--- title: "Keir Starmer Has Resigned: How Britain Became Ungovernable" description: "And just like that, he's gone.\n\nLess than seven weeks after a set of disastrous local elections in Britain — and not even two years after he led the Labour Party to one of its biggest-ever victories — Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned today. While the timetable announced means he will stay in place as a caretaker leader for at least another month, his premiership is over. The reign of the least-popular prime minister in modern UK history, whose personal polling went even lower than that of Liz Truss, has come to a premature end.\n\nIt wasn't meant to be like this. At the 2024 election, Starmer specifically campaigned on an end to 'Tory chaos' — a reference to the then-ruling Conservative Party's habit of defenestrating its leaders. When he then went on to win the biggest majority seen in Westminster since Tony Blair's heyday, it seemed certain that Starmer would serve out at least one full term.\n\nNow, he joins a growing litany of British PMs who arrived in office promising change… only for that \"change\" to turn out to be another change in leadership a couple of years down the line.\n\nNo leader of the UK has yet served a full term in office since David Cameron's first term ended in 2015. Cameron in his second term, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and now Keir Starmer… not a single one of them served more than three years and loose-change. Or, to put it another way, the UK will soon be on its seventh prime minister in ten years. It took over four decades to get through the previous seven PMs. Clearly, something is very wrong.\n\nAnd that right there may be why Starmer's announcement today was so consequential. Because this isn't just the story of one man who rose to the top of UK politics only to discover he was completely unsuited for the job. Nor is it the story of how the Labour Party learned to become as regicidal as the Tories.\n\nNo. It's all that, but also a story of how Britain became almost uniquely ungovernable compared to its peers. How a nation once known for boring, staid politics managed to transform itself into a tribute act to 1990s Italy, only with crap weather and worse food. And that raises an interesting question… will Starmer's replacement have any better luck?\n\n## The King Over the Water\n\nSay what you like about British politics in the 21st Century, but at least it moves fast. On Thursday, Starmer's people were briefing that he'd fight any challenge to his leadership, and was convinced he could win. By Monday morning, he was stood before Downing Street, submitting his resignation to the public. To ask the obvious question: what happened?\n\nWell, for Starmer's about face you can thank the events in Makerfield. In the early hours of Friday morning, the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, stood next to a man wearing a bin on his head to receive the news that he'd won the Makerfield by election.\n\nAnd no, that's not some sort of convoluted metaphor. The guy next to Burnham at the count literally was wearing a bin on his head. And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm proud to be British.\n\nCount Binface aside, what was remarkable about Makerfield was the size of Burnham's victory. The Labour and Co-Op candidate, Burnham managed to increase the party's vote share on the 2024 election by over nine points; an unheard-of outcome, given the tendency for even popular ruling parties to lose votes during UK by-elections. And trust me when I say that Labour is *not* currently popular.\n\nBut it wasn't just the swing to Labour that killed Starmer's last hopes of remaining PM. Burnham was running in the by-election on an explicit promise to challenge Starmer for the leadership if he won. His campaign promised two basic things: that he could stop the bleed of Labour votes to other leftwing parties, and that he could beat the insurgent-populist Reform Party.\n\nIn both cases, team Burnham was proven right. The vote for the far-left Greens and the center-left Liberal Democrats collapsed in Makerfield. Meanwhile, even the combined vote for the center-right Tories, populist-right Reform, and far-right Restore parties trailed Burnham by over ten points. It was, in short, a crushing victory, one made all the more surprising by the fact that Makerfield had swung so heavily to Reform in the local elections just six weeks earlier.\n\nIt also spelled doom for Keir Starmer. Under his watch, Labour have dropped in the polls to a mere eighteen percent — far behind Reform, and roughly equal with the Conservatives. Some polls have even put them behind the Greens, a party that has historically been best-described as \"insignificant\".\n\nStarmer's team, of course, were aware of his unpopularity, with evidence from focus groups suggesting he was dragging the Labour Party down. But until Makerfield, there were few credible challengers. Although no-one wanted Starmer in charge, the fear was that by replacing him with Wes Streeting or Ed Milliband, the party would risk months of in-fighting and psychodrama only to wind up with a new leader who was *also* despised by the wider public.\n\nAnd that, in a nutshell, was why Starmer made his announcement today. Not only is Burnham popular in the Northern towns Labour has lost to Reform, but the by-election result showed he might also be able to win back the party's affluent urban voters who were drifting off to the Greens. Faced with a credible challenger, the PM's will to fight seems to have crumbled.\n\nWhat happens now is still in flux at time of recording, but the general outline seems to be becoming clear. Starmer will stay on as a caretaker for a month or so. Burnham will likely have a coronation, rather than fighting a leadership challenge. By summer's end, the UK will have yet another new leader, and its first northern prime minister of the 21st Century.