The UK is changing prime ministers for the sixth time in the decade since David Cameron left office in July 2016, after Keir Starmer resigned last month, less than two years on from securing a landslide election victory. The country had only four prime ministers in the 30 years prior to Mr Cameron taking office, but the famous Downing Street residence has exhibited something of a revolving door over the past 10 years.
The current period of instability began when Mr Cameron gave way to Theresa May after the 2016 Brexit referendum. Ms May was in office for just over three years, before being replaced by Boris Johnson, whose tenure was roughly the same amount of time. Liz Truss took over from Mr Johnson but only survived for seven weeks, the shortest tenure for a prime minister in British political history. Rishi Sunak succeeded Ms Truss and served for a year and 255 days before being routed at the 2024 general election by Mr Starmer, who resigned around two weeks before his second anniversary, but is expected to stay in office for much of this month.
Of the three general elections contested in the past 10 years, two have delivered large parliamentary majorities – one each for Mr Johnson and Mr Starmer – which traditionally would have provided a years-long protective buffer against resignation or unrest, but in each case proved a mirage.
All the indications are that Andy Burnham will soon succeed Mr Starmer, but what are the chances of him seeing out the remainder of the full five-year term in Downing Street?
No UK PM has entered and left Downing Street via a general election in more than five decades – the last to do so was Edward Heath in 1974 – meaning both Mr Starmer and Mr Burnham will continue that trend, although there is a scenario where the prospective incumbent may call a snap election in an attempt to draw a line under the previous administration. Deploying that move comes with many risks, however.
The arguments about why this may be happening in the UK are well-known and include the breakdown of the traditional party system combined with the emergence of new factions capturing significant vote share, as well as the rise of social media and the change in political discourse it has engineered. The slow rate of economic recovery since the 2008 global financial crisis and the years of division that the Brexit referendum brought about, are additional factors in promoting a sense of dissatisfaction among voters.
Given that recent history, much has been made of the apparent “Italianisation” of UK politics over the past decade, a code that means the rapid turnover of prime ministers.
While it’s true that the name on the door of the prime minister’s office in Rome has been changed many times in the post-Second World War years, that idea misses the more contemporary detail that Giorgia Meloni’s three and a half years in office make her a relative beacon of stability in comparison. Ms Meloni has been in office since the final days of the Truss government in the UK in the autumn of 2022.
Those looking for alternative answers as to why Britain might be turning over so many prime ministers may do worse than to look at the English Premier League – one of Britain’s most renowned soft-power exports – to see how its tactics and behaviour patterns have bled beyond the stadiums. Even the ritual rowdiness of Prime Minister’s Questions offer a sketchy facsimile of matchday conduct.
The Premier League is widely known for its elite standard of football, its fierce fan culture and the unforgiving nature of pundits and the football supporting public at large. When a team’s season starts to unravel, fans will bay for a change of leadership and tactics, while club owners are often persuaded to replace an underperforming leader and hope for some form of “new manager bounce”, also known as an improvement in results.
The average tenure of a British PM since Brexit is approximately 550 days. Only a handful of the 20 current EPL managers have been in office longer than Mr Starmer. Only one, Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta, has been employed by their club for longer than the equivalent of a five-year term. The days of long-serving managers seem to be declining in line with those of the full-term occupant of Downing Street. New manager bounce might be a trend beyond football, too.
Liverpool’s former boss Arne Slot, who was appointed in the summer of 2024 and achieved historic success with the Merseyside club in his first season in charge, was dismissed in May. Mr Slot and Mr Starmer may both count themselves unlucky to be out of work.
Incoming football managers will often talk of improving morale in the playing squad when they take over. They routinely get jobs because the previous incumbent’s management style came into question, something Mr Starmer was regularly criticised for.
Mr Burnham, who like Mr Starmer is a committed football fan, spoke this week of doing things differently when in office and talked of creating a new sense of “possibility and hope”, while setting out a radical case for decentralised power.
But will the centre of power hold when he takes over? Politics, like football, is a results-based business, so we may have to wait and see. The language of sporting cliches is less encouraging. As many football fans will tell you, it is the hope that kills you.
