LONDON — Britain was once a byword for stable, stolid democracy: the mother of parliaments, the country that keeps calm and carries on. But since the referendum a decade ago to quit the European Union, it has been more of a political “Gong Show,” with a half-dozen prime ministers trying and failing to revive a flatlined economy and appease furious voters.
The latest is Keir Starmer, who swept into power two years ago in what the British press proclaimed a “stonking” landslide — his Labour Party’s biggest triumph in a generation — but is now fighting for his political life, trying to avoid being yanked abruptly from the stage like his five Conservative predecessors.
Following a disastrous showing in local elections this month, 100 of his own lawmakers have demanded his resignation or a timetable for his departure. At least four cabinet ministers have quit, and the maneuvering for a leadership challenge has begun.
But with more than three years to go before the next general election, the central question is not whether Starmer can cling to the keys of 10 Downing Street — some other Labour figure would replace him — but rather: Is Britain, once an empire that ruled a quarter of the world, now unable to rule itself?
Riven by low growth, high taxes, overwhelmed public services and an immigration surge that neither party has managed to stop, Starmer in his two years in office has proven only that the chaos crosses parties and the doomsday countdown begins on day one no matter who holds the job title.
“People in Britain used to see places like Italy as unstable because of the endless cascade of prime ministers,” said Tony Travers, a political science professor at the London School of Economics. “Now Italy has a reasonably stable government and it is the U.K. endlessly changing its leaders.”
The revolving door began spinning in 2016 with David Cameron, the Conservative prime minister who resigned the morning after losing the Brexit referendum that he called and then campaigned against.
His three successors were brought down, in turn, by a lost parliamentary majority, a party mutiny and a budget that crashed the pound. The fourth posted the worst Conservative election results in a century.
Margaret Thatcher served as prime minister longer than those three combined.
Britain’s historic Conservative-Labour duopoly is crumbling: Five parties each won meaningful shares of the vote in local elections this month, and the two mainstays together drew less than 37 percent — the lowest combined share since universal suffrage began.
Reform UK, the surging anti-immigration and populist party led by Nigel Farage, one of the leading proponents of Brexit, meanwhile won 1,454 seats, took control of 10 councils and came in first in its share of the projected national vote. The Green Party also made major gains in urban areas Labour once considered safe.
Starmer entered office in July 2024, on a wave of relief following years of Conservative turmoil. But his summer bounce didn’t last through autumn.
Within weeks, his approval ratings had dipped into the negative and by the end of 2025 he was polling as low as Liz Truss, who lasted a mere 49 days before her party ejected her in 2022.
Starmer made missteps, including a decision to means-test winter fuel payments for pensioners, a surprise cut that hit his own core voters and infuriated Labour’s backbenchers. But the almost-instant collapse in support suggested to some that in the current climate no leader can keep the public onside for long.
“The trust in the leadership falls away almost immediately,” Travers said. “The person who becomes the head of government becomes the ‘most unpopular head of government ever’ sort of thing within a very short period. It’s disabling.”
The revolving door on No. 10 has produced a spate of commentary declaring Britain beyond control, and an answering wave countering that the country is not ungovernable, just badly governed. In any case, Labour tasted the public’s sustained fury in the local elections this month across England, Scotland and Wales.
In what analysts called Labour’s worst local election showing ever, the party shed roughly 1,500 council seats and ceded control of more than 30 councils. It lost control of the Welsh parliament for the first time in 100 years.
Now, the knives are out in Labour’s top ranks.
Party rules allow for any challenger who has support from at least 81 Labour lawmakers to trigger a leadership vote by the whole party. Starmer has so far refused to step aside, but Labour’s right, center and left factions are increasingly vying for dominance in a process that would take months.
Three likely contenders are drawing the most scrutiny.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting resigned Friday in a move widely seen as a precursor to a formal challenge. Streeting, hailing from Labour’s center-right wing that produced Tony Blair, is seen as an effective speaker but may be damaged by connections to Peter Mandelson, the former ambassador to Washington who was ousted over his ties to Jeffery Epstein.
Andy Burnham, the popular mayor of Greater Manchester and the figure polling best with the general public, hails from the “soft-left.” He is a former union-backed lawmaker who connects with the working class but governs as a pragmatist. Burnham is running in a special parliamentary election in June. If he wins, he will be eligible to challenge Starmer.
Angela Rayner, a former deputy prime minister who resigned over a tax scandal last year, represents the left of the party — the trade union base and progressives — who never fully accepted Starmer’s rightward turn.
No candidate has consolidated enough support to be certain of prevailing. Meanwhile, analysts point to interlocking crises that no change of leader may be able to resolve.
The first is economic. Britain never fully recovered from the 2008 financial crash. Real wages stagnated for more than a decade. Brexit followed, estimated to have reduced gross domestic product as much as 8 percent per person.
The covid pandemic raised public expectations of what government could deliver — public payments to furloughed workers, the overnight mobilization of the state — and accustomed voters to a baseline level of intervention as emergency spending drove up the nation’s debt.
Now, with defense spending soaring amid President Donald Trump’s pullback from NATO, British government bonds carry the highest yields in the Group of Seven advanced economies. No prime minister has been willing to say plainly that there isn’t the money to satisfy an impatient public.
“It’s a hard time to run a country, particularly democracies,” said Bronwen Maddox, the head of Chatham House, a British think tank. “Politicians have to say, ‘Look, all that money you thought we were going to spend on health and education and your pensions, we need to spend on debt and defense.’”
Britain isn’t alone in being buffeted by migration tensions, social media discord and hangovers from the financial crisis and the pandemic. French President Emmanuel Macron is governing without a majority in parliament. Germany is struggling to keep a fragile coalition together.
“I don’t think this is a British disease,” said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “I don’t think there’s a country in Europe with a strong and stable government.”
The difference now, Leonard said, is that Britain historically floated above such European tumult, thanks to it plurality voting system and the dominance of it two major parties. “I was a teenager in Belgium when the half-life of governments wasn’t very long,” he said. “Britain was the outlier; now it is becoming like everybody else.”
The upheavals have exacerbated divisions that have run through British society for decades, including the dominance of London over other regions and the patchy educational system. There are also newer splits — between urban and rural, elites and the working class,, and young and old — that are driving a steady state of discontent among voters.
“These aren’t the classical British class divisions, these are newer ones, but they’re very deeply felt,” Maddox said.
Brexit also reorganized British political identity along cultural rather than the traditional party and class lines, scrambling the landscape.
“People assumed identities that came to transcend and be more powerful than party political identities,” Travers said. “People who’ve been Labour for years or Conservative for years are now more adherent to the idea of being Leave or Remain.”
Brexit is now viewed as a success by only one-third of Britons, polls show. Ironically, Travers noted, Farage, one of the architects of Brexit, is the politician reaping the most benefit from the political fracturing fueled by its failure.
Reform UK is riding voter discontent over migration that peaked at near 900,000 arrivals a year under the Conservatives. It remains a defining grievance under Labour, which cannot find a position that holds its coalition together. Its metropolitan base is broadly tolerant; its traditional northern working-class bloc is not.
With support spread across more parties, Farage’s Reform UK is in a position to gain power in the next general election — not expected until 2029 — with far less than a majority.
“If you are the leader of a party that can get 30 percent of the votes in our first-past-the-post voting system and no other party can get above 22 or 23 percent, then you win,” Travers said. “The fact that Brexit fragmented support for the two parties the way it did works for him.”
Starmer’s five predecessors tried and failed to satisfy a British public that seems to have lost faith in the system itself. If Starmer also falls short, Farage may be in line to see if anyone can.
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