\n\nAfter that, it's a little less clear. Burnham may call an early general election, hoping to win his own mandate. Although the ghost of Theresa May's ill-advised snap election in 2017 — when the newly-coronated PM lost her majority — will surely be haunting his team. Or Burnham may choose to serve out the remaining three years of Starmer's term, in the hopes that his popularity will carry through to the 2029 vote.\n\nBut the purpose of this video isn't to try and read the tea leaves. Rather, it's to figure out how we got here. How it's even possible that the United Kingdom is already ushering in *yet another prime minister*.\n\n## Downfall\n\nOne of the slightly weird things about being a normie Brit who consumes American media, has been watching the ways that very online Americans have interpreted the implosion of Keir Starmer's premiership.\n\nTime and again, the thing that comes up in newspaper comments or on social media, is the single word \"immigration\". And why not? Polling shows that over two thirds of the British public believe immigration is too high.\n\nBut that's the weird thing. When Starmer won the 2024 election, immigration had inarguably undergone a historic surge. Net migration in 2023 had approached one million, nearly three times what it had been before covid. Given its prevalence in the discourse, it must've gotten even worse under Starmer, right?\n\nThe truth isn't even close. Net migration — the number of inward arrivals minus the number of those leaving — was 175,000 in 2025, the lowest in over fifteen years. And while you'll often see comments suggesting that this is a result of white Brits fleeing abroad, Sam Freedman has ably punctured that myth, recently concluding that (quote):\n\n> \"Of those emigrating, the majority are students or temporary workers returning to their country of origin. There has been no increase in the number of British people leaving the country.\"\n\nMeanwhile, the current home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has brought in ever-tougher restrictions on legal migration. And while small boat crossings remain frustratingly high, with over 41,000 arriving illegally on Britain's shores in 2025, even they were down 38% at the start of 2026.\n\nNow, some will obviously argue that even a small amount of inward migration is adding to the numbers already in the country. Hence why Reform are promising to deport up to 600,000 migrants if they take power, while the far-right Restore are talking about kicking out millions, *including* those who are in Britain legally.\n\nThe point, though, is that these are not normie positions. Most Brits tell pollsters they want immigration to go down, but support routes for legal migration, provided those coming in learn the language, integrate, and don't commit crimes. By these metrics, Starmer's premiership should've been seen as a success, or at least a step in the right direction. Yet his popularity continued to plunge.\n\nIf the issue isn't migration, then there are multiple other potential culprits for the end of Starmer's reign. One obvious one is the sheer number of unpopular policies rolled out and then hastily rolled back in under his watch. Shortly after winning his landslide, for example, Starmer burned an incredible amount of political capital trying to slash a universal benefit for pensioners known as the winter fuel allowance… only to finally backtrack in the face of a major public revolt. He also fought his own party over its desire to lift the two child benefit cap… only to finally cave into their demands.\n\nThere are other major U-turns we could cover, but the two above help get at another issue Starmer faced: his inability to appeal to anyone. Time and again, his premiership was defined by standing up to the party's base and saying the country needed to make tough decisions on welfare or spending, only to eventually back down when faced with an internal revolt. The net result was a left angry that he'd come out swinging against them, and a right angry that he'd eventually done whatever his activists wanted him to do. With no vision or strategy unifying the Starmer project that could help explain his decisions, he eventually wound up looking erratic and weak.\n\nAnd then there was the issue with taxes. The tax burden in Britain is currently at something of a postwar high. Hence Labour's pledge in the 2024 campaign not to raise any of the major taxes.\n\nThe trouble is, Britain is also financially squeezed. So Labour effectively came to power saying \"vote for us and we'll spend money to fix the shitty public services in this country, but we won't borrow to do so, and we won't raise taxes to fund it. Oh, and we'll try not to cut things because we're the nice party, unlike those nasty Tories.\"\n\nAs an intelligent human, you can already see the flaw with that. Labour was elected to fix what felt like broken Britain, but immediately hamstrung its own ability to do so with a bunch of arbitrary pledges. As a result, the chancellor was forced to resort to sneaky tricks like freezing tax thresholds, so as inflation went up and people's wages rose they would be forced into higher tax brackets… something that managed the amazing feat of pissing people off as much as a regular tax rise, without actually generating anywhere near enough money for the government as it did so.\n\nWe could go on covering Starmer's missteps. We could mention, for example, the Mandelson scandal, where the PM overrode those warning that Mandelson's links to Jeffery Epstein should disqualify him from becoming ambassador to America. Or the absolutely pathetic way Starmer spent two years loudly declaring the need for NATO armies to spend more… and then presented the British armed forces with a budget raise so miserly it amounted to a cut in real terms. Or, hey, what about the ballooning welfare bill, or the early release of prisoners, or any of the thousand other ways he contrived to do politically toxic things on a near-daily basis?