Why do prime ministers keep failing?

So here we are again in another protracted leadership contest. The most likely outcome is that Andy Burnham becomes prime minister at some point over the summer. He’s the clear favourite of Labour MPs and members, and now has the opportunity to get back into Parliament via a by-election in Makerfield.

I doubt Starmer can block him from running again, as that would set off another round of resignations and an even messier endgame. Presuming he is allowed to run he has to win a tricky seat. Any other Labour candidate would lose heavily to Reform, who won the wards that sit within the constituency by 50% to 27% in last week’s local elections. The unique context, though, means Burnham should win. If he does, in some of the most friendly territory for Reform, it makes him a shoo-in to replace Starmer. Perhaps the biggest risk is that he will now be considered presumptive prime minister and everything he says will be subject to a lot more scrutiny than he’s used to.

Whatever happens to Burnham it’s hard to see how Starmer remains in number ten beyond the next few months. Which leads to the question I want to focus on in this post: given we’re likely to be on our seventh prime minister in a decade very soon, why do they keep failing?

One theory, popular with those who still defend Starmer, is that parties have got into the habit of binning leaders at the first sign of trouble, hurried into action by a press that became addicted to chaos during Brexit, and unwilling to acknowledge that it takes time to fix the intractable problems facing the country. This impatience, they argue, is making Britain ungovernable.

Another, is that we’ve just had a really bad run of leaders who either lacked basic political skills, were temperamentally unsuited for the job, or were Liz Truss.

I’m more inclined to theory two, after all plenty of other countries have managed to keep a leader in place for more than two years. They also have political journalists who enjoy drama. Nor are Starmer’s troubles due to a lack of patience from his MPs. Most were desperate for him to succeed and, if they had felt he was making difficult decisions that would pay off over time, would have backed him through bad polling and miserable election results. They supported planning legislation, many enthusiastically, despite the inevitable nimby backlash, and controversial reforms to special needs.¹

The problem has been his refusal to make big calls on too many issues, to try and delegate decisions about trade-offs that only he can make, and an almost total absence of overarching strategy.

Having said that, there are some deeper structural problems that are undoubtedly making it harder to be prime minister. Poor economic growth since the financial crash, combined with higher immigration, has triggered a surge in ethnonationalism, particularly in deindustrialised areas that have been hit hardest. This is affecting leaders across Europe. Emmanuel Macron may have held on for a decade but he’s also on his seventh Prime Minister and has dreadful approval ratings. Friedrich Merz has quickly become almost as unpopular as Starmer. In all three countries the radical right lead the polls. Of course, leaders have some agency to deal with these problems but they are new and difficult.

Alongside these broader issues, there are some uniquely British challenges with being prime minister that make it harder than necessary. The role has evolved in a typically haphazard way over the decades, without much thought as to its purpose. Given the complexities of governing in a polarised multi-party system with a struggling economy, it is essential to make the job as manageable as possible. It’s within the PM’s power to make the necessary changes because there are few constitutional limits. Whoever replaces Starmer will improve their chances of survival by rethinking what it means to be prime minister. In the rest of the post I’ll look at three things they could do to make the job easier, if not easy.