Is Britain ungovernable?
By Christian Edwards, CNN
London (CNN) — Anthony Seldon has written biographies of each of the last eight British prime ministers. When he embarked on the project in the 1990s, the work was mammoth but measured. Then, the occupants of 10 Downing Street would spend several years in office, allowing him to scrutinize his subjects properly as they each stamped themselves on their times.
But Seldon now risks being overtaken by events. After the recent churn of leaders under the previous Conservative government, which saw the party cycle through three leaders in one year, Seldon had hoped that Keir Starmer’s victory in 2024 would herald a return to political normality. Starmer’s Labour Party won a thumping majority in parliament and promised a “decade” of national renewal.
But less than two years into Starmer’s premiership, he may already be on the way out. After voters decisively rejected Labour Party candidates in local elections across England, Scotland and Wales, Starmer’s colleagues seem primed to oust him. Seldon’s biography of Starmer’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak, is due to be published in August. By then, Britain may have a new prime minister – its sixth in seven years. Seldon, 72, fears he may perpetually be playing catch up.
“I’ll be on to ‘Angela Rayner at Number 10’ before too long,” Seldon sighed in an interview with CNN, referring to the Labour lawmaker seen as one of the potential rivals to Starmer as prime minister.
The revolving door of 10 Downing Street has caused many in the country to wonder: Is Britain becoming ungovernable?
Britain’s problems are several. The country never truly recovered from the 2008 financial crisis. Real wages have largely stagnated since, only ticking up more recently in response to the inflationary shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Britain’s departure from the European Union, meanwhile, is estimated to have lowered GDP per person by as much as 8%. Productivity growth is tepid. Debt has crept up, meaning Britain’s government bonds have the highest yields among Group of Seven (G7) nations. Britain has the highest industrial electricity costs in that group, too.
Its electoral system is also showing strain. Britain’s first-past-the-post system functions best when there are two dominant parties. For more than a century, those were Labour and the Conservatives. But the decline of that duopoly has effectively turned British politics from a two-way into a five-way fight in England, and a six-way fight in Scotland and Wales, as the two historic parties now compete against the centrist Liberal Democrats, the ultra-progressive Greens, the hard-right Reform UK, as well as nationalist parties that support Scottish and Welsh independence, which could lead to the breakup of the United Kingdom. Scotland has been part of the UK since 1707, and Wales since 1536.
Against such a tide of troubles, there is a temptation in Britain to say that good government has become near impossible, and that any leader would struggle to swim against the current.
But, Seldon believes, this despair only exculpates Starmer – and his less-than-impressive predecessors.
“Britain is categorically not ungovernable, although some recent prime ministers (PMs) have tried darn hard to make it so,” he told CNN.
Seldon sees a string of failings among Starmer’s Conservative forerunners. Painting with a broad brush, he describes Boris Johnson, with his penchant for big government and his concern for “left-behind” regions, as “Rooseveltian” – but only in “ambition, not delivery.”
Liz Truss, in her ideological fervor for libertarian economics, was “Reaganite,” said Seldon, continuing to compare British prime ministers to American presidents. Seeking to reverse Johnson’s excesses, Truss introduced an unfunded tax-cut plan in 2022 which nearly sent Britain’s financial markets into meltdown. With the Bank of England unwilling to save her, the Conservative Party ejected Truss after just 49 days in the job, making her Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister.
Rishi Sunak, a fan of tight money and a smaller state, was “kind of Hooverite.” But by the time Sunak took office, the country was so exhausted with the Conservatives, and so damaged by Truss, that the first British Asian prime minister was never likely to win the 2024 election, he added.
With Starmer, however, fewer American parallels come to mind. Rather than echoing a political project, Starmer instead echoes a personality. “There’s elements of Jimmy Carter,” said Seldon. “I think with Starmer – honest, decent, so serious, so intense, so much integrity. But it was overwhelming. It was just beyond him.”
Not “big enough” for the moment, he said, Starmer has instead seemed to be thrown around by events, and has been unable to fight the tide. When dozens of his colleagues called for his resignation, following last week’s election results, Starmer instead pledged another “reset” of his premiership. But his speech on Monday offered a fuzzy description of his new approach, which mostly restated his current agenda. “To proclaim that as an agenda-setting speech, and then to have nothing to offer,” said Seldon. “It was shocking.”
