Britain Has a Prime Minister in Purgatory

Imagine if a group of disaffected Republican congressmen could get together to bring down a president of the United States—just like that—by getting 20 percent of their colleagues to nominate someone new. Under the U.S. Constitution, the president, as head of state, has his own mandate for a four-year term. But in Britain, a prime minister remains the prisoner of his party and remains in office only with the consent of his or her backbenchers.

That is one reason why Britain has had six prime ministers in the last 11 years, and why it is about to lose another.

Less than two years ago, Sir Keir Starmer won one of his party’s greatest election victories. Under his leadership, Labour returned 412 MPs out of 650, a feat bettered only by Tony Blair in 1997. He has an unassailable majority in the House of Commons. No other political party leader can touch him. But as for his own party—well, that’s another matter. 

There is an old saying in Westminster: Forget the opposition, your real enemies are right behind you. Never has that been more true than this week, when Health Secretary Wes Streeting resigned his post and made clear to the media that he was planning a coup. 

Streeting needs the support of 80 Labour MPs, and there is some uncertainty about whether or not he actually has the numbers. Indeed, Starmer faced him down in Cabinet. The PM said that he was not going anywhere, no formal leadership election had been triggered, and, if there were, Starmer’s name would be first on the ballot paper. It looked as if all bets were off. 

But then another contender for the crown broke cover. The Labour Mayor of Manchester Andy Burnham announced that he had persuaded the Labour MP for Makerfield in Wigan, Josh Simons, to stand down so that Burnham could take his seat and return to Westminster—that is, if he wins the by-election.  This is by no means certain since Reform UK are serious challengers in Makerfield. Moreover, Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee doesn’t like Labour mayors deserting their posts—though it appears to be accepting Burnham’s carpet-bagging this time. 

International leaders are bewildered and alarmed by this latest exercise in parliamentary regicide. It looks like a repeat of the chaos of the Tory years. Is it something in the water in Westminster? Is Britain becoming ungovernable?  Confusingly, there is still no formal challenge to Starmer, yet his authority is draining away by the hour. Britain has a prime minister in purgatory.

And these are dangerous times. Britain is involved indirectly in two wars—Ukraine and Iran—and faces an imminent energy and inflation crisis. The IMF recently forecast that Britain would probably be the country that suffers worst from the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz. The bond markets are going crazy, with UK gilt yields soaring to their highest levels since the 2008 financial crisis.

The proximate cause of Labour’s latest exercise in mad party disease, as some call it, was last week’s local and regional election results. Labour lost nearly 1,500 seats in England, lost the Welsh Senedd to the nationalist Plaid Cymru, and saw the nationalist SNP win a fifth consecutive term of office in the Scottish Parliament. The UK is in danger of fragmenting along regional lines, with separatist first ministers in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. This danger is made immeasurably worse if the center does not hold. And right now it doesn’t. 

Certainly, Starmer’s unpopularity with voters was a large part of the reason for last week’s election losses.  But governments have suffered midterm setbacks before. To repeat, at the time of writing, there is still no actual Labour leadership contest—just an orgy of speculation. 

Others may join the fray, like Angela Rayner, the plain-speaking former deputy prime minister who had to resign for failing to pay her property taxes. Ed Miliband, the ultra-green environment and Net Zero secretary, is also warming up as a potential leadership challenger.

But does anyone seriously think these wannabes would do better than Starmer? Miliband was Labour leader before and went down to a crushing general election defeat in 2015. Burnham stood for the Labour leadership a decade ago, before he left for Manchester, and lost badly. 

Rayner has demonstrated a lack of grasp of basic economics that would shame an undergraduate. Streeting is certainly competent, but he comes from the pro-European right of the party, was a close friend of the disgraced former Labour minister Peter Mandelson, and, as an erstwhile Starmerite, lacks deep support in the parliamentary Labour Party. He will definitely stand however—if and when Burnham launches the election process. 

Starmer’s allies have been telling anyone who will listen that it is senseless to squander the authority of this government by launching a chaotic leadership process that could last six months or more. This will only further alarm the bond markets, undermine voter confidence, and expose deep divisions in the Labour movement before an electorate already terminally dissatisfied with the state of national politics.

Doom-scrolling through potential leaders was what the Tories did five times, and each fared worse than the previous. It is not as if Starmer has been all that bad in office. He won plaudits for securing a reduction in Trump’s tariffs and for not getting involved in his wars. The British economy is growing again, if weakly. It is not at all certain that any of his rivals will manage any better—certainly not in a financial crisis which is getting worse by the day.

If Burnham does finally make it to Number 10, he is promising to borrow yet more, increase the minimum wage, nationalize key utilities, and introduce wealth taxes. This is very much old state socialism with a modern green-digital twist. These policies would only deepen Britain’s economic malaise. Perhaps the parliamentary Labour party should recall another old Westminster saying: Always keep ahold of nurse for fear of getting something worse.