They were times in which prime ministers seemed to be on their way out as soon as they\u2019d arrived. The big strategic decisions the country faced were ducked or postponed. The public finances repeatedly wobbled, yet efforts to rationalise the tax system faltered in the face of vested interests, including farmers. Reforms to social security were trumpeted before being diluted. The whole business of politics was animated by rancour and rivalry, rather than practical action. All the while, populists waited in the wings.<\/p>\n
This is not a sneak peak into a future history book about today\u2019s Britain, but a description of the French fourth republic, which staggered after a difficult birth in 1946 until 1958, when the exhausted regime ceded the authority to create a new order to Gen Charles de Gaulle, effectively putting itself out of its misery.<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer is not going so gently, instead raging against the dying of the light. Overseas precedents for our political tumult are all there is, because British history can\u2019t provide them. There has \u201cnever been a period like the present,\u201d said Anthony Seldon, author of The Impossible Office?, which charts the 300-year story of the premiership.<\/p>\n
Yes, there was a decade in each of the 18th (1760-1770) and 19th (1827-1837) centuries where we burned through prime ministers at a similar rate. But the six \u2013 and soon likely seven \u2013 PMs since 2016 rank as \u201cunique\u201d once we factor in the wider churn at the top. There have also been eight chancellors and nine foreign secretaries \u2013 before any post-Starmer reshuffle.<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer, the prime minister, is not going gently, instead raging against the dying of the light. Photograph: Alberto Pezzali\/AP<\/p>\n
Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, and now, if he can prevail in a tough byelection, maybe Burnham: cast your mind over the list and the first thought is not of anything solid actually happening, just the simple fact of the frenzy. That is not a coincidence.<\/p>\n
Gus O\u2019Donnell, the former cabinet secretary, has seen three transitions \u201cat close hand\u201d: Thatcher to Major, Blair to Brown and Brown to Cameron. In the \u201caccess talks\u201d with the leader of the opposition before the 2010 election, David Cameron<\/a> briefed him on the changes he would be asking for in Whitehall.<\/p>\n Then, O\u2019Donnell said: \u201cHe asked me: \u2018And what can I give you?\u2019 I told him: ministers who stay in the same job for as long as possible, so they\u2019ve got some sort of chance to get on top of their brief.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Donnell sounded world-weary as he recollected trying to sustain strategies for big issues through games of ministerial musical chairs. Pensions is one field that cries out for a long-term approach: individuals are meant to plan, save and accrue rights over the course of a lifetime. Whereas, O\u2019Donnell recalls, at one stage there were \u201cnine pension ministers over the course of five years\u201d.<\/p>\n An obvious but underdiscussed consequence of changing prime minister is that a huge proportion of other ministers will automatically change too. Any new PM will, naturally, want to shape their own cabinet, and no politician with the guile to reach the top of the greasy pole will be blind to the opportunities of using the junior ranks of government to reward loyalists and keep tricky customers under control.<\/p>\n And at the helm of the resulting team of novices will be an inexperienced leader \u2013 counselled by a new kitchen cabinet of advisers, mostly new to the workings of the centre of British power. As Cath Haddon of the Institute for Government thinktank acknowledges, there comes a point where personally ineffective PMs have to go. But she also worries about rendering the individual in the office ineffective by denying \u201cthe time needed to learn, govern and see projects through\u201d. As \u201cthe conversion rate from prime ministers under pressure to prime ministers out the door\u201d increases, she sees the second part of that equation becoming \u201cunderpriced\u201d.<\/p>\n The evasions embodied in Labour\u2019s one-word manifesto title, Change, have unravelled but lessons have not been learned. The demand from all sides through this leadership crisis is: \u201cfaster and less incremental change\u201d.<\/p>\n Excitable lobby reporters, and indeed the passionate party activists who get the final say on who becomes prime minister these days, sometimes forget that big speeches do not in themselves alter much. Effective reforms become reality only after the drawing up of credible blueprints, the use of consultations to reaffirm principles and adjust for practicalities, the rewriting of laws, the securing and effective marshalling of resources.<\/p>\n \u201cYou need to do the work,\u201d says Haddon. \u201cAnd that inevitably takes time.\u201d<\/p>\n A removal company packs items into vans outside 10 Downing Street at the end of Rishi Sunak\u2019s premiership. Photograph: Neil Hall\/EPA<\/p>\n The threat of removal can cause almost as much distraction and disruption as the fact of it. Damian Green was a close ally of Theresa May<\/a> when the June 2017 election saw her lose her majority, raising questions about her survival that hung over her final two years in office.<\/p>\n \u201cTheresa was clearly in trouble then \u2013 it became much more difficult to do anything long term,\u201d Green recalls. During the early months of her premiership she had projected interest in big social challenges, and approached difficult subjects, such as domestic violence, that too many others had foregone. But now the order of the day was survival, which was bound up with one and only one issue. Suddenly, her singular and defining job was to \u201cget a Brexit deal\u201d.<\/p>\n To give her half a chance with this, May and Jeremy Heywood, then the cabinet secretary, made an extraordinary move. They shuffled Green from the Department for Work and Pensions to the made-up job of first secretary of state<\/a>, in effect deputy prime minister, and handed him control of nearly everything else.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in charge of all cabinet committees doing domestic policy, at one point 28, to take the load off Theresa\u2019s shoulders,\u201d said Green.<\/p>\n A loyalist, Green drove through the worthwhile if lower-profile priorities of his boss, such as restrictions on modern slavery. But no deputy has the profile or patronage that the PM can deploy to break logjams, and progress on bigger challenges including social care, a personal passion of Green, ground to a halt.<\/p>\n Theresa May and her husband, Philip, wave outside Downing Street on her last day in office as prime minister, in July 2019. Photograph: Hannah McKay\/Reuters<\/p>\n