U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing intense calls to resign from inside and outside the ruling Labor Party after the party's crushing defeat in local elections. Starmer said he would not step down until the next general election, but a leadership race is already heating up within the Labor Party. If Starmer resigns, Britain will have its seventh prime minister in the past 10 years. As a result, some foreign media say "Britain has become ungovernable."
Two years ago, Starmer led the Labor Party to the biggest landslide in its history and took power as the first prime minister from the party in 14 years. But after the local election rout, he is under intense pressure to quit. Last week, four Vice Ministers from the Labor Party resigned one after another, demanding Starmer's departure, and more than 100 lawmakers in the Labor Party have called for his resignation. Starmer, like his predecessors, is increasingly unlikely to serve out his term.
The ignominious exits of British prime ministers have continued since 2016. That year, Prime Minister David Cameron resigned immediately after losing the Brexit referendum, and Conservative prime ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak also fell in succession over reasons such as a confidant's sexual misconduct, the backlash from a tax cut policy, and the loss of a parliamentary majority. The Washington Post (WP) said, "Margaret Thatcher's tenure as prime minister was longer than the combined tenure of the last four prime ministers."
With the revolving door of British politics spinning, some say the national system itself is wobbling. A country once seen as a symbol of stable democracy has, in effect, descended into an ungovernable state.
Tony Travers, a political scientist at the London School of Economics (LSE), said, "We used to think countries like Italy, where prime ministers change constantly, were unstable, but now Britain has become the country that endlessly swaps leaders." The Starmer government, over its two years in power, has only shown that the turmoil is not confined to any single party, and there is a sardonic view that whoever becomes prime minister starts a countdown to collapse from day one.
The biggest reason Britain keeps changing prime ministers is cited as long-accumulated economic frailty. Britain has been hit in succession by the global financial crisis, the eurozone debt crisis, Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine, badly shaking its economic foundations. Real wages have been stagnant for more than a decade, and per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have fallen by up to 8% since Brexit. On top of that, the massive fiscal spending during the COVID-19 pandemic has driven a surge in national debt.
Internal conflicts within British society are also deepening. On top of long-standing issues like London-centric structures and an unequal education system, rifts are widening between cities and rural areas, elites and the working class, and the young and the elderly. Since Brexit, a new political and cultural divide has also formed between "Leave" and "Remain."
The Guardian said, "The simple class divisions of the postwar society have been replaced by a far more complex fracture structure—cultural differences like Brexit, value clashes over the Gaza Strip, and a generational conflict between older homeowners and young renters."
The bigger problem is that the traditional two-party system, which underpinned the stability of British politics, has effectively collapsed. In these local elections, five parties recorded meaningful vote shares, and the combined share for the Conservatives and the Labor Party fell below 37%, the lowest since the introduction of universal suffrage. Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, is seen as having a chance to take power if it secures around 30% of the overall vote.
The recurring political instability is ultimately bound to shake the British economy further. Economist Paul Johnson told the Guardian, "We are already paying billions of pounds more in interest expense that we would not have had to pay if we were being charged the same interest rates as other countries," noting, "The moment that premium really started to bite was under Prime Minister Liz Truss, when there was extreme political instability."