Public Policy Conjectures

(Written before the recent national tragedy, but left virtually unchanged.)

Can a nation have too many prime ministers? 

Britons used to think so.  50 years ago we Britons laughed at the French and the Italian who could not keep a prime minister for longer than a year or two, sometimes for not much longer than a few weeks.  “How can anyone run a country if those in charge keep changing every five minutes?” we superciliously asked.

Yet here we are in 2026 wishing we could rid ourselves of another prime minister whom we’ve only just elected.  We elected him with a landslide victory under 2 years ago.  Yet he had little more than 6 months in the job before we started 18 months of a media and political frenzy to replace him with at least 3 other named national politicians and, additionally, with one rival Labour Party faction. 

Since 2016, Britain has had 5 prime ministers.  By my calculation —and my maths is now quite rusty—that is a new prime minister every 2 years.  Since a major politician or head of any large organisation must take up to 6 months to establish himself, then in the past 10 years we’ve only had 7.5 years of effective prime ministerial leadership and government: only 75% of what is needed for the top man in the UK. 

Do we really want 6 prime ministers in ten years? 

Here’s our track record.  Cameron resigned in June 2016, after 6 years in power.  He was followed by Theresa May who survived for only 2 years of political holocaust, trying to get Brexit delivered, whilst delivering little else. She was served a poisoned chalice and perished accordingly.  Boris Johnson stepped in to deliver Brexit, which he signally failed to do, though he did deliver oven ready Brexit tasters, Covid jabs, Plague Parties, and corruption. He barely survived covid and lasted 2 years.  Liz Truss survived 7 weeks.  Rishi Sunak  survived 2 years in a form of Brexit non-implementation caretaking.  Starmer has survived nearly 2 years so far.  With some allowance for  some uncounted months, the total comes to virtually 10 years. 

The current proposal is that the current prime minister, Keir Starmer, be ousted and that a 6th prime minister takes us to the next election in 2029.  That would bring us to 6 prime ministers in 13 years . 

However, the expectation is that the Labour Party will not win the next election.  That would mean that the 6th prime minister would forfeit his post as leader of the Labour Party.  So any coalition government would not be headed by the 6th prime minister, even if the prime minister came from the Labour Party.  But the chances of the Labour Party providing the next prime minister in 2029, even in a coalition, must be very slight.  So there must be a 90%+ chance that in 2029, we would achieve our 7th prime minister. That would then reduce the average life of a prime minister since 2016 to less than 2 years.  

The likely government in 2029 is also likely to be unstable.  It could well be a coalition.  If, disastrously, it should be Farage and Reform, then it has every possibility of producing an anglicised version of Trump: destruction and showmanship. And Trump’s reign is now becoming very unstable. If, hopefully, democracy survives in the UK under Farage, (unlike under Trump in the USA), then Farage’s government would fall. This would produce an 8th prime minister in 15 years—still under the 2 year average.

The next general election two or thee years later, in 2034, could well produce a 9th prime minister.  Hopefully this might be the opportunity to regain some stability in the post. But even by 2036 we could well have had 9 prime ministers since 2016. That is still only just over 2 years per prime minister. 

Do we really want 9 or even 10 prime ministers, in 20 years? 

On current trends there must be at least a 50/50 chance of this future.  But the chances would be considerably higher if Starmer is ousted. The chance of 9 prime ministers in 20 years will probably be 80-90%, with Starmer replaced.  

I would suggest Britain needs this gift as much as it needs a hole in the head. Is there anyone, living and compos-mentis who would disagree?  (Apart from Farage of course).

Moreover, if we consider the alternatives to our present prime minister, then the prospects are not good either.  First of all, whoever it is will presumably be implementing the same manifesto as Keir Starmer. That manifesto is what gave the Labour Party its legitimacy, and its landslide victory. There should be no departure from that in a democracy.  Part of that manifesto is a commitment to the fiscal rules, whatever they are exactly; but whatever they are, they are commitment to not spending much extra money.  Presumably also, a new prime minister would have to accept the reality of the Ukraine War continuing, Trump’s War continuing, Trump’s damage to the European economies continuing, and the need for additional defence spending remaining. These drain away  the possibility of whatever extra policy plans any new prime minister might have. A new prime minister also has to accept that we have not achieved economic growth for nearly 20 years and there are no signs of changing that now. 

So what will change with a new prime minister? 

Well, he’ll have to create a lot of new personal relationships with key players outside the government in the UK. But catastrophically, he’ll be starting from square one in relationships with foreign leaders and countries.  How does that further our European relationships, or with Trump, and crucially in helping Zelensky and putting Putin in this place?  Britain will take a further step backwards in its influence overseas.  Great!   But not “Great Britain”! 

Will the only positive change be a change of face? a change of voice? a change of personal weaknesses and strengths? A change back to Rishi Sunak’s short trouser-lengths? Fortunately it seems not. But will it still only be, “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose?”

Will Rayner, Streeting, Burnham, Milliband, Mr Ben, mean any policies will significantly change? Can any of these great leaders change anything much from Starmerism, if they stick to the Manifesto, the fiscal rules, the constraints of the reality of no economic growth, and are shaped by what is happening in the world around us? 

The only politicians and parties around that could do things very differently are the left wing of the Labour Party, Reform and possibly the Greens.  The Conservatives, Lib-Dems, Labour and the nationalist parties all have very similar policies. 

The left wing of the Labour Party could nationalise certain industries, increase welfare spending and the minimum wage, improve workers’ conditions and spend more on education and the NHS. They would build more houses and control rents. This would have financial and economic consequences that the too-powerful financial markets and big industry don’t like. That paradoxically was Liz Truss’s problem. 

