Inside Britain's leadership crisis as Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces calls to step down

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Why has Britain had six Prime Ministers in less than 10 years? And why might it soon be heading for a seventh? I'm in front of Downing Street and four different Prime Ministers have occupied this building in less than four years alone. Unlike in America, British voters do not directly elect a Prime Minister.

[00:00:15]Voters elect members of Parliament and the leader of the party with a majority becomes Prime Minister. Political parties can remove their own leaders internally if they think they've become unpopular. That means Britain can cycle through leaders very quickly without ever holding a general election. And that's exactly what's happened. The crisis really begins with Brexit. In 2016, then Prime Minister David Cameron called a referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union. He expected the country to vote remain.

[00:00:45]Instead, Britain voted for Brexit.

[00:00:47]Cameron resigned the next morning. He was replaced by Theresa May, who spent years trying and failing to get a Brexit deal through Parliament. Her government became paralyzed by division and eventually collapsed under pressure.

[00:01:00]Then came Boris Johnson.

[00:01:02]Johnson transformed the Conservative Party into a pro-Brexit populist movement and won over millions of traditional working-class Labour voters, especially in post-industrial communities in the north of England. But Brexit also raised enormous expectations.

[00:01:17]Many voters believed leaving the European Union would restore control over immigration, improve the economy, and give Britain a new sense of national direction. Instead, Britain entered years of political turmoil and economic stagnation, exacerbated by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. And despite repeated Conservative promises to reduce immigration after Brexit, migration actually reached record highs, badly damaging trust in the political class.

[00:01:45]And after 14 years of Conservative government, many voters had simply lost faith in the party altogether. Labour swept back in power under Keir Starmer in a landslide victory in 2024. But even that victory revealed how fragmented British politics had become. Labour's majority was wide, but arguably not very deep. And less than 2 years later, Starmer's government is already facing mounting dissatisfaction.

[00:02:14]Every vote since 2016 in the Brexit referendum has effectively been a vote for change. We know lots of you know when people voted for Brexit, you know obviously it was about Europe, but it was people saying we're not happy. We don't like the sort of structures and settlement in modern Britain. That change hasn't been delivered and I think that helps to explain this sort of instability as sort of cycling through so many prime ministers because people don't feel that the people they put in place have delivered what they offered, which is a different settlement. The government has appeared mired in scandals. There have been major internal tensions, policy reversals, and a lack of clear direction at a moment when Britain faces major challenges. We traveled around the country to around 40 different places, very different parts of the country. And what was really striking was that despite speaking to quite different people with different political views in different parts of the country, there was one thing that they often shared in common, which was this sense that the status quo isn't working for them. This sense that, you know, sort of working hard, doing the right thing ultimately doesn't pay off anymore in modern day Britain.

[00:03:30]>> That frustration has created space for Nigel Farage's Reform UK, which is rising rapidly by presenting itself as the vehicle for voters who believe both major parties have failed, especially on immigration. At the same time, Labour is also facing pressure from the left, including from some Muslim voters and younger progressive voters angry over Gaza. So Britain's revolving door of prime ministers is not just about unstable politicians.

[00:03:58]It reflects the collapse of old political loyalties, growing distrust in institutions, economic frustration, and a country still struggling to answer the question that Brexit exposed.

[00:04:10]What kind of nation does Britain want to be?