The churn of British Prime Ministers in the last decade has been fuelled by deep divisions caused by Brexit and leaders entering No10 without a proper plan, experts have suggested.
As Keir Starmer’s departure from No10 looms, the UK looks set for its seventh PM in ten years in Andy Burnham. Mr Starmer announced his resignation this week, with the former Greater Manchester Mayor expected to replace him without a contest.
It comes after years of political turbulence, with Tory leaders David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss all forced out of office early. A constant for most of these leaders was a collapse in party discipline. Mrs May was undone by Brexit while a major rebellion on welfare fatally undermined Mr Starmer.
Polling guru Sir John Curtice suggested Brexit was a factor in the chaos as Parliament struggled to cope with the referendum result and old party lines were swept aside. But he said failure to hold their parties together was a thread running through the collapse in support for all these leaders.
View 3 ImagesAndy Burnham is set to replace the PM(Image: Getty Images)
He said: “It’s only partly to do with Brexit. Cameron, definitely Brexit, lost a referendum, May, clearly Brexit, unable to come up with the Brexit deal that she could get through the House of Commons. Boris Johnson, nothing to do with Brexit, everything to do with the feeling inside his MPs that his relationship with the truth was too tenuous to be sustained.
“Liz Truss, doesn’t take civil service advice, ploughs on with increasing spending and reducing taxation, and the bond markets take fright. Rishi Sunak, nothing to do with Brexit, lost an election.
“Starmer, half Brexit. Starmer’s fundamental problem is that he’s not a politician, never developed narrative for his government, and in a sense made his current situation worse for himself by winning such a large Parliamentary landslide on such a small share of the vote because she just means he’s got loads of MPs who have got relatively small majorities.”
Despite the Prime Ministerial merry-go-round, Sir John suggested Andy Burnham had a chance of turning things around.
Pointing to Mr Burnham’s recent success in Makerfield, he said: “Starmer was not just a very good politician, arguably you could say the same thing about Truss. Sunak lacked the quality to create a narrative for his government, and probably inherited a bad case in the first place.
“Johnson, the mistake is personal. Burnham starts off with a reasonable popularity, though he’s not that popular, but he’s got a way with people, to use language that resonates with them and creates something of an emotional or empathetic bond.
“That’s pretty valuable in politics, it makes people feel better about themselves and gets people to think, ‘OK, I’m willing to follow this guy, I know where he’s going and what he’s trying to do’. We are all looking to see however if he can come up with a clear narrative for his government and therefore a sense of direction.”
Hannah White, CEO at the Institute for Government, said the crisis was partly caused by recent PMs entering No10 without a clear vision for fixing the problems gripping Britain.
She said: “As party leaders have left, the people coming in haven’t necessarily had long to prepare, an opportunity has come up to lead the party, but it’s not like previous years where they’ve been leader of the opposition, or preparing for a long time with a policy programme and well thought out plans for what they want to change.
“We’ve had a series of people who sort of stepped into the breach without necessarily setting themselves up for success. Without preparation, lots of them have failed. In a number of these cases, the people who have stepped up have essentially been those who wanted to be Prime Minister, rather than someone with a vision for the country.”
Ms White also pointed to a feeling among voters that politicians could do more to change people’s lives than they were.
She said: “People are more impatient, but they have also been conditioned by things like the pandemic, the energy crisis after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, to see that if things go dramatically wrong and there is a crisis, the government can step in and support your household finances.
“They think right now my household finances are really under pressure, cost of living is rising, ‘why isn’t the Government helping with this? They imagine prime ministers are choosing not to do it, so they must not understand the lives of real people.
“I think the public is more frustrated, has more expectations of things happening quickly, and doesn’t understand why the Government is not helping more.”
View 3 ImagesSir Robert Buckland claimed Britain was governable
Former Tory Justice Secretary Sir Robert Buckland, who served under Cameron, May and Johnson, insisted the UK is governable, and said the civil service could deliver when ministers had a proper plan.
He explained: “It’s not ungovernable, it is deeply eminently governable. I think the instinct of people and politicians is to try and find solutions. Despite all the noise about the ‘blob’, if a minister knows what they want, the civil service will do it for you, that was my experience many times in office. They need a minister who knows what they are doing and has a plan.”
Sir Robert also pointed to the changes in how news is consumed in the past decade.
He said: “I think something got into the water ten years ago with Brexit, and it came at a time when the nature of political communication itself has revolutionised. The way in which politicians even up to Blair and Campbell could control the narratives through mainstream media has all been swept away. It’s the politician that learns how to use the new media quickly is the one that wins, and Starmer was just not off that world.
“I think the 24/7 stuff, the immediacy of knowledge has turned the cycle, it’s a faster spin now, it’s not a gentle wash. That means mistakes will be made, policies will not be thought out, will be prematurely sold, then reined back in.
“In a world that demands immediate answers, the really savvy politician will say ‘no, this is my story, we’re telling it the way we want and I want to control as much as I can.’”
Speaking to Labour MPs who rebelled under Mr Starmer, they complained that the Government simply never tried to be popular, and failed to give them reasons to back policy in the Commons. One said: “I can probably stomach some of the bad stuff if we are looking after disabled people, vulnerable people, we are redistributing wealth and power across society. I can get on board with some of the stuff I find unpalatable if we are doing most of that, but if we’re honest, we haven’t.”
Another added: “We now have a politician as a Prime Minister, a leader with conviction rather than a glorified civil servant, and that will mean more discipline. Andy has demonstrated he can bring the PLP with him, and there’s been more contact with MPs from Burnham in the past few weeks than Starmer has had in two years.”