\n\nBut we don't want to suggest that Starmer was a uniquely flawed Prime Minister, and that getting rid of him will fix everything. Rather, we want to point out that — for all his failings — Stamer is now just the latest in a long line of British PMs to spectacularly self-immolate. And that raises a worrying possibility.\n\nWhat if the problem is not Starmer himself… but some wider issue with British politics?\n\n## Ungovernable?\n\nPrior to the local elections in May, Starmer's team liked to tell journalists that governing in the modern age was simply impossible. The problem was social media and ever-faster news cycles contributing to voter disenchantment and restlessness. Or, as it often got reported in the press:\n\n> \"Since the invention of the iPhone, the UK has had seven Prime Ministers. It had seven in the 42 years before that.\"\n\nAll of which sounds reasonable… until you start comparing the UK to peer countries. The US has had just three new presidents since the iPhone came out in the dying days of the Bush administration: Obama, Trump, and Biden. France has had three presidents. Germany has had three chancellors. Canada has had three prime ministers. Spain has had three prime ministers.\n\nMeanwhile, those peer nations that *have* seen a lot of churn — like Australia, Italy, or Japan — are countries with a tradition of burning through national leaders at an insane rate. Britain is almost uniquely alone in going from stability to clown car madness in this time period.\n\nNow, that's not to say that modern technology has had *no* impact on global politics. It's hard to imagine Trump ever becoming president in an age without social media.\n\nBut it does suggest that the causes are deeper and more structural than just everyone suddenly getting addicted to Reddit. And that doesn't bode well for an Andy Burnham premiership.\n\nAs to what those causes are… well, there are a few major ones we can highlight right now. The first is related to the statistic above. \"Seven prime ministers in X number of years\" is something we ourselves highlighted in our introduction. Only instead of using the invention of the iPhone as our starting point, we used the year 2016.\n\nThat's because 2016 is the year Britain voted narrowly to leave the European Union. Without the Leave vote, you don't get David Cameron resigning barely a year into his second term, which is the point at which the lifespan of British PMs plunged to lower than that of a mayfly.\n\nThe economic impact of leaving the EU was, of course, far from negligible. But for our story today, the greater impact may have been on voters themselves. The latest British Social Attitudes survey emphasized what's been clear for some time: that Brexit was the ultimate sorting event, splitting voters into opposed blocs with very little crossover. As noted pollster Sir John Curtice has emphasized:\n\n> \"the roots of (Reform's) support (lie) in the vote to leave the EU in 2016, describing this as 'motivated by cultural questions of national identity, immigration, and pride in British history'.\"\n\nBy cutting across party lines and going straight to the core of what is or isn't British identity, Brexit split politics in ways that the UK's first-past-the-post voting system just isn't equipped to handle. Boris Johnson's takeover of the Conservative Party chased away a lot of the Tories' natural voters in the leafy suburbs of the south, who liked the idea of being open to the world. But while the Tories correctly identified their new supporters as being older, disaffected voters in economically depressed northern towns, they followed policies that seemed designed to alienate them: throwing open the doors to enormous waves of skilled immigration, or failing to shield their new voters from the economic fallout of Brexit.\n\nHence the rise of Reform, and the internal Tory party fractures that led to their long psychodrama between 2016 and 2024. But something similar happened to Labour as well. In this case, the party found itself being torn between its urban progressive voters who identified as more open to the world, and its old voters in postindustrial towns who broadly voted Leave.\n\nIn a proportional system, the answer might have been for the two parties to both split. But the British electoral system tends to punish smaller parties. So both have tried desperately to keep their coalitions together, even as different parts of their bases start to see each other as either effete unrooted cosmopolitans with no sense of patriotism, or else thick-skulled racists.\n\nThe result has been a lot of anger, and the rise of new parties like Reform — or rebooted old parties like the Greens — aiming to capitalize on that anger. And when half the electorate finds the other half to be utterly bewildering, all while the parties are in a process of realignment which could throw up almost any result at the next election — from a Reform victory to a Labour-Green coalition — well… you can see why things might get messy.\n\nHowever, we should caution that it might be foolish to put too much emphasis on Brexit as the sole driving factor. Because there are other issues at play here. And, to paraphrase the old Clinton line, it may be the economy, stupid.\n\nHere is what may be the most-salient fact about the UK right now. Since the financial crisis in 2008, real wages have remained almost flat. That means Brits today are only fractionally richer than they were nearly twenty years ago. Productivity, in other words, has stalled out.\n\nThis is by no means a widespread phenomenon in Europe. Real wages have grown in Germany since 2008. They've grown in France. In Poland, they've exploded, jumping something like forty percent. But in Britain, they've remained stubbornly flat. It's one thing to feel your society is getting richer at a much-slower rate than when your parents were young. It's another entirely to feel that it's not getting richer at all.