\n Outgoing Prime Minister and Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, who is stepping down after just two years in the role, is in good company. His four predecessors \u2014 Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson and Theresa May \u2014 faced many of the same thorny challenges, and abided similarly brief terms.\n <\/p>\n
\n Truss\u2019 spell in the hot seat lasted less than two months, after the bond market<\/a> told her in no uncertain terms where to get off following a plan for unfunded tax cuts that nearly sent UK financial markets<\/a> into meltdown.\n <\/p>\n \n Bond market vigilantes aside, Clinton\u2019s campaign catchphrase neatly summarizes that it is almost always voters\u2019 experience of the economy \u2014 felt mostly by what they can and can\u2019t afford<\/a> \u2014 that determines how satisfied they are with political leaders.\n <\/p>\n \n In Britain, politicians are paying dearly for the pervasive sense that life is only getting harder and more expensive.\n <\/p>\n \n Salaries have barely kept pace with rising consumer prices, meaning people don\u2019t feel substantively better off. Since the Labour Party took office in 2024, average weekly pay, adjusted for inflation and excluding bonuses, has inched up less than 1% to \u00a3494 ($651), according to the UK statistics office \u2014 hardly better than the growth since 2019.\n <\/p>\n \n Taxes, meanwhile, are at multi-decade highs.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cEverything comes back to (the economy),\u201d said Raoul Ruparel, UK chief economist at Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The UK\u2019s poor economic performance \u201cis part of a wider sense that maybe things aren\u2019t improving,\u201d he told CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n Starmer, and the four leaders before him, all correctly diagnosed the UK\u2019s perennial low growth problem and made fixing it their top priority.\n <\/p>\n \n Yet robust economic growth has proved elusive, even as government debt has climbed, leaving successive administrations with little firepower to fix a growing list of related challenges, from crumbling infrastructure to a chronic housing shortage.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf you have an economy that is growing, then it gives you more flexibility to deliver in other areas \u2026 to invest and spend more, cut taxes\u2026 it underpins everything,\u201d said Ruparel.\n <\/p>\n \n UK GDP growth has averaged around 1% a year since May came into power in July 2016, according to consultancy Capital Economics. GDP per capita, which accounts for changes to the size of the population and is generally considered a better measure of living standards, has been similarly uninspiring.\n <\/p>\n \n Gloom about the economy helped deliver a Labour Party promising \u201cchange\u201d a resounding victory in a 2024 general election. Brits were desperate for someone different, having endured 14 years of rule by the opposition Conservative Party, a period that included the twin shocks of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, but also Brexit<\/a> and government spending cuts \u2014 so-called \u201causterity\u201d following the global financial crisis.\n <\/p>\n![\"Outgoing](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/gettyimages-2201557845-20260622101135840.jpg\")
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