{"id":243,"date":"2026-04-24T14:55:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/prime-ministers-have-always-faced-political-scandals-so-why-cant-they-weather-them-now\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T14:55:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T14:55:50","slug":"prime-ministers-have-always-faced-political-scandals-so-why-cant-they-weather-them-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/prime-ministers-have-always-faced-political-scandals-so-why-cant-they-weather-them-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Prime ministers have always faced political scandals \u2013 so why can\u2019t they weather them now?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span> Left to right: Altopix, Mark Reinstein, 360b, Frederick Legrand\/Shutterstock<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

UK prime ministers today are about as secure in their jobs as football managers. In the nearly three decades between 1979 and 2005, Britain had just three prime ministers: Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. From 2005-2015, we again had three: Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. <\/p>\n

But from then on we have had no less than six: Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and now Keir Starmer, currently fighting to retain his job and explaining to parliament why he supported Peter Mandelson for a key ambassadorship.<\/p>\n

Prime ministers usually resign after serious political failures \u2013 from May failing to get a Brexit deal through parliament after losing her working majority, to a series of scandals under Johnson leading to a mass resignation of his ministers. Truss was evicted in record time after her mini-budget, proposing large unfunded tax cuts, crashed the financial markets.<\/p>\n

But prime ministers have always faced problems in the past and survived, so why is it proving fatal to their incumbency now? <\/p>\n

One explanation is that it reflects the increasing fragmentation of the British party system. In the 1987 general election, Labour and the Conservatives took 73% of the total vote. In the 2024 election, they took 57%<\/a>. In particular, when prime ministers can\u2019t get a working majority, something which happened in 2010 and again in 2017, they are quick to be blamed by their supporters when things go wrong. <\/p>\n

Another explanation is that while all prime ministers face failures, the massive shocks to the political system and the economy in quick succession since 2015 are really unusual. The Brexit vote, the COVID pandemic, Russia\u2019s invasion of the Ukraine and now the war in the Middle East, all rank highly on the scale of political crises. <\/p>\n

Arguably, no political leader can cope with such a litany of events, when the public directly feel (and blame them for) the consequences of these shocks such as higher inflation. Coping has been made more difficult for Starmer by having to deal with an irrational and unpredictable American president, whose tariff wars have directly affected the British economy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is also an increasingly large gap between the vote shares and the seat shares in general elections produced by the first-past-the-post system. In the 2024 election, Labour took less than 34% of the vote, but over 63% of the seats in the House of Commons. This means that the party lacks legitimacy in the eyes of many voters who did not support it, resulting in a short honeymoon. <\/p>\n

Again, this makes the leader\u2019s position vulnerable, and their approval ratings more susceptible to a volatile public. Starmer\u2019s favourability<\/a> ratings are currently very negative<\/a>, though not quite as bad as Johnson, Sunak or Truss before they resigned.<\/p>\n

A less-recognised reason for the high PM turnover is evident in data from successive Ipsos monthly polls<\/a> over a nearly 30-year period. <\/p>\n

\n
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From the Labour landslide victory in 1997 up to the end of 2025, satisfaction with both the government and the prime minister have declined, while dissatisfaction has increased. Regardless of their party affiliations, voters are increasingly fed up with the governments and leaders.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the two figures track each other quite closely. But it is interesting that the prime ministerial series is consistently more positive than the government series. It appears that the public are a bit more likely to blame the government of the day for problems than the prime minister. This means that replacing the prime minister does little to change the standing of the governing party. This did make a difference in the past, such as when Major replaced Thatcher as prime minister, but it is unlikely to succeed now<\/a>. At the time of writing, Starmer\u2019s approval is ahead of the government\u2019s \u2013 but not by much.<\/p>\n

Average satisfaction ratings for prime ministers and governments (1997-2015)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The dynamics of decline<\/h2>\n

While there is clear evidence of a decline in the public\u2019s satisfaction with leaders and governments, this decline is not uniform. We can observe a relatively sharp break in the satisfaction ratings for prime ministers by looking at the performance of all eight of them since 1997.<\/p>\n

Blair had the highest average satisfaction ratings over this period, at 44%. In contrast, Brown was caught by the financial crash which started the year he took over as prime minister. Cameron and May did quite well, even though they ended up having to resign for Brexit-related political reasons (being on the losing side of the referendum and failing to get a deal through parliament, respectively). <\/p>\n

Even Johnson\u2019s ratings were not much different from his immediate predecessors, since he was popular at the time of the 2019 general election. His reputation only really soured when the evidence about Partygate and lying to the House of Commons fully emerged in 2022.<\/p>\n

Truss appears to be the turning point, with satisfaction with the prime minister really collapsing after she became leader, even though she was in office for only a month and a half. The longstanding fallout from the economic crisis which her mini-budget provoked has been much discussed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the data suggests that the political fallout from her brief premiership has lasted beyond her resignation. Sunak and now Starmer have subsequently followed in her footsteps with low positive ratings overall. This enduring crisis of leadership in Britain applies both to Conservative and Labour prime ministers. The public appears to have a lower tolerance for political failings \u2013 with a loss of trust<\/a> in politicians generally this is not surprising.<\/p>\n

The cumulative impact of the economic and political shocks to the system, the crumbling of the traditional party system and the repeated failures of recent prime ministers on a scale not seen before may have created a trend. The potential failure of all prime ministers, regardless of their party, is likely to continue until the turmoil created by recent events dies down.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Left to right: Altopix, Mark Reinstein, 360b, Frederick Legrand\/Shutterstock UK prime ministers today are about as secure in their jobs as football managers. In the nearly three decades between 1979 and 2005, Britain had just three prime ministers: Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. From 2005-2015, we again had three: Blair, Gordon Brown and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}