Forgive me for being glib. But it would be hard to distinguish Britain’s political decade from that of a banana republic. The country might be facing its seventh prime minister in ten years*.
Keir Starmer has 404 seats yet plenty are calling for his head. His closest aide just resigned. And then another one. None of this is unfamiliar: Theresa May was undone by her own party over Brexit, Boris Johnson was mired in scandal, Rishi Sunak took over an already-defeated operation. Liz Truss – well, she was even less suited to the primacy than any of them.
When Labour won that landslide in summer 2024 it was on a vague promise to restore normality to British democracy. Fourteen years of Tory rule had become untenable, their internecine warfare no longer amusing. Starmer might not set the room on fire; his adenoidal pitchy voice can grate. And what about all that plodding legalism? But the point remained – he was normal, he was boring, he believed in standards and probity. Politics was about to be dull again.
Well, we all called that wrong, didn’t we. And not just the media or the parliamentary party, but British voters too. As it turns out, the Tories of the 2010s and early 2020s were not uniquely predisposed toward regicide. Labour is just as capable and just as willing – no matter that it promised to expunge the instinct from frontline politics.
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Complain about Ireland all you want, but at the very least this beleaguered electorate keeps returning staid, stable and rote governments. The view of Leinster House looks nice from Westminster.
Those who want him gone make a funny case: Starmer’s job is in peril because his judgment is in doubt. He appointed Morgan McSweeney to his chief of staff, who in turn encouraged the prime minister to appoint Peter Mandelson to US ambassador, who himself was caught up far too closely with international paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, even though we all knew that last point rather well at the time. As an excuse to call for the prime minister to resign? Well, it’s hardly parsimonious. I would go as far to say that it’s not really credible at all.
But the practical case behind calling for Starmer’s resignation is clear, logical and entirely self-fulfilling. He has lost McSweeney – the Corkman who gave Starmer’s government anything close to resembling a moral purpose (kick out the urban far left, talk to the working class again). His poll ratings are abysmal. He has squandered his authority in the party. He simply can’t keep it up like this.
The overly excitable media is as much to blame for this narrative propulsion as anything – in a constant news cycle these ideas spread and take hold in a way they just wouldn’t when Harold Wilson was in charge in the 1960s. But whoever is responsible for this momentum is of secondary concern when the momentum is here.
And so you have to accept at some point that this is not a party-specific issue – the centre-left of this country self-cannibalises as much as the centre-right. Nor is it a character flaw.
Because it strikes me as rather unlikely that May, Johnson, Sunak (stop me if I am forgetting anyone), Truss, Starmer, Dominic Cummings, McSweeney, Andy Burnham, Jeremy Hunt (and on, and on) all share some genetic predisposition to ousting, being ousted, pretending to the throne or resigning in disgrace. It’s not party, it’s not personality. By now you have to wonder whether it’s something much more troubling, something endemic to the British state in 2026.
I do not think it is too grand to suggest that all of this – all the baying for blood in Westminster – is reflective of a more twitchy disposition in this country.
Britain that once ruled the waves (yada yada) now is a low-growth, middling economy with high streets either desolated or awash with American cash. Washington, meanwhile, is no longer a special friend of No.10 – it might even be an active threat. This is a country that doesn’t seem to know what to do with itself as the world is remade around it at a threatening clip.
Then there is the old question of Europe, the question that has long scrambled the senses of the British political class. Starmer wants closer integration (that war is starting to look quite scary). Half of the party say this would be electoral suicide; the rest say the only end point is to rejoin entirely. The Tories nearly tore themselves limb from limb over the Continent. The point again is that this is not party specific but endemic. Britain is adrift in a post-Brexit world.
[ How Downing Street scrambled to ensure Keir Starmer survived to fight another dayOpens in new window ]
And so the churn. This cycle – abetted by the highly strung media ecosystem – is about a lot more than picking the precisely perfect leader. It’s cover, it’s misdirection, it’s projection: like thinking that just a better pair of trainers will make up for all those runs you neglected to go on. The problem is far more foundational than that. And Starmer was never the solution to spiritual listlessness. But who is?
*This column was amended on February 12th 2026 to correct an error. It originally stated that the UK might be facing its seventh prime minister in eight years.
