The shrinking shelf life of a British prime minister

Another prime minister arrived at Downing Street today. Andy Burnham became the United Kingdom’s seventh leader in just 10 years.

Burnham takes office after his predecessor, fellow Labour politician Keir Starmer, was ousted after barely two years in office. In his first speech, Burnham pledged to act as a “circuit breaker” for a political and economic system that, he says, has been heading in the wrong direction since the 1980s.

It is an ambitious promise. Recent history suggests the UK’s biggest political challenge isn’t just fixing the country – it’s staying in office long enough to try.

As our Graphic Truth shows, prime ministers used to stay in office far longer than they do today. Between 1979 and 2010 – a span of 31 years – the UK had only four leaders: Conservatives Margaret Thatcher and John Major, followed by Labour’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Since then, turnover has accelerated dramatically. Over the last four years alone, the UK has had five prime ministers: Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Starmer, and now, Burnham. Larry, a cat who has lived at Downing Street since 2011, has proved more enduring than the politicians who have come and gone.

Why has the revolving door of prime ministers spun so quickly?

Brexit is the first and most obvious reason. The 2016 vote to leave the European Union consumed British politics for years, crowding out debate over deeper structural problems. Theresa May inherited the task after David Cameron resigned and spent much of her premiership trying to secure parliamentary approval for a post-Brexit deal to manage the divorce from the European Union. May ultimately failed, and served a little over three years in office.

The second factor is economic stagnation. Britain has never fully recovered from the global financial crisis. Disposable incomes have stagnated while the cost-of-living crisis has deepened public frustration with leadership.

The third is the political missteps by specific prime ministers. Johnson was undone by the fallout from COVID-19 and the “Partygate” scandal, in which gatherings at Downing Street appeared to violate the very social distancing rule he’d asked citizens to follow. Truss lasted just 45 days after her unfunded tax-cutting plans triggered turmoil in financial markets. Starmer was undone in part by controversy surrounding his former ambassador's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, along with internal party divisions, and an inability to articulate a compelling economic vision.

But Burnham may have one advantage his predecessor lacked. As a former mayor of Greater Manchester, known for his man-of-the-people communication style, Burnham “is a better retail politician,” Mujtaba Rahman, Eurasia Group's managing director for Europe, recently told GZERO. “He is better at engaging and communicating with the electorate in a way most politicians aren’t,” Rahman said.

Burnham acknowledged the scale of the challenge in his first speech.

“I am acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street, the seventh prime minister since 2016, making this a moment for reflection and new resolution,” Burnham said. “It requires my generation of politicians to raise our game and rise to the new challenge.”