Why Britain keeps losing prime ministers

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0:38Why does Britain keep losing its leaders? Tristan, that is a question even we here on this side of the Atlantic are asking about British politics. And we might not know loads about how your system operates, but we've seen you all cycle through six prime ministers in 10 years since Brexit. I mean, it's a lot. That's right, Asma. The most stable political operator in Downing Street over the last decade may have been a cat called Larry, who lives there. He's seen quite a few prime ministers come and go, and he might seem to be seeing a new one. I've been reading that the current prime minister, Keir Starmer, is under severe pressure from members of his own party revolting against him.

1:22It sounds like they could try to kick him out. I mean, that is the most direct threat. But there's an indirect threat as well, as there are two insurgent populist parties coming up his left flank and right flank. So it's not an easy time to be him. All right, let's get into it. From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. And I'm Tristan Redmond in London. And today on The Global Story, is Britain now ungovernable?

1:58Well, my name is James Landale. I am the diplomatic correspondent for BBC News, which means I sort of cover global affairs. But in my deep hidden past, I was also a political correspondent and deputy political editor of the BBC. So I spent a large amount of my life skulking in the corridors of Westminster. So occasionally I get dragged back to cast a sort of broader historical eye over contemporary British politics. Well, James, I will say from this side of the Atlantic, what I do know about British politics in this moment, one major headline that has crossed the ocean is that it seems like you all are in a bit of turmoil.

2:39The prime minister has insisted he will not walk away despite the disastrous election results last week. More than 80 Labour MPs are now urging the prime minister to go. The prime minister entered Downing Street promising stable government. and an end to chaos. This is anything but. But I want to understand from you how he got into such a shaky position because it felt like he won this landslide victory, what was this, just less than two years ago. How is he now in such a fragile position, it seems? I think the first thing to understand is that although Sir Keir Starmer won a massive majority in the House of Commons, as you say, two years ago, It was about 165 seats, and it's a genuinely enormous majority.

3:25It's a bigger majority than was won by Britain's post-war Labour leader, Clement Ackley, and he's the guy who transformed modern Britain, helped forging the creation of the NATO Military Alliance, setting up our own National Health Service. Keir Starmer has a bigger parliamentary majority than him. And yet it was described as a kind of loveless landslide. And that's because although he won a lot of seats in the House of Commons, the actual share of the votes cast was actually not that big. It was only sort of 34 percent or so. And that was really, really low. In other words, because of the vagaries of British politics, it meant that although he got a lot of seats, not that many people actually voted for him in absolute terms.

4:15So the basis of his premiership and his government had a slightly sort of heartless feel to it. So that's the basis of it. Since then, he's basically been seen to govern not very well domestically. Foreign, OK. People broadly think that he's done OK dealing with the United States, dealing with European allies, negotiating the Ukraine war and things like that. But domestically, he's been criticised for a variety of reasons. Well, James, we'll get maybe into some of the tactical reasons for this loveless landslide, as you put it. But if you zoom out to a kind of more strategic level, the last decade of British politics has been overshadowed by one thing in particular, which is 10 years ago, almost exactly 10 years ago now, there was the famous Brexit referendum result, which led to Britain leaving the European Union.

5:12Well, at 20 minutes to five, we can now say the decision taken in 1975 by this country to join the common market has been reversed by this referendum to leave the EU. The British people have spoken and the answer is we're out. How did Brexit become a turning point for British politics? Because things have been different ever since in many ways, haven't they? It was 48, 52 percent. You know, there was a clear result, but the country was clearly divided. But it also was an issue about national identity and how you saw your place in the world. Did you see yourself as somebody who felt threatened by globalization?

5:56somebody who felt alienated from Brussels and from London and from politicians who you felt weren't reflecting your views? Or did you see yourself as somebody who was internationalist, that Britain had a role in the world, and it was self-evident that it should remain part of this massive trading bloc right on its border? And so what it meant is that people came out of the Brexit result, slightly confused about precisely what it meant. And what it also did, though, is it gave an awful lot of wind to politicians who gathered together people who were concerned about, you know, who felt threatened, alienated by globalization, threatened by immigration and things like that.

6:43A lot of them subsequently went on to support a party called UKIP that was led by Nigel Farage and that party the latest version of that kind of party is still led by Nigel Farage it's called Reform UK and that is, you know, Reform UK and Nigel Farage are now, you know, leading players in mainstream British politics. Anyway, divisive at the time around the debate and the referendum itself. Then came something else and that was the process of implementing Brexit. And that was supposed to be implemented by the Conservative government that had held this referendum. But nobody had really agreed how.

