Australia got addicted to political beheadings. Ten years on, is the UK following suit?

Viewed from afar, and judged primarily by footage of him interacting with other international leaders, Keir Starmer projects the air at least of a half-decent prime minister. There he is, say, at the Élysée Palace being glad-handed by French President Emmanuel Macron, a rapport that speaks of the repair job he has been conducting with the European Union after Britain’s disastrous Brexit. There he was on the pavement outside 10 Downing Street hugging Volodymyr Zelensky, a consoling embrace after the Ukrainian president had just flown in from Washington following his mauling in the Oval Office at the hands of Donald Trump and henchman JD Vance.

And there he was at the White House, pulling from his suit pocket a letter from King Charles inviting Trump to an unprecedented second state visit to Britain, a stunt that papered over the growing oceanic divide in the trans-Atlantic relationship, which successive UK governments still delude themselves is special.

All the time, however, contempt for Starmer has been mounting. From voters. From Labour backbenchers. And, this week, from senior members of his cabinet, who demanded a timetable for his “Stexit”. His approval rating, as measured by those with a favourable view versus those who look upon him unfavourably, has plummeted below -50 per cent. Only Liz Truss, who did not even have a prime ministerial lifespan of a supermarket iceberg lettuce, has been so reviled.

A BBC report this week used the word “revulsion” to describe public antipathy towards Starmer, which, believe me, is strong language from Britain’s aunty. Football crowds, to the tune of Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, have started to chant “Keir Starmer’s a wanker”.

People find him boring. Many bemoan his monotone, estuarial voice. Attempts to come across as an everyman so often sound strained. Frequently, to emphasise his working-class roots, he has noted that his late father, Rodney, was a toolmaker. During a phase when populist politicians are striking emotional chords with voters, this former barrister and head of the Crown Prosecution Service comes across as dry and lawyerly. Even buttoned-down Brits want more passion.

It was only two years ago, in the 2024 general election, that he achieved his landslide victory, when Labour won a staggering 411 seats compared with the Conservatives’ measly 121. Only the third Labour leader in the past half century to win the prime ministership from opposition, Starmer must have thought he was destined to have the word “era” attached to his name. Instead, he won what must be the most loveless landslide in UK political history. Starmer was not even allowed to check into his honeymoon suite, let alone pick up the bedside phone to order from room service a glass of celebratory champagne. Almost immediately, he became the victim of the kind of anti-incumbency which helped carry his party to victory.

Problems on the home front have been overwhelming. Small boat crossings of the English Channel, which last year exceeded more than 40,000. A cash-strapped National Health Service. English universities also facing a funding crunch. Rivers and shorelines polluted with effluent.

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza have taken up much of Starmer’s bandwidth. Next came the Iran war, with its collateral economic effects on inflation and, soon in Britain, the cost of borrowing.

Not even “the Trump effect” assists him, as it has done for other centre-left prime ministers, such as Mark Carney in Canada and Anthony Albanese here. When the US president mocked Starmer as “not Winston Churchill” for failing to adequately support “Operation Epic Fury”, it was a reminder to many British voters – and especially backers of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – that the incumbent of Downing Street is not going to make Britain Great Again. Progressives, meanwhile, yearn for a Love Actually moment, where a prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, stood up to a bullying US president. But Starmer, unlike Farage, has always lacked what Hollywood would call “main-character energy”. He lacks a large enough personality to occupy the biggest office of state.

His misguided decision to select as Britain’s ambassador to Washington someone he thought would be a “Trump whisperer” backfired terribly. Peter Mandelson was his scandal-prone choice, a friend, it turned out, of the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson was sacked. Then it emerged the usual Foreign Office vetting procedures had been short-circuited, allegedly under fierce pressure from Downing Street. The scandal imperilled Starmer’s already fragile leadership.

Catastrophic results in this month’s municipal elections in England and parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales precipitated the latest leadership crisis. Labour lost more than 1460 council seats, and was pushed into third place in the Welsh parliament, its long-time fiefdom.

Regarding his plight solely as a Starmer problem would be a mistake. Britain faces a crisis of governance, which has been exacerbated by the ongoing effects of Brexit, which economists estimate has produced a 6 to 8 per cent hit to the UK’s GDP. The country could soon have seen seven prime ministers in the decade since the Brexit referendum – and, staggeringly, five in the past five years. That kind of turnover puts even Canberra’s crazed period of prime ministerial instability in the shade. (In the 10 years from the 2007 election onwards, there were six prime ministerships.)

As Australia found, political turmoil is habit-forming. Crisis begets crisis. Omnishambles lead inexorably to further omnishambles. The Westminster village has become ever more feverish and self-destructive. Collectively, MPs and the journalists who cover them appear to be suffering from drama addiction, producing an unending cycle of episodic chaos. The defenestration of a prime minister is the superlative form of entertainment that Westminster has to offer, a pantomime in which parliamentarians and political reporters seem happy to play hammed-up roles.

“No drama” Starmer has not proven to be a leader for these times. In an age when style so regularly stumps substance, this dour 63-year-old has failed to meet the theatrical requirements of the modern day. But the revolving door at Downing Street – if over the coming days or weeks it revolves again – surely speaks of a larger problem. Maybe the United Kingdom has become ungovernable.

Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the author of the Substack History Never Ended.

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