British electoral politics in the 1980s were dominated by Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister for the whole of that decade. Similarly, Tony Blair dominated elections when he was in Downing Street from 1997 to 2007. In sharp contrast, the decade from 2015 to 2025 saw no fewer than six prime ministers come (and mostly go) – five Conservatives and Keir Starmer for Labour.

Traditionally, Labour has been reluctant to sack its leader, but if the May elections turn out to be as bad as the polls suggest, the party might well adopt the Conservative strategy of changing its leader as frequently as premier league football managers.

However, the data suggests that sacking Starmer after those elections would be a mistake. This is because voters focus much more on the performance of the government overall than the prime minister when it comes to casting a ballot.

If he were removed, it would also trigger a serious internal conflict in the party on the scale of the turmoil in the Conservative party over Brexit. This played a major role in explaining the Tories’ massive defeat in the 2024 general election.

Trends in voting intentions, satisfaction with governments and with prime ministers for governing parties, 2015 to 2025:

To see why this is the case, we can examine polling data on perceptions of the performance of incumbent governments........

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