As Britain races through prime ministers, veterans like Yvette Cooper should know better

What a mess. There is no other word that sums up the current state of government in Britain.

As I write this, the country is facing the prospect of its seventh prime minister in a decade. I need to add a caveat, because events are moving so fast, that any prediction can quickly be overtaken – such is the nature of modern British politics and a chaotic, frenzied, febrile atmosphere.

Right now, Keir Starmer is clinging on. His party was humiliated in last week’s local elections, routed by Reform UK and the Greens. More than 70 Labour MPs have said he should resign. Ministers are considering their positions. Jess Phillips at the Home Office has already quit. Meanwhile, the three prime contenders for the leadership – Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting – are jostling for support.

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Party discipline, collective responsibility, common purpose – they have all been abandoned. It is worse than that. Rows are breaking out, setting colleague against colleague or as Labour would have it, comrade versus comrade. There is little camaraderie on display today. This, in an administration that swept to power with an overwhelming majority only two years ago.

It is bizarre and deeply troubling. The nation has entered a doom loop, from which there seems little prospect of immediate escape.

Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, has called for an “orderly transition” of Mr Starmer giving way in an agreed timetable. There is no chance whatsoever of that occurring and someone of Ms Cooper’s experience should really know better. She might have meant well, wishing to seem statesmanlike by making such a measured call, but instead it only added fuel to the fire. Ms Cooper was effectively saying Mr Starmer should quit, orderly transition or not.

Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is understood to have called for an orderly transition with a timetable for finding a new Labour leader. Getty Images

There is no possibility of a calm process. There is no lead challenger, no one ahead of the rest. If Mr Burnham is to stand, he needs to find a safe seat and after the local results, it is difficult to conceive of such a place any more. Reform and the Greens – not to mention the Tories and Liberal Democrats (it is a five-way battle from now on, gone is the old two-party dominance) – will do their level best to deny Mr Burnham in what would be a colossal by-election struggle.

At the same time, Mr Burnham must resign from the mayoralty of Greater Manchester, which could see the city that likes to bill itself as Britain’s “second” after London fall to Reform. That would be a huge embarrassment for Labour, plunging a dagger right into its former heartland, the home of the Co-op movement, site of the Peterloo Massacre, once lived in by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. All lost to Nigel Farage’s nascent right-wing party.

The country has been on a roller coaster, going through prime ministers in rapid fashion and lurching from one side of the spectrum to the other

Ms Cooper was making the comparison with Tony Blair, who did stand down, in favour of the chancellor, Gordon Brown. That was completely different. There was no other rival to Mr Brown, he was out on his own as the next leader. There was the thorny issue of whether Mr Blair had agreed originally at their famous dinner at the Granita restaurant in Islington after the then Labour leader John Smith’s sudden death and discussion of the succession, that Mr Blair would run and would subsequently move aside for Mr Brown. The Brownites insisted there was a pact, the Blairites said if there was, their man took the view that in the interests of the country he should remain in charge.

Whatever, Mr Blair did eventually quit, after delivering three general election victories. That was a period of certainty, of a prime minister in number 10 for a long innings. Relative stability was maintained with Brown and with the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition of David Cameron.

Gordon Brown and Tony Blair were thought to have agreed between them that Mr Blair would eventually hand over to Mr Brown if Labour came to power. Getty Images

The very need for a coalition, though, was indicative of a deeply fracturing electorate. The once centrist majority, with a swing to the left or right, was no more. Britain was broken.

It was a divide highlighted by Brexit, which split Britain in two. Since that ballot, the country has been on a roller coaster, going through prime ministers in rapid fashion and lurching from one side of the spectrum to the other.

The Brexit result was a protest vote. It was as much about working class, disenfranchised, disillusioned constituencies giving Westminster a bloody nose as it was signalling a desire to abandon the free trade bloc. That’s been the pattern in the intervening years. Boris Johnson persuaded the usual Labour “red wall” North and Midlands to elect him because he would bring “levelling up”. When he didn’t and his Tory successors Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak also failed to pick up the baton, they stampeded in the other direction, back to Labour and to Mr Starmer.

Wrapped up in this is frustration, a shortage of timespan. People have no patience. Social media has seen the creation of a populace that demands change immediately.

Politicians, anxious to please, to get themselves elected, have gone along with that, promising they will deliver. Even in this current cauldron, those words “deliver” and “change” are repeatedly being bandied about.

They shouldn’t be. Britain is not set up to do things in a hurry. Its regulatory framework, the government system, the City institutions – none of them function at pace. Over the decades, there have been proclamations that the red tape would be torched on bonfires, to no avail. If Mr Johnson was serious about ending the North-South divide and securing parity, it would have taken him many years – two if not three terms. No one bothered either, to inquire as to the cost. One comparison was Germany, where reunification cost $3 trillion. That sort of money was simply unavailable. Still, Mr Johnson was believed, for a short while.

What’s also occurred is that the main parties housed organised factions within themselves. They always did, but latterly they became more structured, parties within parties. In the pursuit of peace and electoral success, this was tolerated but it was storing up trouble, so the Tories had the Europhobes, the Brexiteers and Labour had Momentum on the left. They had their own chiefs and agendas. They were complying with the central command some of the time but prepared to work against it as well.

That too was more achievable with the rise of social media and WhatsApp. It was noticeable that the turmoil of the last few days took place while MPs were not at Westminster; they were away from Parliament but nevertheless they were able to mount a rebellion. Dissatisfaction is fomented also by a questing, headline-searching media, anxious to gain online clicks. The one feeds on the other.

Here we are then, with a lame duck premier who maintains he is staying put. In the time I’ve taken to write this another minister has resigned. We shall see.