Reform will just destroy things, as Trump has done in the USA.  I cannot identify a single positive policy in the White Supremacist House and Dance-Hall, nor in Trump as a person.  There will also be social unrest over Reform’s immigrant policies, together with a shortage of labour in some businesses, the NHS and social care.  The UK Rust Belt will remain in its misery.  Reform is about reform and change: but of exactly what, to exactly what, is so restricted by the ends of their noses that it is impossible for even them to know what it is. Maybe it’s just a drip. Farage couldn’t even tell us how to do Brexit: it required the genius of Boris Johnson.

If the Greens try to spend a lot more money, they will also run into the Liz Truss problem. If they don’t spend more money, then I can’t see how they will change anything significantly. The problem for the Greens, and the reason why I don’t vote for them, is that apart from being laudably, significantly and importantly Green, they don’t have any policies that are clearly different from other parties.  And how could they?  They don’t have a political aim or philosophy for those huge non-Green areas of political activity: there is nothing Green about law and order. 

So if anyone thinks that changing the prime minister will change anything, they need their wits tested.  That includes not only Labour politicians, but also Chris Mason, Nick Robinson, Laura Kuenssberg  and the rest of the mighty wise media. 

So how can anything be changed in UK politics?  

The first possible change is not to promise what can’t be delivered.  This is a media mantra which everyone ignores.  Over-promising and under-delivering has been a feature of British politics this millennium.  Cameron was a master of this, always hitting the ground running and punching above his weight, whilst the world around him moved the goal-posts. The Labour Manifesto, which I’ve not read, probably did this in presentation if not in substance. The government’s housing, industrial and defence strategies have strong elements of this.  I have struggled with each of these, seeking to discover the substance behind the form. 

Secondly, the nation has to recognise that until we spend enough money we are not going to solve our problems.  Whatever the public service, lack of resources is one of the key problems. Yet everyone says, “It’s not just resources we need to consider, but how we do things.”  Now no-one can quarrel with that. In the glory days of Thatcher, enthusiastic acolytes used to say, “Don’t assume you can solve problems by simply throwing money at them.” No-one can quarrel with that either.  But at the same time in the late 1980’s our Japanese students were quoting a Japanese saying, “To make money, you have to spend money.” And no-one can quarrel with that either. 

Unfortunately, Britain has focussed its attention entirely on these “other things” to solve all our problems, not on spending money.  Indeed, reducing costs, efficiency, value for money, discounts, bargains, changing your gas “supplier”, nectar points, Black Fridays, even two for the price of three, are a national obsession.  This obsession begins at the dizzy heights of many prime ministers, and descends down to the lowest levels of the homeless.  Unfortunately, and far worse, it is an obsession of every organisation except high tech and mass entertainment, including the whole of the private sector. Cutting prices, wages, maintenance, training, all costs, and investment. 

Not spending money, especially on investment, is one of the generally agreed reasons for the UK’s low economic growth.  Even Boris Johnson, in a rare moment of political wisdom, recognised we are a low wage, low productivity economy.  

“Spending more money” has to be addressed.  That is something to be tackled in a later essay.  And it can be tackled successfully. 

The third reason why it is so difficult to solve our national problems, especially by spending money, is the abject failure of most of the private sector to grasp the opportunities of Thatcherism; and by some of the greedy private sector to indeed grab it wholly selfishly and avariciously  The high tech world has invested and expanded at astonishing rates, and other worthy parts of the private sector such as tourism have also.  But generally, industrial production has declined and new technologies have been under-exploited.  But crucially, huge resources have been poured into financial services, many of which, probably most of which, simply move financial assets and land and property from one person to another.  They also waste huge amounts of labour and waste human lives.  (For an exposition of the same point by a couple of learned economists, see Mariana Mazzucato and Adam Smith: The Value of Everything.)  It also amazes me that too many key parts of the UK private sector are owned by foreign businesses, equity funds etc, rather than by one of the top financial centres of the entire world, the City of London.  The steel industry is now owned by India, the jewel in the Victorian Crown, and by the Chinese and soon by Labour; much of the car industry by the Japanese, losers in the last war; and some dubious tax-evading financial wallah, owns H.M. Treasury in Whitehall. Our banks have spent £50 billion on compensating their customers for the banks’ financial fraud, and, with help from this Labour Government, are avoiding paying much of the £30 billion compensation due to customers for another fraud upon them. And the Labour Government of 2008 had to rescue the entire private sector and the nation as a whole from the incompetence of the bankers.  The private sector was bailed out by the despised public sector!  And by Socialism at that! 

If the private sector has failed all governments so badly, but particularly the Tory governments of their own mates, including the blessed Margaret, then no wonder we have no economic growth. 

Timescales is a fourth issue that we do not recognise. My solutions to these problems, which include the redeployment of large numbers of workers, will take 20 years or so. They are outlined in later essays in this Blog.  They are not quick fixes.  Starmer has been in effective power for 18 months or so and has not produced a quick fix.  Why not?  What’s he been doing?  Pussy-footing around?  Surely he’s not been knocked of course by Trump or Putin?  Surely he’s not put too much money into climate change?  What we want is transformation, hitting the ground running. We want quick results, not ones that will only benefit our children. We’re in it for the short term not the long term. The long term? That’s pie in the sky when you die; even pork pie in the sky when pigs will fly. 

Sadly we need a bit of grim determination. We have a hard grind, not a quick fix, before us.  We’ll never get transformation in the twinkling of an eye, even with the end and benefit of the last Trump. And we have some really big real problems to sort.  

So why move the prime minister off his deckchair and shuffle and refill the rest of the deckchairs, when it will solve nothing?  Why not rather encourage him with a Pims, and shade him a bit from the sun? 

Sadly, we’ve been stupid again. 

Philip Morgan Winchester 10 May 2026

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