7:27What should the nature of the relationship between the UK and the EU be going forward? So initially, obviously, we had David Cameron was the Conservative Prime Minister whose policy was to hold the referendum. He lost the referendum, so he felt he had to resign. He was replaced by Theresa May. Okay, two, I'm counting. Then she lost her job a few years later because of her failure to implement Brexit. She was then replaced by Boris Johnson. Okay, three. He was then briefly replaced by Liz Truss. That's four. That did not last well because she promised to cut taxes without saying where the money was going to come from.

8:09So she lasted literally a matter of days. And then she was replaced by Rishi Sunak. Five. Okay. It created a poison in the political system of constant rebellion, constant turmoil, Conservative MPs thinking it's perfectly acceptable to constantly undermine your Prime Minister and then eventually get rid of them. And then that was obviously until 2024, when the Conservatives lost power and Labour were brought in. And Labour is the centre-left party that is their main rival. Labour, left of centre are sort of, you know, Liberal with a small L party. And so what we're seeing now is Labour MPs behaving in a similar way to Conservative MPs.

8:57In other words, they are two years after a substantial election victory, undermining and challenging the leadership of their prime minister. So, James, you had five prime ministers across seven years, essentially, and all of those PMs that you initially had after Brexit were conservatives, correct? And then you get to the election of Keir Starmer. Why did he win and what was he promising? And did his victory at the time tell you something about the desire for stability in that ecosystem of a post-Brexit world in the UK? At that stage, I think many voters were unhappy with the degree of instability and chaos that the Conservative governments, they saw, had created.

9:45And Labour's pitch, the pitch of Sir Keir Starmer, was that, you know, we will bring a degree of normality. The next general election, a moment the country needs and has been waiting for. and where, by the force of our democracy, power returns to you. We will bring some calm, some stability, some sort of grown-up politics. And together, we can stop the chaos, we can turn the page, we can start to rebuild Britain and change our country. And so that was the pitch, but that is a pitch that I think in the eyes of voters, Labour has failed to produce. that actually it hasn't delivered stability, it hasn't delivered economic growth, it has shot itself in the foot with self-imposed errors, and that that has led to some incredibly bad opinion poll numbers and a real visceral dislike of Sir Keir Starmer by many voters.

10:48Okay, well, Brexit told Britain a certain amount about what it didn't want, and that was to not be in the European Union. But it also told us something about what Britons did want, and that was greater control of borders and greater control of immigration. That was one of the central themes of that campaign that led to that referendum decision. And that issue hasn't gone away. It's only grown since then. It's still a major issue in politics in Britain, as it is across Europe and in the United States. What is Keir Starmer offering on the question of control of borders and control of immigration?

11:30The great irony is that net migration in the UK is actually falling at the moment quite substantially. A couple of years ago, net migration just soared up to around 900 ,000 people a year. Then in 2024, it dropped. It was halved. It went down to about sort of 400 ,000. But at the moment, the numbers are actually pointing in the right direction. But for some reason, the current government doesn't manage to bang that drum very well. But what is the narrative around his government and how has that developed? Because a narrative around a government can either make you or break you as a politician.

12:08What's the story that his government has engendered? The Labour government has essentially said, look, we are going to be competent. We are going to manage the economy in a way that the Conservatives failed to. They said growth was their number one priority in all their election campaign, and yet they failed to deliver it, in part because growth and productivity is proving really hard to generate in the UK at the moment. That is something that is a legacy of the financial crash in 2008, and since then we have seen huge amounts of borrowing in the UK. Then COVID came along and we had to borrow an awful lot of money just keeping the British economy going, paying people, paying salaries, all of that.

13:01And we, as a result, have a huge amount of debt. So, for example, we spend more in the UK on paying debt interest, government debt interest, than we do on defence. by a margin of 40, 50 billion pounds sterling. So that's what, you know, 70, 80 billion dollars. That's a huge amount of money. In the past, whenever governments had trouble, they'd spend a bit of cash on it. So if you were a government of the right, you would cut some taxes. If you were a government of the left, you would spend some more on welfare to help the lowest paid. This government cannot do either of those things. And so there's an expectation gap.

13:47And what is the number one concern for British voters as we're talking today? What do polls suggest about that? It is the cost of living crisis. It is the fact that real household incomes has not risen for years. People are really struggling. People are not seeing their pay go up and yet inflation is obviously still there. the sheer scale of welfare and the fact that there are so many people who are basically claiming welfare and are not being productive workers in the system, you know, paying taxes, that in itself is a huge structural problem that no government has struggled with. This one came into power saying we're going to try and do something.

