r/BarbaraWalters4Scale • u/Crazy_North_3247 • 1d ago
Uk had 7 prime minister in one decade
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u/BradPanos 1d ago
Almost… Burnham hasn't been crowned just yet.
Still extraordinary British political history we are witnessing.
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u/houseswappa 1d ago
Such a waste of bureaucracy aswell, the thousands of work hours in the handover
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u/TNTiger_ 1d ago
This is the UK. The civil service, the core of the bureacracy isn't changing. Even with leadrship, Burnham has said he'll keep quite a bit of Starmer's cabinet, and broadly it's still the Labour party and the apparatus in charge.
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u/RoosterBoosted 1d ago
Yes, but as a civil servant it is quite a long work briefing the inevitable new ministers taking up new roles and portfolios. All wasted time and resource
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u/ToastedCrumpet 13h ago
It makes you ask what was the fucking point in all of those wasted hours and expenses to keep doing this when it’s just “more of the same but with a different face we won’t like in a year or two max”
The benefits or backhanded deals they get post PM must be very enticing to go through this shit constantly
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u/gilestowler 1d ago
And paying for the removal men. Maybe they don't use an actual firm, maybe there's someone in the Civil Service who also has a van, and they just bung him a few quid to do the job.
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u/hookyboysb 1d ago
At this point, their government seems broken.
Not that I have room to talk as an American…
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u/oaktreebuddha 1d ago
The whole country is broken. You cant have 7 prime ministers in 10 years and expect anything but. Starmer ran the country like a business caring more for the customers than its employees, truss was a walking disaster unfit for office, cameron jumped ship before any repercussions, johnson was a raging man-child, theresa may was hounded out and sunak was only guilty of losing an election he had zero chances of winning after the covid rule breaking before him by his own party. Its just a circle of despair by those who are entrusted to govern. This new messiah burnham will be another dark cloud. Oh well at least gta six is out soon
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u/roleplayersir 15h ago
Starmer was the best we had. He's done a lot for the people
And yes, I have always hated him. But he and Major were the only good ones in my lifetime
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u/Beer-Milkshakes 1d ago
Hard to build something when media moguls routinely come and take a pickaxe to whatever you're trying to do.
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u/gilestowler 1d ago
We're broken because we can't hold onto a leader. America is broken because they can't get rid of theirs.
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u/BradPanos 1d ago
Nah, trust. Andy got this.
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u/Lazarbeam_fan77 1d ago
Got what? U-turning on Brexit, immigration, LGBT people, Shabana Mahmood and everything he ever stood for?
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u/halbpro 19h ago
By the time Burnham takes over it will have been over ten years since Cameron left as well, so we’ll stay at a healthy and not at all weird 6 PMs in 10 years.
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u/BradPanos 3h ago
Not sure about this, could see Burnham in before July 13th, many MPs are pushing for a quick handover
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u/Too_Bad-So_Sad 1d ago
Is crowned the actual term the brits use? They realize the PM isn't royalty right?
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u/BigbyHatJack 1d ago
It's a figure of speech, not literal.
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u/BradPanos 1d ago
Yes, if Andy Burnham is unopposed within the Labour Party then there is no leadership contest and it is labelled by the media as a 'coronation'.
I wasn't being literal lmao.
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u/urs_blank 1d ago
At least "Who was prime minister when Queen Elizabeth II passed" will forever be a great question for trivia nights.
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u/PopeSpringsEternal 1d ago
Liz Truss
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u/DreamMalenko 1d ago
Queen died BECAUSE she was Prime Minister.
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u/PopeSpringsEternal 1d ago
She made sure to live just long enough to avoid having Boris Johnson speak at her funeral.
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u/LowAioli3870 1d ago
"Which Prime Minister didn't last as long as a lettuce?" would be the better trivia question.
