Change of Guard at 10, Downing Street

UK is not new to political crisis at the top. Since David Cameron resigned in 2016 after the Brexit referendum, UK has seen five prime ministers: Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and Keir Starmer. Cameron resigned in 2016 after the Brexit referendum where the UK voted to leave the European Union- a decision he had campaigned against. Cameroon was succeeded by Theresa May, who failed to secure parliamentary backing for her Brexit deal. After repeated failures to pass her agreement through Parliament, May resigned in 2019.
May was succeeded by Boris Johnson, credited for getting Brexit done. Johnson’s tenure was, however, marred by controversies, including the handling of COVID-19 lockdown parties, ministerial resignations and declining party support. Johnson stepped down under pressure from his own Conservative Party in 2022.

Then came Prime Minister Liz Truss, who had the shortest tenure in British history – 49 days. Truss’ controversial “mini-budget” triggered financial market turmoil and a collapse in confidence, forcing her resignation. Rishi Sunak, who succeeded Truss, stabilised markets and government functioning but led the Conservatives into a period of electoral decline. Sunak lost power too.
Sir Keir Starmer succeeded Rishi Sunak as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on 5 July 2024, following the Labour Party’s victory in the general election. The frequent reshuffling at the top is caused by a combination of mulitiple political factors. The recent trend began with Brexit that fundamentally reshaped British politics by creating deep divisions within both major parties and forcing successive leaders to navigate an unresolved national question. Economic pressures- from inflation to public debt, make things from bad to worse.

In recent changes, internal party instability has also led to instability. The prime ministers are now more vulnerable to removal from within their own parties rather than through general elections. Starmer is a classic example of that. Two years after routing the Conservatives, in an election that saw Labour win 412 seats, Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned both as PM and leader of the Labour Party. His election in 2024 had brought Labour back to power after 14 years. This kind of resounding electoral majority was last seen in 1997 when Labour had defeated John Major, the Conservative Prime Minister since 1990, by winning 328 seats under the leadership of Tony Blair. Although Starmer campaigned on the promise of “Change” to create a “fairer, healthier, and a more secure Britain”, he struggled to deliver on his electoral promises.

Trouble began to brew in the very first 100 days, often considered the honeymoon period for new leaders, of his government when he and his other Cabinet Ministers were accused of accepting gifts and free tickets for football and concerts worth thousands of pounds.

Dubbed as the “freebies gate”, Starmer had to face huge public backlash for his accepting of gifts resulting in his dwindling approval rating. Although he reimbursed the costs for the gifts and tickets and put in place strict donation rules, the damage was already done. Within two months of taking office, 43% of the electorate had started seeing him a bad PM. By June 15, 2026, that number had gone up to 73%.

His attempts to strengthen the National Health Service at the cost of cutting subsidies for winter fuel to roughly 10 million pensioners, his decision to release 1,700 prisoners before the completion of their sentence, the controversy surrounding extravagant payments to Sue Gray for her service as the Chief of Staff, and promised spending cuts to the tune of approximately $8 billion for the next financial year were not received well among the public as well as party members. Another issue that brought him into conflict with his own party MPs was his decision to continue with the “two-child benefit cap”, a policy introduced by the Conservatives in 2017 and fiercely opposed by the Labour Party since then. The controversial policy, meant to limit child support for parents in the form of Universal Credit or Child Tax Credit only for the first two children, was hugely unpopular in Britain and was abolished by Starmer only in April this year.

Starmer’s resignation has come a day earlier when Britain will be observing ten years of its decision to exit the European Union (EU). A decade later, the mood in Britain about Brexit has significantly changed. Brexit supporters had mainly voted to exit the EU on issues of sovereignty, immigration and economic prosperity. Ten years down the line, Britain is still struggling. An estimated range from 2 to 8% contraction in the British gross domestic product, decreased revenue, high borrowing and tax hikes, a spectacular failure on non-EU immigration, struggling businesses, customs complications, and rampant inflation has made at least 57 % of Britons think that the UK was wrong to leave the EU.

Although Labour opposed the Brexit referendum and supported the UK’s membership of the EU, Starmer’s position has been a UK-EU Reset without joining the bloc and thus, there was not much political space to manoeuvre especially at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic and the wars in Ukraine and Iran further impacted the already struggling British economy.

Starmer started from an already fragile base, his promise to “Change” never materialised where his tenure was marked by frequent resignations, delivery deficits, policy U-turns, intra-party conflicts and leadership contestations. He struggled to implement a solid policy agenda that could control rising non-EU immigration, improve Britain’s crumbling health sector and check the rise of far-right.

With the disastrous Labour performance in the recently concluded local elections, where the party lost 1,100 council seats and control of more than 30 councils, the writing was on the wall. Besides, the victory of Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, in a parliamentary byelection after defeating the far-right candidate of Reform UK, was the last nail in Starmer’s coffin, pushing him to finally leave.