14:31They haven't done it yet.

14:42Hi there, I'm Asma Khalid. And I'm Tristan Redmond. And together we're the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. For those of you who might be new to our show, we here at the Global Story dive deep every weekday on one big story at the intersection of where the world and America meet. And you can now watch the Global Story on the iHeart app. Catch every brand new episode every weekday. Just tap into iHeart to start watching. And we hope you enjoy the show.

15:15Okay, so the cost of living crisis you described, James, it's been going on for some time, right? And I will say that I don't think that the UK is distinctly unique in feeling economic pressures. A number of countries, you know, here in the United States, people have had qualms about inflation, about the cost of living for some time. But it seems like the pressure on Starmer to resign has been growing recently since the UK held some local elections earlier this month. Why now? Why are these calls growing louder? So our local elections, which happened just a few weeks ago, they're sort of our midterms, if you like.

15:54Obviously, it's not a direct parallel, but essentially a big test of government popularity between general or presidential elections. It is quite rare that these local elections make international news, though it does seem to be happening right now. Yeah, that is true. That is true. Local elections, they're not seen as existential, whereas I think these ones were. And they were existential because basically the governing Labour Party were absolutely walloped. Labour has suffered huge losses after millions of people went to the polls in England, Wales and Scotland. As reform surged from Hartlepool to Havering, Labour not just being punished on their right.

16:33but also by the Greens on their left, taking a walloping in Wales and unable to find any safe haven in Scotland. They lost about 1 ,500 council seats, which is a huge number. Reform won... That's Nigel Farage's party. Nigel Farage's party, Reform UK, won about 1 ,500 seats, almost a minuscule amount. We've been so used to thinking about politics in terms of left and right, And yet what reform are able to do is to win in areas that have always been conservative. But equally, we're proving in a big way we can win in areas that Labour have dominated, frankly, since the end of World War One. If you add up all of the votes cast and you shove it through a computer and you get clever sort of sophologists, election experts to come up with a number, they come up with something called the PNS, the projected national share.

17:28And this is essentially saying, look, if the entire country voted today, because it's not the entire country, it's just some bits of it. But if the entire country today voted, the ultimate result was Reform UK, Nigel Farah's party, did best on 26%. The Green Party, very left of centre party, they were on 18. And then the Conservatives and Labour, the two what we call mainstream parties, they were both on 17 % each. Wait a second. I understand, James, you're saying the two parties that are what I would describe maybe in my political terms, the sort of more fringe parties, not the two mainstream parties, they did better in these local elections.

18:06Correct. That is what's happening at the moment, is that the voters in the UK are becoming disillusioned with the two main parties that have largely shared power for decades and decades. And voters are being attracted to the margins on both sides of the political divide because of their unhappiness with the mainstream parties. So they're liking sort of more anti-establishment parties. Something more radical. Yeah, something more radical, something that now, I mean, the positive would say, you know, these are fresh thinking parties. They're cutting to the chase. They're being honest. That would be their pitch.

18:41The critic would say, you know, these are more populist minded parties offering slightly more simple answers to really complicated questions. But at the moment, those two parties are picking up a lot of votes and particularly they're picking up a lot of votes from Labour. Well, Nigel Forage's Reform Party is maybe the most familiar of these more radical parties that made some international headlines after these local elections. But what about the Green Party on the left? How do they fit into the picture? Well, the Green Party traditionally has been, as you might imagine, a party focused on protecting the environment and talking about climate change issues.

19:22and it's largely been quite a marginal party, picked up a few MPs here and there in Parliament. But what has happened is that it's got a new young leader, Zach Polanski, who is seen as very energetic, charismatic to his supporters. His critics have other adjectives to describe him. I've been asked dozens and dozens of times in the last few days, in fact, in the last few hours probably, if the Green Party is an environmental movement or a social justice movement. as if you can't speak up for our working class or LGBT plus communities at the same time as challenging the fossil fuel industry. So let's clear this up.

20:03You cannot be an effective environmentalist without talking about the deep inequality in our society. He's attracted lots of young voters who look at the mainstream parties and aren't terribly impressed. But also, crucially, the Greens are picking up quite an awful lot of Muslim voters because they are campaigning hard on Gaza. There are a lot of people who support Palestinian rights, who are Muslims, who do not think that the Labour government has done enough to put pressure on the State of Israel. So essentially they're stealing some of the issues that would traditionally be the domain of the Labour Party.