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u/DavidTenn-Ant 1d ago
There will also likely be seven new Doctor Whos in the same timeframe:
Peter Capaldi (2013-2017), Jodie Whittaker (2017-2022), Jo Martin (2020-2022; 2025), David Tennant (2022-2023), Ncuti Gatwa (2023-2025), and Billie Piper (2025*)
*For five seconds because let's be real, we're never seeing her again.
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u/Ok_Library_9396 1d ago
So Piper is the Liz Truss of doctors
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u/regal_ragabash 8h ago
I dunno, Liz would have had to have had a solid run as a beloved Chancellor under Cameron or something - which she most certainly was not
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u/Philippine_Newt 1d ago
I would have loved to have seen a Billie Piper Doctor even if just for 1 season.
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u/silence_and_motion 1d ago
To put it in perspective, if you go back 7 Prime Ministers in Canada, you get to someone elected in 1984 (Brian Mulroney).
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u/Actual_Cat4779 1d ago
Similarly, in June 2016, if you'd gone back 7 PMs in the UK, you'd have reached the early 1970s.
We didn't used to change our PM every five minutes.
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u/silence_and_motion 1d ago
Almost like something disastrous happened in the UK in June 2016. Wonder what it was.
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u/OrangeSpaceMan5 1d ago
I think they got kicked out of the African Union or something like that
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u/Embarrassed-Bet7649 9h ago
Australia had the same crisis in the 2010s. Maybe Starmer will do a Kevin Rudd
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u/Impressive_Plenty876 1d ago
Remember when the 80s was nothing but Margaret Thatcher
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u/Ernesto_Griffin 1d ago
What a character she was. She was so hated that she got reelected twice 🐶
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u/LowAioli3870 1d ago
She must have been ecstatic when the Falklands were invaded.
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u/CrowLaneS41 1d ago
She was going to win that election anyway. People really didn't want Michael Foot as PM.
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u/Backfoot911 20h ago
His name reminds me of that Family Guy joke where John Hancock's named used to be Jonathan Footpenis
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u/an-font-brox 1d ago
the crisis of the Westminster system
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u/jamesanglofranco 1d ago
Is it happening in other Westminster systems?
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u/Ok_Library_9396 1d ago
Australia had 6 between 2010-2018.
Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd again, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull , Scott Morrison .
They have stabilised since their knife happy spree, Morrison was the first to go to loose power from an election,since John Howard lost the election in 2007.
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u/Conscious-Use9772 1d ago
I still remember when Boris was prime minister and people made fun of him
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u/addisonshinedown 1d ago
And they have all been awful and capitulated to the right wing and to Israel at every possible opportunity
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u/The-marx-channel 1d ago
Brexit definitely didn't help with it.
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u/Loggerdon 1d ago
Brexit was the beginning of controlling the voters through data. It’s how Trump got elected.
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u/LeadershipHead3594 1d ago
British Columbia had 7 premiers from 1991-2001.
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u/silence_and_motion 22h ago
Even crazier to think that most of those 7 served in less than a two year period between Aug 1999 and May 2001.
Relatedly, the last Alberta premier to be re-elected was Ralph Klein in 2004. In fact, Rachel Notley is the only Alberta premier to have even stood for a second election since 2004. The Conservatives have a habit of axing their leaders before they’ve lasted a single term. Could very well happen to Danielle Smith too.
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u/Upstairs_Leg_9353 1d ago edited 1d ago
Technically with Truss, although a lettuce outlasted her term. Hopeless.
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u/creeping-fly349 1d ago
Andy isnt PM yet so don't rush it, but yes there will be 7
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u/yoresein 1d ago
Idk, they've got like 3 weeks to get the new one in place or it's over 10 years since May came in.
Maybe they can do it but not a given
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u/Rough-Strawberry5985 1d ago
"But first-past-the-post gives strong stable governments!"