\n\nThere are many possible reasons for this. The numbers of young people out of work, education, or training are rising fast in modern Britain. Infrastructure is *incredibly* difficult to build, with the modern UK essentially an island of NIMBYs. One in which those who are against building projects are so empowered at the local level, that they can conspire to make a high-speed rail line unaffordable, or force the government to accept a 700 million pound bill and multiyear delays to stop a new nuclear reactor — Hinkley Point C — from disturbing local fish.\n\nAnd then there are energy costs. Britain pays more than double what the US pays for energy, but also significantly more than France, Germany, or Poland. And with additional sources of power seemingly impossible to build in NIMBY land, that has a serious knock-on effect.\n\nBut the precise mechanism behind lagging productivity and flatlining wages is a topic for another video.\n\nWhat matters for us today is that these problems are very real, and unlikely to go away, no matter who the prime minister is. More to the point, they cannot be solved with incremental action. To save Britain from its spiral, radical action will likely be needed. Action that it might be incredibly hard to take for a new PM hamstrung by an old manifesto, and no personal mandate from the electorate.\n\nAnd that suggests that this change from Starmer to Burnham may not be the last. Because unless Burnham is able to call a snap election and win it on a manifesto promising serious, deep changes, then he may turn out to only be the latest temporary occupant of the prime minister's chair. Another face that will swan in, promising change… only for that change to turn out to be a change of leadership at the next general election.\n\nIn short, Starmer may have gone the way of Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, or Rishi Sunak. But that doesn't mean that Britain's deep-seated problems have gone with him.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n\n- Keir Starmer resigned as UK Prime Minister after less than two years, marking another short tenure.\n- Starmer's resignation followed disastrous local elections and a significant by-election loss to Andy Burnham.\n- The UK has seen seven prime ministers in the past decade, indicating deep-seated political instability.\n- Brexit and economic stagnation are major factors contributing to the UK's political turmoil.\n- The next prime minister, likely Andy Burnham, faces significant challenges due to ongoing political and economic issues.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### Why did Keir Starmer resign?\n\nKeir Starmer resigned due to his unpopularity and the significant victory of Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election, which showed Burnham's potential to challenge Starmer's leadership.\n\n### What was the outcome of the Makerfield by-election?\n\nAndy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election with a substantial increase in the Labour vote share, defeating the combined vote of the center-right Tories, populist-right Reform, and far-right Restore parties by over ten points.\n\n### How popular was Keir Starmer before his resignation?\n\nKeir Starmer was the least-popular prime minister in modern UK history, with polls showing Labour's support dropping to around 18%, far behind Reform and roughly equal with the Conservatives.\n\n### What was the impact of Brexit on British politics?\n\nBrexit split voters into opposed blocs with very little crossover, leading to a realignment of political parties and the rise of new parties like Reform, which capitalized on the cultural questions of national identity, immigration, and pride in British history.\n\n### What are some of the structural issues facing British politics?\n\nStructural issues include the first-past-the-post voting system, which punishes smaller parties, and the economic impact of Brexit, which has led to voter disenchantment and restlessness.\n\n### How has immigration changed under Keir Starmer's premiership?\n\nNet migration under Starmer's premiership was 175,000 in 2025, the lowest in over fifteen years. The majority of those emigrating are students or temporary workers returning to their country of origin.\n\n### What are some of the unpopular policies rolled out by Keir Starmer?\n\nSome unpopular policies include attempting to slash the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and fighting his own party over lifting the two-child benefit cap, both of which were eventually reversed.\n\n### What is the economic situation in the UK under Keir Starmer?\n\nThe UK faces stagnant real wages since the 2008 financial crisis, high energy costs, and difficulties in building infrastructure due to local opposition, all contributing to economic stagnation.\n\n### What is the political outlook after Keir Starmer's resignation?\n\nThe political outlook is uncertain, with Andy Burnham likely to become the new leader. Burnham may call an early general election or serve out the remaining term, but deep-seated problems in British politics suggest more changes could be ahead.\n\n### How does the UK's political instability compare to other countries?\n\nThe UK has had seven prime ministers in the past decade, a rate of political instability unique among peer countries, which have seen far fewer changes in leadership during the same period.\n\n## Sources\n\n- [Original HomeFronts video: Keir Starmer Has Resigned](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md0V1F6rFYs)\n- [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Prime_Minister_Keir_Starmer_attends_Pride_of_Britain_Awards_%2854868173109%29.jpg) by Number 10 / openverse, by.