LESS THAN two years ago Sir Keir Starmer was elected promising to save Britain from populism. As with Emmanuel Macron in France and Friedrich Merz in Germany, his mission was to show that the fruits of sober, competent policymaking are worth more than the empty promises of demagogues.
This week it became clear how abjectly Sir Keir has failed. A drubbing for Labour in elections for councils in England and parliaments in Scotland and Wales on May 7th has sparked a revolt in the parliamentary party. As we went to press, the prime minister was about to face at least one serious challenger for his job. It would be in Britain’s interest for him to go.
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The moral for some who look at the miserable polling of Messrs Macron, Merz and Starmer—all decent men—is that European social democracies have become ungovernable. Caught between low growth, high taxes and borrowing and the demand for more public spending, exhausted centrists seem incapable of bringing about change or seeing off the populist challenge from the right and the left. Nowhere more so than in post-Brexit Britain, which, with five heads of government in six years, has got through prime ministers almost as fast as Chelsea has replaced its managers. Larry, Number 10’s chief mouser, has become a furry beacon of stability.
Yet Britain is not ungovernable. Sir Keir blames his problems on everybody else, but they should really be put down to that unfashionable quality in politics: “character”. The counsel of despair which says Britain should cling to a lame duck for fear of something worse is a formula for the populist insurgency safety-minded centrists most want to avoid.
It is true that the prime minister has had a lot on his plate. Real wages in Britain have barely grown over 20 years. The departure from the European Union and its $18trn single market has lowered Britain’s GDP per person by between 4% and 8%, some studies say. Governments terrified of angering NIMBYs have failed to deal with a chronic lack of productivity growth. Between 2008 and 2023 output per hour worked increased by 21% for American workers. In Britain it grew by a miserly 7%. Battered by Brexit, Liz Truss’s premiership and soaring energy prices, Britain’s government bonds have the highest yields in the G7.
Politics has compounded Sir Keir’s problems. Perversely, Labour’s huge, 165-seat parliamentary majority has turned out to be a source of instability. As we have argued, when several parties have similar levels of support in a first-past-the-post electoral system, small changes in the share of votes lead to wild swings in the number of seats parties can expect to win. As Labour’s popularity has ebbed, many of its fainthearted MPs are tempted to rebel by the prospect of losing their jobs.
However, as that all-conquering parliamentary majority also attests, Sir Keir had a chance to make a better fist of governing. Britain’s institutions still function. Relations with Europe, for so long a drag on the economy, are now an opportunity for growth. So too, as Labour rightly spotted, are cutting red tape in planning and curbing unsustainable welfare.
Other countries, such as Australia, Canada and Norway, have faced headwinds and yet centrist parties there have survived and even thrived. A large part of the reason Britain has not joined them is Sir Keir himself. Even before he took power, he pinned his government down with manifesto commitments not to raise income taxes or VAT. His half-baked reforms were painful enough to alarm voters but too small to have a meaningful effect on the economy. The big stuff never materialised: no big tax reset, no brave welfare reform, no ambitious rapprochement with the EU. He talked about speeding up planning, but wavered as soon as he hit resistance.
Prime ministers need authority and clarity. Sir Keir, it turns out, has neither. He cannot articulate a vision. Nor is he grounded in one. Twenty-first century policymaking is so complicated that voters want to be able to trust that the prime minister has the instincts to appoint the right people, weigh the evidence and make sensible decisions. Yet voters have sniffed out what Sir Keir is made of. A YouGov poll since this month’s elections finds that only 29% of them want him to stay in office. Panicky Labour MPs have become a rabble.
Jettisoning a prime minister carries risks. As the Conservatives showed, it is habit-forming. Labour could tack to the left, causing a panic in bond markets. If it learns the wrong lessons, a change in personnel alone could set Britain on an even worse path.
And yet the risks of Sir Keir staying on are greater—as the country could find if he sees off his challengers until the next crisis or the one after that. As a prime minister surviving against the will of many of his MPs, he too would be dragged left. In any case, whoever is prime minister, the scope for foolish left-wing policies will be limited by the bond markets, which have British borrowing on a tight leash. Labour leaders understand their party and the country need growth. A more important attribute today is the political skill to set that as a direction for the country and defend it. The promise of a leadership contest is that it will draw out the candidates who best meet that test.
Purrsonality test
Two paths now lie ahead: a chance of renewal or downward spiralling. Whoever takes over from Sir Keir will inherit an enviable majority, three more years in office and a loyal cat. The country’s problems are fixable. British assets are cheap. Voters want change. True, Labour could succumb to more infighting, but this could also be the rock-bottom moment.
The alternative is dark. This weekend, a large crowd is expected in London’s streets for Tommy Robinson, an agitator who talks of resisting an “Islamic invasion”. Britain’s deserved reputation as a tolerant, multicultural success story is showing cracks. Episodes of bigotry are growing, from antisemitism in the name of “Free Palestine” to Muslim-bashing in the name of “save British values”. If the centre does not hold, the snake-oil sellers will win the next general election. That might really make Britain ungovernable.
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