In 2024 the British Labor Party, led by Sir Keir Starmer, won back the office of prime minister after more than a decade out of power.
He told the cheering crowd: “Change starts here!”
Starmer was right that the British electorate wanted change; unfortunately for him, they wanted him out very quickly. Starmer is stepping down on Monday – making him Britain’s sixth prime minister in less than a decade.
“We are not used to this,” Tom McTague, editor of the New Statesman newspaper, told Today, It’s Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram. “We used to pride ourselves on being this island of calm in a world of things … and now we’re just in Italy with the worst weather and the worst food.”
McTague spoke to Rameswaram about why Starmer moved so quickly, a far-right contender for the top job, and why the incoming prime minister, nicknamed the “King of the North,” could be Labour’s best way to turn things around.
The following is part of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get the podcast, including Apple Podcasts, Pandoraand Spotify.
Why is Britain on the way to a seventh prime minister in a decade?
We live in very strange times here in England. We are not used to this. We were proud to be this island of calm in a crazy world – we could secretly watch countries like Italy or Australia when they were going through their prime ministers, and we held firm with Margaret Thatcher for 10 years or Tony Blair for 10 years. Now we are in Italy, only with worse weather and worse food.
I think, big picture, we’re not that different from the rest of the Western world in this regard, since all the same factors that cause unrest in the United States or France or Germany are the same kinds of factors that cause political anxiety here. Immigration, poor economic growth, living standards not improving as quickly as we’re used to, post-crisis inflation – all of that comes together and creates the kind of dynamics you see in America. So we have voter coalitions, the rise of social media savvy in the new era who are attracting attention.
It is that what is happening here is happening in the context of our parliament instead of the context of the presidency, where you elect a president and they are there for a full time whether they are unpopular or not. Here, if you lose the public’s trust or the trust of the legislators, then suddenly you can be out on your ear within weeks or months.
Let’s talk about the last time there was a big change. It was in 2024 when the voters were afraid of the Conservative Party in England, and then they chose the Labor Party and its leader Keir Starmer to hold the office?
They elected them by a landslide – a stunning majority in the House of Commons, enough to basically do whatever they wanted. But I think once he came to power, he didn’t know how he wanted to change the country. He stood on the “change” manifesto, in quotes – it was a kind of hopeful change thing, without much basis for it.
In one sense, he was the least conservative. He just wanted to make this thing work again, and he thought you could do that through smart, incremental, smart, technological changes. And I think that analysis has proven to be fundamentally flawed.
What follows Keir Starmer? Does the Labor Party continue to control parliament?
Yes. So the Labor Party has essentially sacked its prime minister. It is due to the fact that he was not very popular in the country, and they thought that if they continued to stay with this person again that they were all deceived, basically, and that they would all lose their jobs. That is why he has been removed from power. He lost the support of his MPs and his cabinet, who eventually turned against him and looked to the person who will replace him – the so-called man. Andy Burnhamwho is the mayor of Greater Manchester.
Tell us a little about it. I mean, they call him the King of the North?
Yes, like Game of thrones things – he’ll come down with his, I don’t even know what they’re called, White Walkers, right, or something?
Northern England is, I think, similar to the Rust Belt Midwest. It looks like the lowest place in the world, the least post-industrial. It has more economic problems – it is an area that used to be hard Labor but has moved to the right. And so I think there’s an opportunity here for Andy Burnham to win the next election and stay on for a long time.
You are talking about leaders in the UK who have so far lacked authority or a broad vision for the country. I wonder if the person who has those things right now is Nigel Farage. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about him?
Nigel Farage is the man introduced in the United States by Donald Trump as “Mr. Brexit.” He is the figure of the right of the majority in British politics who has stood outside the Conservative Party – the traditional party of the right here – and criticized it for not being conservative enough, for not being patriotic enough, for not being tough enough on borders and immigration.
All the things that happened to the Republican Party from the Tea Party or from Donald Trump – it’s that he did it from outside the Conservative Party. And he is a kind of charismatic person, a very good public speaker, very difficult to pin down, he speaks fluently and gets out of hand.
He was finally elected to the House of Commons in the last election for his rebel party called Reform UK. And from that position, he has led the party in opinion polls. But something else is going on now, where because he is a potential prime minister, he is facing a level of scrutiny that he has never faced before.
So all sorts of things are going on in British politics, which sound quite wild.
People look at this situation – this prime ministerial race, this Nigel Farage supremacy – and say Britain has become ungovernable. Can you argue what the situation is, Tom?
Look, I would say that it is parliamentary democracy in its most basic and messy forms. Britain is a country, like many countries in Western Europe, which is struggling to think about how it will make the world in the 21st century, in a world where many of the ideas we have come to take for granted do not seem normal.
The United States is a trusted partner – that is changing. Free market economy, free international trade seems to be over. And you add in social media, the AI revolution, all of this. It feels like the upheaval in British politics is just a reflection of some kind of chaos in the world and in the world economy. You can see the same types of questions going on in Canada and Australia and France and Germany. And I don’t think anyone has the answers yet, and England certainly doesn’t.
