This one's hard to walk away from quickly. The heat, the drownings, the infrastructure gaps, it's all connected. Speaker 3: And it's happening right now, not in a projection today. David: All right, stick around. We've got a couple more things before we let you go this morning. All right, that's the Rundown. Starmer's out, Burnham circling, and the question of whether Labour gets a real race or a coronation is still hanging in the air. Speaker 3: And the SpaceX bond sale story. I keep coming back to that. One financing move and suddenly investors are asking what kind of company this actually is. David: That makes sense. Oh, and forty people dead across Europe from this heat wave. That one stayed with me. Speaker 3: Lot to sit with today. Big thanks for listening, seriously. David: If you got something out of this, subscribe and leave us a review. It helps. Maya: We'll be back tomorrow. Speaker 4: Yeah. Maya: Stay sharp out there. David: And that's the rundown.