20:39Correct. They have stolen those votes from the Labour Party. And so the problem, the dilemma for the Labour Party is it's under attack from both left and right. So, James, can you sort of incrementally help us understand Keir Starmer had been under pressure, you say. He had been under pressure on the cost of living, the economy, immigration. Then these local elections happen. His party doesn't do well. Help me connect the dots with, okay, his party doesn't do well to suddenly his own party members wanting him out of power. How does that happen? The local election results were so bad for Labour that I think a large number of Labour MPs came to the conclusion that as a result, Sir Keir Starmer would not be the man to lead the Labour Party into the next general election, which in theory doesn't have to happen for another three years.

21:38And therefore, some of them said, right, in that case, we need to have a fresh look at the leadership. But it's complicated. And as we sit here today, there is still no formal leadership election. Sir Keir Starmer remains in number 10 Downing Street. He remains prime minister. And there is no formal process underway. However, two things have happened. One is that a Labour MP called Wes Streeting, who was the health cabinet secretary, so the most important minister dealing with health, he has resigned from government and the British cabinet because of his unhappiness with the leadership of Sir Keir Starmer.

22:27We arrived in government underprepared in too many areas and lacking clarity of vision and direction. saying that where there should be vision, there is no vacuum. Unless we change course, Labour risk being the handmaidens of Nigel Farage and the breakup of the United Kingdom. The second thing is this. Another contender seen as a possible future leader is a guy called Andy Burnham. People are losing faith in politics. More than anything, that's what people's votes were saying on Thursday 7th May. He is currently the mayor of Manchester, a big city in the north of England. In my view, the time has come for a much bigger debate about how politics needs to change if it is to work properly for the north of England.

23:18He wants to be leader one day. He's tried to be leader a couple of times already. But he can't do that because he's not a member of the British House of Parliament. He's a mayor. So he has to somehow become a member. So that requires somebody else, another MP, to give up the seat. Imagine a member of the House of Representatives basically has to sort of say, well, I'm standing down, I'm resigning, creating a little election for somebody else to come in. So what's happened is that an MP has been found. A guy called Josh Simons, he's announced that he's going to resign from his seat just on the outskirts of Manchester in a place called Wigan.

23:58but there is absolutely no guarantee he's going to win this seat. So there's still a huge amount of confusion over what may happen. But the fundamental point is that the Labour MPs, a substantial number of them, and ministers, now believe that unless they change their leader, Labour has absolutely no chance of winning the next general election in several years' time. In other words, they need to act now. OK, so it's to win the next election. It is to win the next election. That's what we're talking about here. That is fascinating as somebody who intimately covered the last presidential election and saw how distraught the Democratic Party was and how Democratic voters didn't want Joe Biden to run for re-election.

24:40Nonetheless, he ran and we all know how that story unfolded with eventually him not being at the top of the ticket. But it's a helpful comparison. So thank you very much, James. I mean, OK, so the United Kingdom has become unexpectedly unstable over the last decade politically with a succession of prime ministers. What are the fundamental reasons for that beyond, you know, people who don't like this party leader or that party leader or that policy or this policy? Is there something more fundamental and structural that is happening that's driving that instability? Well, we've touched on some of the answers to that.

25:16the financial crisis of 2008, Brexit, COVID, Ukraine, Iran. So point one is it's a pretty difficult time. I think any leadership over the years would have struggled with some of those issues. And then you add into that, and I think this is where you get to the nub of it, a lack of confidence. I think one of the impacts of the recent years is people are sitting there thinking kind of, you know, what is our role in the world? What are we about here in the UK? okay, we've left the European Union, we're no longer really a bridge to the United States, which we used to be. We're not entirely sure what our relationship is with our European partners.

25:54And there are people sitting here thinking, okay, you know, what are we actually about? And I think that lack of national confidence, it's bled into the political system. So at the moment, and a lot of analysts would say this, is that British politics and politicians, they're not levelling with the voters. They're not talking about the tough trade-offs that are actually needed to get into the right place. And there are lots of people at the moment trying to work out how do we get back into a space where we can address the problems that need to be addressed and we can have the argument depending on where you are on the political spectrum, but instead of just saying, you know, we're going to solve the economy by promising more growth or fixing immigration is somehow a panacea for all problems or whatever it is, actually addressing these things face on.

26:47And I think that's where the debate in the UK now is beginning to nudge itself. But we're not there yet. And I think I would struggle to see it emerging during the current leadership tensions that the Labour Party are facing.

27:05Well, James, thank you so much for joining us on the show. We really appreciate it. It's a great pleasure. I wish I could be more positive or upbeat.