As Lady Bracknell didn’t quite say, to lose one prime minister before they have served four years may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose five in a row looks like carelessness – or worse. Some argue that a nefarious combination of factors including Brexit, the media, the centralised state, unaccountable elites, the bond markets and political and cultural polarisation has made the job of leading Britain more or less impossible. Did Keir Starmer lose his job because he wasn’t very good at it, or because it can’t be done? And as Andy Burnham settles in at Number 10, do voters think Britain is ungovernable? Or just that it has been badly governed?
We can look in detail at three arguments: that it is impossible to maintaining a governing coalition while making painful decisions in office; that the cost of living crisis and the 24-hour news cycle have made people too impatient for change; and that voters are unwilling to accept the consequences of trade-offs between taxes and state spending, while populist parties claim this circle can be squared.
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