23rd June 2026
It is that we keep appointing poor Prime Ministers that is the problem: an input issue not an output issue
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There is an old adage that a litigator should not be “surprised” (or similar) by what their opponent does in litigation – one may be disappointed perhaps, but one should never be surprised. If a litigator is genuinely surprised by what their opponent does, they are probably in the wrong job.
A similar thing may be said about political commentators who are “baffled” (or similar) by a politician losing substantial support. A number of commentators seem bewildered by why and how the current Prime Minister Keir Starmer has lost political support so rapidly and widely that he announced his resignation yesterday, despite winning an emphatic majority at the last general election only two years ago. Again, if a pundit is genuinely baffled by a politician losing substantial amounts of political support they too are probably in the wrong job.
(The quick answer is that the current Prime Minister alienated his backbenchers and other political supporters by a sequence of decisions and indecisions, many of which were unforced errors.)
The question for this post is whether yet another Prime Minister going is a sign of a political system functioning or dysfunctioning. We will soon be on the seventh Prime Minister since the Brexit referendum ten years ago today, and such a turnover suggests something is not right.
Yet it is less obvious to say what is not right, as each departure can be explained and indeed justified on its own terms.
Cameron resigned because his government lost the Brexit referendum.
May resigned because she lost the confidence of her party and parliament regarding the Brexit exit deal.
Johnson resigned because the loss of support with his parliamentary party notwithstanding the huge majority (like Starmer) he had won a couple of years before.
Truss resigned because her and her Chancellor created an economic crisis.
Sunak went because he lost a general election.
And Starmer is going because he too has lost the confidence of his parliamentary majority.
Which of these particular departures can one object to or even quibble about?
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If each departure can be justified on its own terms, the suggestion must be that the departures are signs of a political system working rather than not working.
But aggregate numbers change minds – or at least perspectives.
Yes, each of the departures makes sense by themselves, but six? In ten years? Surely that cannot be right?
Not long ago we had the premierships of Thatcher (eleven years), Major (seven years), and Blair (ten years).
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If each departure was the right thing to happen, then the better question is why our political system keeps producing Prime Ministers who soon lose the confidence of their parliamentary supporters?
One could blame party members – for example, for Johnson and Truss.
But that explanation does not fit all.
Another answer is that we have had a run of prime ministers who could not or would not manage their parliamentary majority. Here May was in an impossible situation, but it is obvious Johnson, Truss and Starmer did not have happy relationships with their backbenchers.
The answer this blog will offer as to whether losing six prime ministers in ten years is a sign of our political system functioning or dtysfunctioning is that, given each departure was justified, it is a sign of a working polity.
But the constant production of prime ministers who so quickly lose their support is, in contrast, a sign of the system not working.
It is not that we keep getting rid of poor Prime Minister that is the problem, but that we keep appointing them.
It is an input issue, not an output issue.
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Very much to the point. The worst reason for keeping a person – most of all a chief executive – in place is that ‘we only appointed him recently’ (doesn’t apply for the first three months or so which could be seen as a probationary/learning period, obviously). In Starmer’s case it seems to be that someone who had been competent (to the best of my knowledge) at the head of an important institution turned out not to be competent at politics – to put it cruelly. Having read the story of how Morgan McSweeney put him in place as the anti-Corbyn, anti-left candidate, this is not so surprising. It turns out that four years in Parliament is not necessarily sufficient ‘training’ to run the party and the country.
Looking at the recent, short run, PMs, Brown and Sunak lost elections after their parties had been in power for a considerable time: I presume no one argues that they should have been in power longer? Cameron actually had six years and whatever one thinks of the action that led to his leaving (keep it clean!) it can not be considered a failure of the system as such. May had more or less lost an election and was fatally wounded by an unhappy back (and front) bench; Johnson was Johnson and Truss was Truss!
Back to the present, Starmer won a big majority (or rather the Conservatives and Reform managed to lose massively) but if that majority is not persuaded that the PM knows where he is going or that he is going where they want, they are right to look for another leader. Otherwise we would be in a Presidential situation, and looking westwards does not encourage us to go in that direction.
