It was Keir Starmer’s turn to partake in this ritual on Monday. Just weeks after the Labour Party’s poor performance in local polls, he announced his resignation, clearing the way for Britain to get its seventh Prime Minister in 10 years.
All of which raises a critical question: If Burnham does succeed in becoming the next Prime Minister, how long can he realistically last, given that he will confront the same deep-seated economic and structural problems as his predecessors?
“We are now one of those ridiculous countries which are incapable of delivering stable government,” he said.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announces his resignation during a speech outside 10 Downing Street in London, England, on June 22, 2026. —Wiktor Szymanowicz—Future Publishing/Getty Images
In the 31 years from 1979 to 2010, the U.K. had just four Prime Ministers—the Conservatives’ Margaret Thatcher and John Major, then Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Since then, tenures have shortened dramatically.
Against this troubled backdrop of national angst, Prime Ministers came and went, making the U.K., not so long ago a bastion of political stability on this side of the Atlantic, look more and more like some of its formerly unstable southern European neighbors. Between 2011 and 2022, Italy, for example, cycled through six different leaders. With Giorgia Meloni now firmly ensconced in Rome, and the U.K. once again awaiting a new leader, the revolving door has moved north.
His successor Liz Truss’ tenure of just 45 days was a disaster. Her controversial mini-budget of unfunded borrowing unleashed complete panic on the financial markets. She did notch up a couple of records, not just for the shortest term in office, but also for being the first leader since Winston Churchill to govern under two monarchs. King Charles III ascended to the throne following the death of his mother Queen Elizabeth II, just two days after Truss took over. During Truss’ final days in Downing Street, a British newspaper tracked whether her tenure would outlast a lettuce. It did not. Rishi Sunak restored some stability post-Truss, but resigned in July 2024 after a crushing Conservative election defeat.
The problems with being Prime Minister
Anthony Seldon, a political historian of recent times, who has charted the careers of every U.K. Prime Minister since Major, lists a string of reasons why so many have failed. He says too often the choices were either too young or too inexperienced, or both. As a result, if and when they reached No. 10, they turned out to struggle with the job.
There is also the added disruption of the social media discourse, Seldon says, noting how it creates intense pressures for instant solutions that are counterproductive.
Politicians and commentators cite a particular structural problem in British politics that builds in instability for leaders and Prime Ministers. This results from the way the Conservative and Labour parties outsource the final choice of their political leaders these days to party memberships, who do not always choose wisely. Nor do they often select the leader their MPs want.
Andrew Haldenby, managing director of the Effective Governance Forum, a cross-party Westminster campaign for better government in the U.K., says Prime Ministers are way more vulnerable than U.S. Presidents.
Robert Ford, a professor of politics at Manchester University, agrees, noting the “very high bars” to remove a U.S. President and the relatively low bars to remove U.K. political leaders. “There is also an institutional problem in that Labour or Tory MPs don’t necessarily agree with the leader chosen by the party members, and yet they (the MPs) can press the eject button (to kick them out)," he says.
“The task before him [Burnham] is enormous as there are no short-term fixes. There is no money. He cannot address that task without becoming unpopular, but as soon as he becomes unpopular, his MPs will fear losing their seats and they could say, ‘Hey let’s just have another leader,’” says Walker.
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