\n\n## Related Coverage" url: https://homefronts.pub/article/keir-starmer-has-resigned-what-next.md canonical: https://homefronts.pub/article/keir-starmer-has-resigned-what-next datePublished: 2026-07-02 dateModified: 2026-07-02 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://homefronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: HomeFronts image: "https://media.homefronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/Md0V1F6rFYs/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: 2230e99ac27f3460c1456eab38acdc28082cf842a5e5ca7182e747c51be8de64 tokens: 5818 summaryUrl: https://homefronts.pub/article/keir-starmer-has-resigned-what-next.md.summary.md --- And just like that, he's gone. Less than seven weeks after a set of disastrous local elections in Britain — and not even two years after he led the Labour Party to one of its biggest-ever victories — Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned today. While the timetable announced means he will stay in place as a caretaker leader for at least another month, his premiership is over. The reign of the least-popular prime minister in modern UK history, whose personal polling went even lower than that of Liz Truss, has come to a premature end. It wasn't meant to be like this. At the 2024 election, Starmer specifically campaigned on an end to 'Tory chaos' — a reference to the then-ruling Conservative Party's habit of defenestrating its leaders. When he then went on to win the biggest majority seen in Westminster since Tony Blair's heyday, it seemed certain that Starmer would serve out at least one full term. Now, he joins a growing litany of British PMs who arrived in office promising change… only for that "change" to turn out to be another change in leadership a couple of years down the line. No leader of the UK has yet served a full term in office since David Cameron's first term ended in 2015. Cameron in his second term, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and now Keir Starmer… not a single one of them served more than three years and loose-change. Or, to put it another way, the UK will soon be on its seventh prime minister in ten years. It took over four decades to get through the previous seven PMs. Clearly, something is very wrong. And that right there may be why Starmer's announcement today was so consequential. Because this isn't just the story of one man who rose to the top of UK politics only to discover he was completely unsuited for the job. Nor is it the story of how the Labour Party learned to become as regicidal as the Tories. No. It's all that, but also a story of how Britain became almost uniquely ungovernable compared to its peers. How a nation once known for boring, staid politics managed to transform itself into a tribute act to 1990s Italy, only with crap weather and worse food. And that raises an interesting question… will Starmer's replacement have any better luck? ## The King Over the Water Say what you like about British politics in the 21st Century, but at least it moves fast. On Thursday, Starmer's people were briefing that he'd fight any challenge to his leadership, and was convinced he could win. By Monday morning, he was stood before Downing Street, submitting his resignation to the public. To ask the obvious question: what happened? Well, for Starmer's about face you can thank the events in Makerfield. In the early hours of Friday morning, the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, stood next to a man wearing a bin on his head to receive the news that he'd won the Makerfield by election. And no, that's not some sort of convoluted metaphor. The guy next to Burnham at the count literally was wearing a bin on his head. And that right there, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm proud to be British. Count Binface aside, what was remarkable about Makerfield was the size of Burnham's victory. The Labour and Co-Op candidate, Burnham managed to increase the party's vote share on the 2024 election by over nine points; an unheard-of outcome, given the tendency for even popular ruling parties to lose votes during UK by-elections. And trust me when I say that Labour is *not* currently popular. But it wasn't just the swing to Labour that killed Starmer's last hopes of remaining PM. Burnham was running in the by-election on an explicit promise to challenge Starmer for the leadership if he won. His campaign promised two basic things: that he could stop the bleed of Labour votes to other leftwing parties, and that he could beat the insurgent-populist Reform Party. In both cases, team Burnham was proven right. The vote for the far-left Greens and the center-left Liberal Democrats collapsed in Makerfield. Meanwhile, even the combined vote for the center-right Tories, populist-right Reform, and far-right Restore parties trailed Burnham by over ten points. It was, in short, a crushing victory, one made all the more surprising by the fact that Makerfield had swung so heavily to Reform in the local elections just six weeks earlier. It also spelled doom for Keir Starmer. Under his watch, Labour have dropped in the polls to a mere eighteen percent — far behind Reform, and roughly equal with the Conservatives. Some polls have even put them behind the Greens, a party that has historically been best-described as "insignificant". Starmer's team, of course, were aware of his unpopularity, with evidence from focus groups suggesting he was dragging the Labour Party down. But until Makerfield, there were few credible challengers. Although no-one wanted Starmer in charge, the fear was that by replacing him with Wes Streeting or Ed Milliband, the party would risk months of in-fighting and psychodrama only to wind up with a new leader who was *also* despised by the wider public. And that, in a nutshell, was why Starmer made his announcement today. Not only is Burnham popular in the Northern towns Labour has lost to Reform, but the by-election result showed he might also be able to win back the party's affluent urban voters who were drifting off to the Greens. Faced with a credible