Keir Starmer became the sixth prime minister to leave Downing Street in a decade on Monday, making his resignation statement outside No 10 as the average tenure since the Brexit referendum has fallen below two years. The outgoing Labour leader took power, according to the Guardian columnist Rafael Behr, “without a clear sense of what he wanted it for” and “resented the expectation that he explain himself better” – weaknesses that were “more cruelly exposed in our parched post-Brexit climate”.
The cost of that 2016 vote has been estimated at 4% to 8% of GDP in foregone growth, a figure that does not include the “emotional toll: the coarsening of debate; radicalisation and polarisation”. Behr argues that Britain is “not ungovernable, but the chalice of high office has been spiked with unusually fast-acting poison”.
“Keir Starmer becomes sixth UK PM in decade as average tenure since Brexit falls below two years.”
The chain of events that led to this revolving door was set in motion by David Cameron, whom John Crace, in a ranking of the six ousted prime ministers, calls the “architect of much of the political chaos of the last 10 years”. Cameron promised a referendum on EU membership to resolve an internal Conservative problem, spooked by the rise of Ukip, then won an outright majority in 2015 and was obliged to deliver. He went early, partly because he wanted it out of the way, but mainly because “he thought he would win easily”. Two weeks before the vote he said he would stay if remain lost. At 9.30am the morning after, “he was gone, whistling to himself as he entered Downing Street for a final time. As if he didn’t give a toss.”
Britain has now had six prime ministers in 10 years, with a seventh likely in place by as early as mid-July. The spectacle of the resignation lectern outside No 10, Behr writes, “has acquired the familiarity of ritual.”