Prime Minister Keir Starmer makes an announcement at the South West London Elective Orthopaedic Centre. Photo by Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street/Flickr.

“Something is rotten in the state of Britain,” Shakespeare might have written had he been alive today. With the resignation on Monday of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the country will now experience its seventh head of government in just a decade. While Starmer’s own faults had much to do with his untimely downfall, his departure from number 10 Downing Street is reflective of a much deeper malaise in British society.

Starmer’s fall from grace is somewhat surprising in that he is less than two years into his term of office, and his party—Labour—enjoys a massive majority in the British House of Commons. But politicians look forward, not back. The fact that their leader won an election two years ago is much less important than the perception that he may be leading them to defeat two years hence. And the omens for Labour are dire. According to opinion polls, the party currently enjoys the support of only about 20 percent of the British public, on par with the Conservatives, and well behind the Reform Party led by one-time Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage. Even the safest Labour seat is no longer safe, and if nothing changes the party could face near extinction at the next general election.

Another leader could perhaps have weathered the storm, but Starmer appeared to lack basic political skills. He liked to portray himself as being not another politician but rather a competent manager, who could bring order to government following the chaos of the previous Conservative administration. But government is a political business, and Starmer’s neglect of the political arts cost him badly. Above all, he never seemed to learn how to engage with his fellow MPs, acquiring a reputation for being aloof and autocratic. Discontent with his leadership style within the parliamentary Labour Party seems to have been almost universal.

Again, this might not have been a fatal flaw. Had Starmer indeed been the competent administrator that he claimed to be, he might have survived. Unfortunately, a series of........

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