challenger, the PM's will to fight seems to have crumbled. What happens now is still in flux at time of recording, but the general outline seems to be becoming clear. Starmer will stay on as a caretaker for a month or so. Burnham will likely have a coronation, rather than fighting a leadership challenge. By summer's end, the UK will have yet another new leader, and its first northern prime minister of the 21st Century. After that, it's a little less clear. Burnham may call an early general election, hoping to win his own mandate. Although the ghost of Theresa May's ill-advised snap election in 2017 — when the newly-coronated PM lost her majority — will surely be haunting his team. Or Burnham may choose to serve out the remaining three years of Starmer's term, in the hopes that his popularity will carry through to the 2029 vote. But the purpose of this video isn't to try and read the tea leaves. Rather, it's to figure out how we got here. How it's even possible that the United Kingdom is already ushering in *yet another prime minister*. ## Downfall One of the slightly weird things about being a normie Brit who consumes American media, has been watching the ways that very online Americans have interpreted the implosion of Keir Starmer's premiership. Time and again, the thing that comes up in newspaper comments or on social media, is the single word "immigration". And why not? Polling shows that over two thirds of the British public believe immigration is too high. But that's the weird thing. When Starmer won the 2024 election, immigration had inarguably undergone a historic surge. Net migration in 2023 had approached one million, nearly three times what it had been before covid. Given its prevalence in the discourse, it must've gotten even worse under Starmer, right? The truth isn't even close. Net migration — the number of inward arrivals minus the number of those leaving — was 175,000 in 2025, the lowest in over fifteen years. And while you'll often see comments suggesting that this is a result of white Brits fleeing abroad, Sam Freedman has ably punctured that myth, recently concluding that (quote): > "Of those emigrating, the majority are students or temporary workers returning to their country of origin. There has been no increase in the number of British people leaving the country." Meanwhile, the current home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has brought in ever-tougher restrictions on legal migration. And while small boat crossings remain frustratingly high, with over 41,000 arriving illegally on Britain's shores in 2025, even they were down 38% at the start of 2026. Now, some will obviously argue that even a small amount of inward migration is adding to the numbers already in the country. Hence why Reform are promising to deport up to 600,000 migrants if they take power, while the far-right Restore are talking about kicking out millions, *including* those who are in Britain legally. The point, though, is that these are not normie positions. Most Brits tell pollsters they want immigration to go down, but support routes for legal migration, provided those coming in learn the language, integrate, and don't commit crimes. By these metrics, Starmer's premiership should've been seen as a success, or at least a step in the right direction. Yet his popularity continued to plunge. If the issue isn't migration, then there are multiple other potential culprits for the end of Starmer's reign. One obvious one is the sheer number of unpopular policies rolled out and then hastily rolled back in under his watch. Shortly after winning his landslide, for example, Starmer burned an incredible amount of political capital trying to slash a universal benefit for pensioners known as the winter fuel allowance… only to finally backtrack in the face of a major public revolt. He also fought his own party over its desire to lift the two child benefit cap… only to finally cave into their demands. There are other major U-turns we could cover, but the two above help get at another issue Starmer faced: his inability to appeal to anyone. Time and again, his premiership was defined by standing up to the party's base and saying the country needed to make tough decisions on welfare or spending, only to eventually back down when faced with an internal revolt. The net result was a left angry that he'd come out swinging against them, and a right angry that he'd eventually done whatever his activists wanted him to do. With no vision or strategy unifying the Starmer project that could help explain his decisions, he eventually wound up looking erratic and weak. And then there was the issue with taxes. The tax burden in Britain is currently at something of a postwar high. Hence Labour's pledge in the 2024 campaign not to raise any of the major taxes. The trouble is, Britain is also financially squeezed. So Labour effectively came to power saying "vote for us and we'll spend money to fix the shitty public services in this country, but we won't borrow to do so, and we won't raise taxes to fund it. Oh, and we'll try not to cut things because we're the nice party, unlike those nasty Tories." As an intelligent human, you can already see the flaw with that. Labour was elected to fix what felt like broken Britain, but immediately hamstrung its own ability to do so with a bunch of arbitrary pledges. As a result, the chancellor was forced to resort to sneaky tricks like freezing tax thresholds, so as inflation went up and people's wages rose they would be forced into higher tax brackets… something that managed the amazing feat of pissing people off as much as a regular tax rise, without actually generating anywhere near enough money for the government as it did so. We could go on covering Starmer's missteps. We could mention, for example, the Mandelson scandal, where the PM overrode those warning that Mandelson's links to Jeffery Epstein should disqualify him from becoming ambassador