For Ben Ansell, a political scientist at the University of Oxford, Starmer has come to resemble “a doctor coming to the bedside of a very ill patient, sort of tutting, and saying, ‘God, that looks terrible – someone should do something.’” Over nearly two years in office, Starmer has done little to explain what “hard medicine” he will prescribe to make Britain better, Ansell told CNN.
Because Starmer ruled out raising the three main sources of taxation during his 2024 election campaign, his government has been constrained, and has had to hunt for revenue from small, politically unpopular sources.
“They picked ‘baddies’ – private schools, farmers, banks – and they whacked them, but then they didn’t get enough money from doing that to do much for anyone else,” said Ansell. “They created a lot of enemies and not a lot of friends.”
These policy missteps might have been forgiven if Starmer had a compelling political story, he added. A good story can go a long way in Britain, even as it leads the country to ruin. After the 2008 financial crisis, Prime Minister David Cameron arrived at Britain’s sickbed, and his diagnosis was clear: the previous Labour government had spent too much, and it would take a period of painful belt-tightening to restore Britain’s financial health.
The Conservatives were unable to cut their way to growth. Austerity aimed to reduce Britain’s debt and aid its recovery, but failed on both counts: Debt has ballooned, and economic growth has been anemic since. Nonetheless, Ansell noted, having “kept hammering home” the message that Britain needed to “trim its sails” throughout his first term, Cameron – having enjoyed some modest economic growth in the year before the election – was reelected in 2015.
By contrast, Starmer has had no message to hammer home. He promised “change,” without specifying what, or how. “The Prime Minister is the nation’s chief storyteller – and Starmer never had a story,” Seldon said.
A better salesman?
Still, Starmer’s government could stagger on. He has vowed not to resign and plunge Britain back into the “chaos” that flourished under the Conservatives. Some pundits warn that Britain has become “addicted” to changing its prime minister, as English soccer clubs have become addicted to changing their managers.
Starmer’s allies point to how Britain is getting better. This week, National Health Service (NHS) waiting lists – which under the Conservatives – saw their biggest monthly drop outside of the pandemic since 2008. Wes Streeting, the health secretary who resigned this week, said the NHS is on track to deliver the “fastest reduction in waiting times” in its history. Others point to how Starmer has restored Britain’s credibility on the world stage, after years of antagonism with Europe over Brexit.
His allies complain that things are getting better, but that the public don’t know that, or aren’t interested – swayed instead by the “snake oil” sold by Reform or the Greens, which Starmer says could take Britain down a “very dark path.”
But a prime minister must make their achievements felt. “If you’re a bad salesman, no matter how good the products you have for sale – or how innocuous, in this case – every time you try to make a sale, it gets worse,” said Ansell.
Britain risks reading too much into Starmer’s struggles, to which he said there is little mystery: “Somebody without much charisma who can’t sell things has turned out to be really bad at selling things and is widely hated among the public. Is that fair? I don’t know – but that’s how the public is reacting.”
To try to salvage their electoral prospects, many Labour lawmakers are looking to a better salesman – Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, who most polls find to be the most popular politician in Britain. Where Starmer is accused of lacking vision, Burnham champions “Manchesterism” – a brand of “aspirational,” business-friendly socialism that seeks to put essential services back in public control. His policies have helped make Manchester the fastest-growing city in the country.
Burnham’s route to Downing Street is fraught and uncertain. He cannot challenge Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party without first winning a seat in parliament. Hoping to make way for Burnham, a Labour lawmaker resigned this week as MP for Makerfield, an area in Greater Manchester, triggering a special election that will likely see Burnham face off against Reform’s candidate.
The stakes could not be higher. From Manchester, Burnham has come to resemble the last chance for a Labour Party that has largely given up on Starmer. If Burnham loses to Reform in the special election, this could sound the death knell on Labour’s electoral prospects for years to come and send Britain further down the “dark path” warned of by Starmer. Then, Britain might truly become ungovernable.
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