My own feeling (on the “input issue”) is that this has been a “slow-burn” decline for quite a long time.
I am sure there are many, many individuals in our population who have sufficient an opinion about our country, ideas for solutions to problems, and suitable skills to communicate, that they “could” become a good MP should they so wish. I do believe however, that the world in which we all live now is so vastly different from even 20 years ago, and the scrutiny under which any individual “who consciously puts their head above the parapet” finds themselves, that a large majority of these potential candidates decide they do not want to be in the intense limelight that goes with the job.
So ultimately we end up with a self-selecting group of individuals that are of a very particular make-up and not necessarily having the complete package of skills and abilities required.
Agreed, largely an input problem rather than an output one.
No need to dwell on the florid bafflement commentators and news presenters affect to earn their pay. All equally distasteful mugging to the gallery.
To counter the pervasive 6-in-10 talking point, I’d offer that the best one could say of Johnson, Truss and Sunak is they appeared to that slender subset of the total UK population who were involved, Tory members, as the best that could be done at the time rather than the party relinquish power. Just as the Labour party do now. These results being precisely those which parliament agreed would happen when they changed the rule to 5-year terms between General Elections.
I’d also proffer the opinion that Cameron and Starmer effectively sacked themselves by the lack of political calibre in, as you say, managing their electoral majority positions. Self-inflicted. Neither party can have anything justifiable to say about the other in this regard.
As for May and now, presumably, Burnham; what’s the old saying? ‘Beware what you wish for’ or maybe the Oscar Wilde quotation;
https://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/quotes/oscar-wilde-when-the-gods-wish-to
https://www.progressivepulse.org/economics/built-in-failure
The major problem is that these Prime Ministers arrive absolutely convinced that government is a household and that they have to be hemmed in and controlled by fiscal rules and must remain, to coin a phrase we’ve heard a lot of recently, in hock to the bond markets.
When none of these is actually true, failure is automatically built in to their very souls.
It is rumoured that the MP Miatta Fahnbulleh, previously of the New Economics Foundation, is advising Andy Burnham. She’s not quite the radical I would have wished but they did, on her watch, propose getting rid of fiscal rules in favour of a fiscal referee.
Which might be a start on the road to asking the question what can we do? And not for ever asking the household question, can we afford it?
Prime Ministers who do stuff might actually stay in post just a little longer…
Starmer did lose popularity through policy own goals of course, but he wasn’t particularly popular to begin with. Not even within his own party. Labour won in 2024 because the nation had had enough of Conservative governments. Not because of Starmer’s popularity. He was presented as a safe pair of hands, but soon showed his political instinct was lacking.
He could have survived public unpopularity had he not made his own backbenchers so unhappy with policies they found difficult to support.
We have had a period of political instability since 2016. This is why Prime Ministers have had such a short shelf life. Changing them frequently is as a result of that instability, not the cause of it.
Looks a bit like a company that has hired a long succession of managing directors all of whom had to be ‘let go’. Even before Brexit the UK was in economic trouble with assorted nostrums tried.
The Brexit nostrum did address the fundamental problem – the UK does not make enough money – but I don’t think it was successful. Since then our prime ministers have messed about with side issues but the fundamental problem remains – not enough income.
I reckon Mr Burnham will face the same problem as well as the usual quagmire of parliamentary in fighting and game playing. As for making more money, I don’t know how, not without breaking a great many eggs and slaughtering a whole herd of holy cows and TBH I don’t think he (or Parliament) is up to it.
The fundamental unanswered question is how does a smallish country make money when it becomes post-industrial. The simple-minded answers are Software, global E-Commerce, Banking and Insurance and Fintech, R&D esp pharma. But we allegedly do all this and it is all on any AI search engine. But so can everyone else.
When we get down to brass tacks we find that education budgets are cut in real terms and being a software whizz is not the gold mine it was. The worrying answer to making more money is – we can’t, not much anyway.