This morning, Keir Starmer announced a timeline for his departure from Downing Street. His successor, almost certain to be Andy Burnham, will be the seventh prime minister in 10 years. Such frequent changes at the top are emblematic of national instability, but they also come at a financial cost when money is tight. Whatever one’s thoughts on Starmer, what’s clear is this prime ministerial merry-go-round cannot go on.

Yesterday, Labour Home Office Minister Mike Tapp posted online: “Is it time to legislate; if a change of leader is forced by its own Party then a General Election must be called.” He continued: “That would stop the constant churn and focus all politicians on delivery, instead of work place politics.” The writer Aaron Bastani labelled this proposal “as big a change to the constitution as anything Blair proposed. It would undermine parliament being sovereign.”

There are, of course, previous points in British history which have produced a quick churn of prime ministers. The years during and after the First World War provide perhaps the closest parallel. Between 1916 and 1924, Britain was led by H.H. Asquith, David Lloyd George, Bonar Law, Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald and then Baldwin once again. To contemporaries, it appeared that the old political order was collapsing.

Eventually, that process produced stability. By the late Twenties Britain had settled into a new two-party system that would endure for much of the 20th century. Today’s instability feels different, though. Rather than voters reshaping the political landscape through elections, prime ministers are increasingly removed and replaced for internal party-political reasons. Leadership contests have become a substitute for seeking a fresh mandate from the public — when we are lucky enough to have a leadership election at all.

A century ago, it was MPs themselves who chose their new leaders, an approach which is at least compatible with the notion of parliamentary democracy. The shift towards a small cohort of unelected party members getting to determine the prime minister is not a healthy one.

It is also worth noting that there have been several historical cases in which politicians made prime minister by their party have called a general election to give themselves a mandate. Lloyd George did it after the war, as did Andrew Bonar Law in 1922 after the Conservatives withdrew their support for the Liberal Party.

Critics of Tapp’s proposal argue that it would undermine parliamentary sovereignty. Yet it is difficult to see how an Act of Parliament passed by a sovereign Parliament could somehow diminish parliamentary sovereignty. Parliament cannot bind its successors, and any future government would remain free to repeal such legislation. What this proposal recognizes is that politics has changed. The combination of social media, 24-hour news and increasingly factional political parties has created powerful incentives for MPs to remove leaders long before the public has had an opportunity to pass judgment. Leadership speculation has become a permanent feature of British politics.

The result is a cycle of short-termism. Governments are reluctant to pursue difficult reforms that may take years to bear fruit, and civil servants become accustomed to changing priorities and abandoned initiatives. The country drifts from one administration to the next without any clear sense of direction.

Requiring a general election following the forced removal of a prime minister would not eliminate political instability altogether, but it would fundamentally alter the incentives. MPs contemplating the removal of a leader would have to weigh the prospect of facing their constituents. Most importantly, voters would once again become the ultimate arbiters of major political change.

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Thomas Munson is a freelance writer and political commentator. He spent six years working in foreign policy and in government.

TWMunson

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