to America. Or the absolutely pathetic way Starmer spent two years loudly declaring the need for NATO armies to spend more… and then presented the British armed forces with a budget raise so miserly it amounted to a cut in real terms. Or, hey, what about the ballooning welfare bill, or the early release of prisoners, or any of the thousand other ways he contrived to do politically toxic things on a near-daily basis? But we don't want to suggest that Starmer was a uniquely flawed Prime Minister, and that getting rid of him will fix everything. Rather, we want to point out that — for all his failings — Stamer is now just the latest in a long line of British PMs to spectacularly self-immolate. And that raises a worrying possibility. What if the problem is not Starmer himself… but some wider issue with British politics? ## Ungovernable? Prior to the local elections in May, Starmer's team liked to tell journalists that governing in the modern age was simply impossible. The problem was social media and ever-faster news cycles contributing to voter disenchantment and restlessness. Or, as it often got reported in the press: > "Since the invention of the iPhone, the UK has had seven Prime Ministers. It had seven in the 42 years before that." All of which sounds reasonable… until you start comparing the UK to peer countries. The US has had just three new presidents since the iPhone came out in the dying days of the Bush administration: Obama, Trump, and Biden. France has had three presidents. Germany has had three chancellors. Canada has had three prime ministers. Spain has had three prime ministers. Meanwhile, those peer nations that *have* seen a lot of churn — like Australia, Italy, or Japan — are countries with a tradition of burning through national leaders at an insane rate. Britain is almost uniquely alone in going from stability to clown car madness in this time period. Now, that's not to say that modern technology has had *no* impact on global politics. It's hard to imagine Trump ever becoming president in an age without social media. But it does suggest that the causes are deeper and more structural than just everyone suddenly getting addicted to Reddit. And that doesn't bode well for an Andy Burnham premiership. As to what those causes are… well, there are a few major ones we can highlight right now. The first is related to the statistic above. "Seven prime ministers in X number of years" is something we ourselves highlighted in our introduction. Only instead of using the invention of the iPhone as our starting point, we used the year 2016. That's because 2016 is the year Britain voted narrowly to leave the European Union. Without the Leave vote, you don't get David Cameron resigning barely a year into his second term, which is the point at which the lifespan of British PMs plunged to lower than that of a mayfly. The economic impact of leaving the EU was, of course, far from negligible. But for our story today, the greater impact may have been on voters themselves. The latest British Social Attitudes survey emphasized what's been clear for some time: that Brexit was the ultimate sorting event, splitting voters into opposed blocs with very little crossover. As noted pollster Sir John Curtice has emphasized: > "the roots of (Reform's) support (lie) in the vote to leave the EU in 2016, describing this as 'motivated by cultural questions of national identity, immigration, and pride in British history'." By cutting across party lines and going straight to the core of what is or isn't British identity, Brexit split politics in ways that the UK's first-past-the-post voting system just isn't equipped to handle. Boris Johnson's takeover of the Conservative Party chased away a lot of the Tories' natural voters in the leafy suburbs of the south, who liked the idea of being open to the world. But while the Tories correctly identified their new supporters as being older, disaffected voters in economically depressed northern towns, they followed policies that seemed designed to alienate them: throwing open the doors to enormous waves of skilled immigration, or failing to shield their new voters from the economic fallout of Brexit. Hence the rise of Reform, and the internal Tory party fractures that led to their long psychodrama between 2016 and 2024. But something similar happened to Labour as well. In this case, the party found itself being torn between its urban progressive voters who identified as more open to the world, and its old voters in postindustrial towns who broadly voted Leave. In a proportional system, the answer might have been for the two parties to both split. But the British electoral system tends to punish smaller parties. So both have tried desperately to keep their coalitions together, even as different parts of their bases start to see each other as either effete unrooted cosmopolitans with no sense of patriotism, or else thick-skulled racists. The result has been a lot of anger, and the rise of new parties like Reform — or rebooted old parties like the Greens — aiming to capitalize on that anger. And when half the electorate finds the other half to be utterly bewildering, all while the parties are in a process of realignment which could throw up almost any result at the next election — from a Reform victory to a Labour-Green coalition — well… you can see why things might get messy. However, we should caution that it might be foolish to put too much emphasis on Brexit as the sole driving factor. Because there are other issues at play here. And, to paraphrase the old Clinton line, it may be the economy, stupid. Here is what may be the most-salient fact about the UK right now. Since the financial crisis in 2008, real wages have remained almost flat. That means Brits today are only fractionally richer than they were nearly twenty years ago. Productivity, in other words, has stalled out. This is by no means a widespread phenomenon in Europe. Real