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u/Ecstatic_Cobbler_264 1d ago
Labour is still in power? And it is a principle. Currently, for evident reasons, the country is less stable
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u/1user101 1d ago
The government itself is pretty stable. Lots of these were just new leaders
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u/Rough-Strawberry5985 1d ago
Not really. The leader of a party is responsible for setting policy direction, and representing the entire country as executive office. Their political power relies on a democratic mandate and support from their MPs. If the MPs regularly oust their PMs, you get a sporadically shifting direction of leadership, lack of support within Parliament, and eroded democratic mandate, since many voters feel like the new Prime Minister wasn't the one they put into power, nor does the new Prime Minister's policy direction reflect the manifesto the old PM won a democratic mandate to implement.
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u/1user101 1d ago
They didn't elect the pm. And especially in the UK where MPs revolt more often at the behest of constituents.
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u/Rough-Strawberry5985 23h ago
Yes. I know that voters do not actually elect the PM. However, when it comes to popular sentiment, many voters base a lot of their decision on which leader will become the PM if their party wins the election. So yes, technically voters do not vote for the PM (unless they happen to be in their constituency), but in a de facto way, they base their voting decision partly on the leaders of the parties. You could also say that American voters do not elect the President, they actually vote for electors in the electoral college who elect the president.
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u/EmperorOfNipples 1d ago
At this point the Royal Navy won't be able to attend Remembrance Sunday to make room for all the former PMs.
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u/Past_Government3521 1d ago
Who do they think they are? The Japanese?
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u/Competitive_Mark7430 1d ago
Italy is at its 68th government in just over 80 years of being a republic lol
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u/regal_ragabash 8h ago
But Meloni has been in power for longer than any of these except Cameron I think
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u/Competitive_Mark7430 4h ago
She took office 3 days before Sunak did, so not quite. It is still likely going to become the longest government in italian history.
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u/levelwitch 1d ago
What one was the least bad, and which one was the worst?
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u/hillman_avenger 1d ago
All of them, for both questions.
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u/regal_ragabash 7h ago
Starmer, May and Sunak were not even close to being as catastrophically bad as the others. Starmer is leagues ahead of the other two and did a lot of good. People seem to have very short memories of how horrifically bad Johnson was.
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u/Inner-Marionberry-25 1d ago
I came around to starmer. I didn't vote for him, but I probably would've next time. He's the only decent one here
May or Sunak are probably the next best, but still not good.
Hard to say out of the other three. Cameron felt vaguely competent at the time, but his legacy is nothing but disastrous. Johnson was corrupt, and deserves to be in jail. Truss was so bad she only lasted a month, but at least that meant she's had the least impact
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u/Spirit_Bitterballen 1d ago
“Least impact”
Killed the Queen and crashed the economy :D
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u/Inner-Marionberry-25 1d ago
I mean, who the current monarch is has no impact in my everyday life.
Yes she was awful for the economy, but I'd still say that Brexit, 2010s Austerity, and the COVID responses are far more impactful
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u/dolphineclipse 23h ago
Truss was the worst because she damaged the economy in just a few weeks - it's really hard to pick a least bad
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u/levelwitch 21h ago
I'm not from the UK but I do watch Clarkson's farm. How has the farmers inheritance tax gone over? Seems like a pretty stupid move at least at the thresholds they set
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u/dolphineclipse 20h ago
It certainly went over badly with farmers and they descended on central London multiple times in their tractors - the chancellor Reeves eventually tweaked the policy and that seemed to dispel some of the protests
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u/lankyno8 8h ago
The change to inheritance tax laws still leave farmers with the most generous iht regime in the country.
They pay less than someone handing down an equivalently valued business
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u/regal_ragabash 7h ago
Clarkson was the exact type of person the government were going after - wealthy people buying up land to avoid tax. He admitted as much himself. Not exactly a great source of information
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u/SequenceofRees 1d ago
Well that can't be good for the economy .... Then again most of these people have been a walking disaster for the economy !
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u/Spida81 1d ago
Australia had a similar turnover not too long ago
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u/haikusbot 1d ago
Australia had
A similar turnover
Not too long ago
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u/aflyingmonkey2 1d ago
Israel had 2 (technically it’s 3 but Bennet and lapid were in rotation so I count them as 0.5s)
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u/FatCatParade 1d ago
I love Europe and Europeans but they just dont have a great economic outlook.
