The prime ministers replace each other in an absurd theater
For exactly ten years ago, on June 23, 2016, the British voted to leave the EU. Before the vote warned David Cameron’s government that a withdrawal would mean an “immediate and extensive shock”. He wasn’t wrong. The next day Cameron resigned and since then British prime ministers have succeeded each other in an increasingly absurd political theater.
However, Brexit was only a symptom of a longer-term British decline. Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal policies at the fall of the empire meant a radical change: “Society does not exist,” she said as she sold off society’s common assets to the highest bidder.
Even if it took several years of grueling negotiations before UK actually left the Union in 2020, and although the corona pandemic and energy crises have confused the consequences of Brexit, economists agreed: The UK economy is smaller than it likely would have been without Brexit. Today, a majority of Britons believe that leaving the EU was one mistake.
Apparently the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnhamoccupy 10 Downing Street in a couple of weeks. If so, he will be Britain’s seventh prime minister since the ten-year-old Brexit vote. The last British Prime Minister to complete his full term was Tony Blair – twenty years ago.
Brexit was not just an exit. It became a machine to grind down governments. Instead of the promised “taking back control”, Brexit led to permanent instability.
At first could the left sit back and watch as the conservative Tories imploded. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak – the political turmoil had a distinct blue color. Keir Starmerwho won the general election for Labor in 2024, claimed to be the (bright) red answer to this farce. But barely two years after Starmer was voted in, he has been pushed out – by his own party.
Starmer chose tactics over strategy, short-term battles over a sustainable vision. He began by waging a crusade against the former socialist Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn whose followers he accused of anti-Semitism.
Starmer’s promise in 2024 was change, but in his two years in power he has rather managed decay, with the appearance of a boring bureaucrat. But his boredom did not become solid but emptiness. His stance on the Gaza war will undoubtedly tarnish his legacy: In a notorious statement, he said that Israel “had the right to” cut off Gaza’s access to water and fuel.
It’s enticing to blame Brexit for Britain’s calamity, but it’s not that simple. The migration-related culture wars that partly prompted the withdrawal predate Brexit and will persist. Britain’s identity crisis since the country lost its empire is still ongoing, and there will be racially politicizing demagogues who Nigel Farage always to exploit.
But Britain suffers from a deeper disease. Over the last decade, the economy has stagnated while the population has become older, sicker and less productive. Every Prime Minister, regardless of affiliation, has to deal with the fact that more than half of public spending now goes to funding health care, welfare and the national debt.
For several decades, the British documentary filmmaker has Adam Curtis tried to answer the question “how the hell did it all go?” His latest movie Shifty: Living in Britain at the End of the Twentieth Century” (2025) describes Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal revolution as the beginning of the decline. Thatcher wiped out British industry and converted housing from family homes to financial assets.
The incoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, grew up in the former industrial city of Liverpool, which was hit hard by Thatcher’s sell-out. He inherits not just a post-Brexit Britain but a Britain still seeking its identity in the shadow of empire.
The question is not whether Burnham can rule Britain. The question is whether Britain still allows itself to be governed.
Edgar Mannheimer is a freelance journalist and culture writer with a focus on the Middle East.