wages have grown in Germany since 2008. They've grown in France. In Poland, they've exploded, jumping something like forty percent. But in Britain, they've remained stubbornly flat. It's one thing to feel your society is getting richer at a much-slower rate than when your parents were young. It's another entirely to feel that it's not getting richer at all. There are many possible reasons for this. The numbers of young people out of work, education, or training are rising fast in modern Britain. Infrastructure is *incredibly* difficult to build, with the modern UK essentially an island of NIMBYs. One in which those who are against building projects are so empowered at the local level, that they can conspire to make a high-speed rail line unaffordable, or force the government to accept a 700 million pound bill and multiyear delays to stop a new nuclear reactor — Hinkley Point C — from disturbing local fish. And then there are energy costs. Britain pays more than double what the US pays for energy, but also significantly more than France, Germany, or Poland. And with additional sources of power seemingly impossible to build in NIMBY land, that has a serious knock-on effect. But the precise mechanism behind lagging productivity and flatlining wages is a topic for another video. What matters for us today is that these problems are very real, and unlikely to go away, no matter who the prime minister is. More to the point, they cannot be solved with incremental action. To save Britain from its spiral, radical action will likely be needed. Action that it might be incredibly hard to take for a new PM hamstrung by an old manifesto, and no personal mandate from the electorate. And that suggests that this change from Starmer to Burnham may not be the last. Because unless Burnham is able to call a snap election and win it on a manifesto promising serious, deep changes, then he may turn out to only be the latest temporary occupant of the prime minister's chair. Another face that will swan in, promising change… only for that change to turn out to be a change of leadership at the next general election. In short, Starmer may have gone the way of Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, or Rishi Sunak. But that doesn't mean that Britain's deep-seated problems have gone with him. ## Key Takeaways - Keir Starmer resigned as UK Prime Minister after less than two years, marking another short tenure. - Starmer's resignation followed disastrous local elections and a significant by-election loss to Andy Burnham. - The UK has seen seven prime ministers in the past decade, indicating deep-seated political instability. - Brexit and economic stagnation are major factors contributing to the UK's political turmoil. - The next prime minister, likely Andy Burnham, faces significant challenges due to ongoing political and economic issues. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why did Keir Starmer resign? Keir Starmer resigned due to his unpopularity and the significant victory of Andy Burnham in the Makerfield by-election, which showed Burnham's potential to challenge Starmer's leadership. ### What was the outcome of the Makerfield by-election? Andy Burnham won the Makerfield by-election with a substantial increase in the Labour vote share, defeating the combined vote of the center-right Tories, populist-right Reform, and far-right Restore parties by over ten points. ### How popular was Keir Starmer before his resignation? Keir Starmer was the least-popular prime minister in modern UK history, with polls showing Labour's support dropping to around 18%, far behind Reform and roughly equal with the Conservatives. ### What was the impact of Brexit on British politics? Brexit split voters into opposed blocs with very little crossover, leading to a realignment of political parties and the rise of new parties like Reform, which capitalized on the cultural questions of national identity, immigration, and pride in British history. ### What are some of the structural issues facing British politics? Structural issues include the first-past-the-post voting system, which punishes smaller parties, and the economic impact of Brexit, which has led to voter disenchantment and restlessness. ### How has immigration changed under Keir Starmer's premiership? Net migration under Starmer's premiership was 175,000 in 2025, the lowest in over fifteen years. The majority of those emigrating are students or temporary workers returning to their country of origin. ### What are some of the unpopular policies rolled out by Keir Starmer? Some unpopular policies include attempting to slash the winter fuel allowance for pensioners and fighting his own party over lifting the two-child benefit cap, both of which were eventually reversed. ### What is the economic situation in the UK under Keir Starmer? The UK faces stagnant real wages since the 2008 financial crisis, high energy costs, and difficulties in building infrastructure due to local opposition, all contributing to economic stagnation. ### What is the political outlook after Keir Starmer's resignation? The political outlook is uncertain, with Andy Burnham likely to become the new leader. Burnham may call an early general election or serve out the remaining term, but deep-seated problems in British politics suggest more changes could be ahead. ### How does the UK's political instability compare to other countries? The UK has had seven prime ministers in the past decade, a rate of political instability unique among peer countries, which have seen far fewer changes in leadership during the same period. ## Sources - [Original HomeFronts video: Keir Starmer Has Resigned](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md0V1F6rFYs) - [Hero image source](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Prime_Minister_Keir_Starmer_attends_Pride_of_Britain_Awards_%2854868173109%29.jpg) by Number 10 / openverse, by. ## Related Coverage