Is Britain Ungovernable?

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]When the Tories were voted out of office in 2024, there was a feeling that this would bring an end to the chaos that they presided over, an end to the directionless governance, an end to the scandals, an end to the U-turns, an end to the broken promises, and an end, ultimately, to the constant churn of prime ministers. Looking back, this appears to have been somewhat naive.

[00:00:20]Labour have struggled with many of the same problems as the Conservatives.

[00:00:24]Starmer has struggled to set a direction for his government. He's found himself wrapped up in a number of different scandals, and it's looking increasingly likely that he'll be replaced by someone else, like Andy Burnham, for example. If this does happen, then Burnham would become the UK's seventh prime minister in 10 years, an embarrassing track record for a country generally seen as relatively politically stable. So, in this video, we're going to have a look into this and answer the question, has Britain now become ungovernable? And if so, why?

[00:00:57]>> [music] >> If Andy Burnham becomes the next British prime minister in summer, the UK will have had seven prime ministers in less than 10 years. So, in the latest issue of our magazine, we explain why there appears to be a revolving door at number 10 Downing Street. That's just one of 80 pages in the magazine, because there's more in two long than you'd expect.

[00:01:21]Purchase your copy by clicking the link in the description.

[00:01:25]We should start the video by explaining what we mean by the word ungovernable.

[00:01:29]By this, we mean that the UK has become so hard to govern that, irrespective of who leads the country, they would ultimately fail. This is to say there are essentially core structural reasons preventing good governance. Those that argue that Britain is ungovernable argue that this explains why we've moved through so many prime ministers, why Starmer's approval rating is through the floor, and why we appear to be on the verge of getting yet another prime minister.

[00:01:53]However, on the flip side of this, those that argue it isn't ungovernable would argue that the problems aren't structural. It's just that we've had bad prime ministers. And that while there are things making governing harder, a competent leader should be able to mitigate these. So, we're going to split the rest of this video into two and have a look at these arguments in turn. We should note that we're going to look specifically at 2010 onwards as this is often cited as when Britain started to appear ungovernable. So, let's start with structural arguments that demonstrate that Britain really is ungovernable.

[00:02:25]The most obvious place to start here is by pointing out that from 2010 onwards, British prime ministers really have had to deal with an unprecedented set of crises. David Cameron had the Eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis to deal with. Theresa May had Brexit to contend with. Boris Johnson had coronavirus. And Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak had the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war. Of course, all prime ministers have, to some extent, to deal with unprecedented events. That is, after all, part of the job. But, the number and scale of the crises of the last 15 years has meant that prime ministers have had to spend a lot more of their time dealing with them rather than spending their time trying to improve the workings of the state.

[00:03:07]A good example of this is Theresa May, who, following her loss at the 2017 election, which resulted in the loss of her parliamentary majority, began to dedicate more and more time to her political survival. In order to give herself the space to do this, May gave Damian Green, her close ally, the position of First Secretary of State.

[00:03:25]And, according to Green, handed him control of all cabinet committees doing domestic policy. At one point, 28 of them.

[00:03:32]Clearly, this isn't an ideal situation.

[00:03:35]Green himself explained that because he didn't have the profile or patronage that the PM had, he wasn't able to break logjams in the way that the PM could.

[00:03:43]This is just one example of the PM being unable to give her attention to domestic politics as a result of major crises.

[00:03:50]But, May isn't the only one. Johnson was sidelined with COVID, Truss with the energy shock, Sunak with the fallout from Truss. They weren't able to dedicate time and effort to sorting things like social care, the NHS, restructuring the tax system, looking at tuition fees, etc. Because all of their attention was spent on addressing whichever crisis they inherited. So, this is one of the structural problems.

[00:04:13]Another is the way in which the electoral system has functioned. Unlike a lot of European countries, the UK uses a majoritarian system, which theoretically should trade off good representation with more stable government by providing the winning party large majorities. However, for much of the past 15 years, this hasn't been the case. Between 2010 and 2015, the country had a coalition Conservative Lib Dem government. In 2015, Cameron achieved only a slim majority of 12, and in 2017, Theresa May lost her majority and had to rely on a confidence and supply agreement with the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist party in order to function. This isn't how the system is supposed to work. Long-standing party loyalties no longer matter as much as they did, fracturing the electorate and making governing harder.

[00:05:02]While the success of Johnson in 2019 and Starmer in 2024 demonstrate that, perhaps the system was going back to working the way it was intended. The rise of the Greens and Reform in the polls recently certainly undermine this and demonstrate that big majorities might be a thing of the past.

[00:05:20]So, there are the structural reasons why Britain might be ungovernable. But, what about the argument that it is governable? We've just had bad leaders.

[00:05:28]Well, alongside obvious arguments about individual leaders, for example, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, there are some more fundamental errors that a number of Prime Ministers seem to have made.

[00:05:37]Namely, a refusal to be honest with the electorate. It's clear, for instance, that the public want better public services. According to YouGov, around 79% of voters think that public services are in a bad state, with them singling out the NHS and social care as those in the worst state. The thing is, 59% also believe that taxes are too high, compared to 25% who think they're too low. And 50% say that they would be happy for current taxes to remain the same or lower, and for public service funding to remain the same or be lowered, compared to 31% who say that they would be happy for taxes to rise to fund more public services. Obviously, there's something of a contradiction here. As YouGov has put it, the public wants Scandinavian quality public services at an American level of taxes, and are frustrated when Prime Ministers fail to deliver it.

[00:06:25]The thing is, the UK government taxes the economy significantly less than other European economies.

[00:06:31]Germany, for instance, taxes 48% of GDP, France 52%, Italy 47%, and Spain 42%.

[00:06:38]The UK only taxes 39% of GDP.

[00:06:42]This, though, has not been made clear to the electorate. And there's still a view that public services can be made better without having to pay for it, leading to inevitable disappointment when this doesn't happen. But, what do you think?

[00:06:54]Is Britain really ungovernable? Are there fundamental structural problems preventing good governance, or have Britain's Prime Ministers just been particularly bad, especially when it comes to framing the difficult choices that have to be made? Let us know in the comments below.

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