Westminster and farce: is the UK an ungovernable country?

LondonBritish politics has been advancing for decades like a Shakespearean comedy of errors: the characters change, but the pattern repeats. Long before Brexit, which will be a decade next month, Westminster was already chaining together cycles of confusion, miscalculated maneuvers, and governments trapped in their own mistakes. From 1974 –with two general elections, the fall of the conservative government, the winter of discontent, and the unions on war footing–, to the parliaments without an absolute majority in the 21st century, passing through the illegal suspension of Parliament in 2019, the British system has shown a recurring fragility that contrasts with an image of impeccable solidity.

As political scientist Nick Dickinson of the University of Exeter reminds ARA, "before the Brexit referendum, six of the fourteen prime ministers since 1945 came to Downing Street by replacing their predecessor and not after an election." In recent days, this infection has spread again through the so-called Westminster bubble. The patient is now the Labour Party, threatened by Nigel Farage's far-right, which last week swept it in the English local elections and the national elections in Scotland and Wales.

The party faces an existential crisis, and more than ninety Labour MPs have called for the head of the premier, Keir Starmer. All of this has recalled the endless fights of the Conservatives between 2016 and 2022, when the famous black door of Number 10 Downing Street opened and closed with surprising ease.

The new revolt could end with Starmer's slow-motion fall, at the hands of his own party members. He would be the seventh prime minister in a decade. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss (Conservatives) suffered it firsthand. David Cameron resigned following the defeat in the Brexit referendum (2016), and Rishi Sunak lost the July 2024 elections, when Labour won with a much more than comfortable majority. It hasn't even been two years since then, but Starmer is already condemned.

A 'premier' on life support

Is the United Kingdom ungovernable, then? In a speech with which he intended to relaunch his leadership, the still premier said on Monday that he was not. But the truth is that the man is living on artificial respiration, while he waits for the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to be able to return to Parliament in the coming weeks. If he wins a very difficult by-election in a territory within his city's metropolitan area where the Reform Party is replacing Labour, Burnham will launch a hostile takeover for the keys to Downing Street. In the best-case scenario, the feeling of instability will continue for the next two or three months.

This is the conjunctural situation. There is a structural one with different factors. Tom Caygill, also a political scientist and professor at Nottingham Trent University, in the East Midlands, discusses it in a telephone conversation with this correspondent: "The economy has not grown much since Brexit, and wages and living standards have stagnated for more than a decade. The population loses patience quickly and governments lose support very rapidly. Citizens are particularly irritated by domestic issues: the cost of living, public services, immigration."

Nick Dickinson agrees in highlighting that "the British economic model has been broken for almost two decades." And he adds: "All governments have had to face the problem of very limited public spending, which restricts the capacity to undertake large projects. It is the main long-term problem after immigration." Immigration, paradoxically, soared in the wake of Brexit when Nigel Farage, and the Conservatives who supported him, assured that it would decrease. It ended up costing the Tories, but not Farage. Not by a long shot. And he exploits the vein while pointing fingers of blame everywhere.

Here comes another element of 21st-century politics: the influence of social networks, which has led to what Rory Stewart, former minister of Theresa May –very popular for his podcast The rest is politics, and author, among others, of the book Politics on the edge–, defines as “leaderships built on virality rather than competence”. Networks, he argues, have destroyed the traditional incentive system of parliamentary politics in exchange for the “immediate reward for outrage, the disappearance of nuance, and the constant pressure to react”. The impact is even greater in the United Kingdom, says Dickinson, who states that the country is often a “target” for Elon Musk and his platform X. “The fact of sharing a language with the United States makes it much easier for far-right narratives to cross from one country to another”.

Some political actors use digital mobilization better than others. “The best thing many politicians could do is step back a bit, because networks do not represent all of society. They often end up overreacting to very loud campaigns or criticisms that do not reflect general opinion,” says Tom Caygill in turn, who also recalls the idea that “social networks have completely changed the rhythm of politics and information, but many governments continue to act with an analog mindset in a fully digital environment”.

A palace collapsing

One of the leading intellectuals of the Reform Party, the sociologist and former professor at the University of Manchester Matt Goodwin, uses them in an inflammatory way. But for this former candidate of Farage's party for the Commons in one of the districts of the great northern city, "the networks do not fuel the problem, but rather reveal it." The statement may be debatable. His most recent book is Suicide of a nation. Immigration, islam, identity.

The thesis, very briefly summarized, is the Great Replacement. According to him, the United Kingdom is experiencing a crisis caused by mass immigration, multiculturalism, and the loss of a shared national identity. Goodwin argues that the demographic increase of communities of immigrant origin —especially Muslim ones— alters the British cultural and political balance. He never says anything about wealth redistribution and progressive tax reform. Quite the opposite: taxes should be lowered.

The fake news, populism, and the supposed easy solutions, which never arrive, also contribute to the discrediting of politics and the distancing of citizens from their representatives. Particularly in Westminster, there is another structural problem surrounding the figure of the prime minister. "The major ministries have hundreds or thousands of civil servants, while Downing Street operates with a very small team, between 50 and 80 people," explains Tom Caygill. From Number 10 Downing Street, one cannot go very far. On the contrary, public opinion is in a great hurry. And as in the Mensa of "Much Ado About Nothing", rumors and maneuvers spread even faster. The result is that an institutional architecture from the 20th or even the 19th century does not fit into the world of the 21st century.

Perhaps the most visual metaphor for the situation is the degradation of the Palace of Westminster. Seen from the outside, it is impressive. When you walk through its corridors, the cracks that betray the ruin are seen with incredulous eyes. And yet, the 650 MPs of the House of Commons continue to postpone the budgetary decision on its urgent reform because it will have an astronomical cost and no one dares to take the step: it would lead to a lot of demagoguery.

But any day now the palace will fall on the heads of Conservatives and Labour. Now, the emergency architect is called Andy Burnham. The details of his plans are yet to be known. Despite everything, many have already assumed that he will be able to reconcile the interests of those who supported Brexit and oppose immigration with those who voted in favor of the EU and live in cities where English is not the only language spoken. If it does not go ahead, by 2029 or sooner Nigel Farage will have finished demolishing Westminster. And the comedy will turn into a great tragedy.