In Britain, the widening gap between the PM and people |
“You don’t think the country is fundamentally broken. You don’t think the model of the country is broken. You just think it’s been let down by a series of bad prime ministers who have effectively managed the situation badly,” a frustrated Tom McTague, political editor of the New Statesman asked British Prime Minister (PM) Keir Starmer in 2025. The journalist had been shadowing Starmer for months to understand his vision and felt he was getting nowhere. The response he received confirmed McTague’s suspicions: “Yeah, you’re right,” Starmer said. The Labour leader, who, in 2024, led the party to its third-largest parliamentary majority in history, failed to fully grasp his country.
The UK stands a good chance at getting its seventh PM in a decade; and its eighth in the next general elections that may occur any time before or in 2029. Such sustained political tumult cannot be understood simply as a by-product of Brexit, the shock of wars, or a series of poor decision-making by several PMs. The UK is experiencing acute social, economic, and strategic churn. This is best witnessed in the emergence of a five-party system with the far-Right Reform UK led by Nigel Farage and the far-Left Green Party led by Zack Polanksy dominating the scene.
Former Cambridge economist Joan Robinson’s mid-20th century quip for India holds truer for the UK today: Whatever you can rightly say about Britain, the opposite is also true.
Starmer is both right and wrong. He’s right that British society is not fundamentally broken. For all social media-powered narratives about rising crime and uncontrolled immigration, the facts speak a different story. Homicides and other serious crimes, including knife-crime and burglaries, have........