This report is from this week's CNBC's UK Exchange newsletter.
The U.K. is facing its seventh prime minister in a decade after Keir Starmer announced on Monday that he will stand down.
That is two more than Italy — often cited in the U.K. as an example of how not to do things — has had over the same period.
As striking is that of the last five — Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Starmer — just one, Sunak, was ejected by voters in a general election.
Johnson was undone by revelations of his conduct during Covid lockdowns and Truss by the adverse market reaction to her 2022 mini-Budget.
This report is from this week's CNBC's UK Exchange newsletter. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
The U.K. is facing its seventh prime minister in a decade after Keir Starmer announced on Monday that he will stand down.
That is two more than Italy — often cited in the U.K. as an example of how not to do things — has had over the same period.
As striking is that of the last five — Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Starmer — just one, Sunak, was ejected by voters in a general election. The rest were forced out by their own party.
It creates a sense that a country once renowned for political stability is now ungovernable.
However, while voters are restive and angry, this ungovernability cannot all be blamed on them.
As Luke Tryl, an influential pollster, points out, May demonstrated her lack of prime ministerial qualities by calling an unnecessary election in 2017, during which she threw away a parliamentary majority inherited from David Cameron. Johnson was undone by revelations of his conduct during Covid lockdowns and Truss by the adverse market reaction to her 2022 mini-Budget.
Now Starmer is going due to unpopularity, largely self-inflicted, after policy errors including scrapping the pensioners' winter fuel allowance, hitting small farmers with inheritance tax increases and appointing a close friend of the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein as ambassador to Washington.