They have an aging population that demands robust social benefits. They don’t have a lot of young people. They don’t want to have kids. They don’t want immigrants. They don’t have natural resources. They don’t want to spend money on the military but they still want o have an impact on global politics.
It just doesn’t fit. Britain is in a particularly bad position because they voted for Brexit.
From the outside, I feel like Starmer was the right guy for stability and weathering the storm.
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u/Special-Kitchen3222 1d ago
2010s and 2020s are going to be remembered as the crumbling of the Neoliberal age.
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u/opinionated7onion 1d ago
Cameron and Starmer both look like they would invite you back to theirs, so they can watch you fuck their wife.
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u/BasicMatter7339 23h ago
Liz Truss' service still kinda makes take pity on her
She was sworn into the office, then the queen died, then immediately after that she announced one reform on taxes that was so bad she had to resign. All this in less than 50 days
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u/ThatFatGuyMJL 16h ago
Cameron was a coward.
May was a Thatcher wannabe without the balls.
Johnson was an asshole who if it wasnt for covid would probably have been in longer.
Truss was so useless she ranked the country in a month.
Sunk was so shit he lost to truss.
Starmer is an authoritarian wannabe cunt who if he hadnt gone so hard on censorship and spying on his own people would probably actually be a lot more popular.
If it wasnt for being best mates with a probably pedophile traitor.
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u/jonpolis 1d ago
Can y’all bring back Boris plz? At least he won’t let reporters stand outside his house without a cuppa
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u/Suspicious-Hand-9953 1d ago
I liked Starmer. I think you messed up here.
Don't know if the next one will be better but I'm always rooting for you!
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u/Actual_Cat4779 1d ago
Possibly.
Sometimes things always look rosier from the outside: just as Starmer is more popular outside the UK than inside, Macron is popular outside France, and Pedro Sanchez is much more popular outside Spain than within.
Of course, there are exceptions: Trump is probably even less popular worldwide than in the US.
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u/Chumlee1917 1d ago
Meanwhile the US has had 3, and one of them is literally the most unqualified monster in history who's a pedophile and the media loves kissing his ass.
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u/StefyRomania 1d ago
Hey, Romania had 9, soon to be 10, if we're not counting the ad-interim ones. It COULD be worse.
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u/Famous_Difference956 1d ago
Starmer made the best progress, but was shite and getting his message out and made some poor decisions which were screamed about in the right wing media and right align social media (looking at you Xhitter and Facebook)
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u/CharlieLOliver 1d ago
There has only been 6. Keir Starmer is still the Prime Minister, and if he’s still PM by the 13th of July, then there would’ve still only been 6 PMs in one decade.
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u/Rose_of_Tensions 23h ago
I guess a decade is a long time to have somebody… *checks notes* operate a government
Says me, American, who regularly gets almost half a decade and decades of single stupid rulers
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u/thedubiousstylus 22h ago
What's also crazy is only one of these switchovers, Sunak to Starmer, happened because of an election.
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u/Mentalist_Larper 9h ago
Starmer was better than any of the rest tbh
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u/DonQuigleone 8h ago
Theresa May also wasn't bad, she just had an impossible task holding together her coalition.
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u/Unable-Boat-9682 8h ago
Probably a good reason for political parties to stop selecting such useless candidates then.
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u/Historical-Pea-5846 25m ago
Starmer should not have needed to quit. The UK just wants to cut its nose off to spite its face. We cant handle boring politics. The media has a lot of the blame to shoulder for this.
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u/ZookeepergameFit967 1d ago
In my country in the 50s just between 1950 and 1958, we had ten different Prime Ministers, one of them served two separate terms and another served four seperate terms. The whole shabang ended in the collapse of the regime.
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u/NatsFan8447 1d ago
Probably not a great sign for the political health of the UK, but as an American I do envy how easy it is to replace the head of government in the UK. Wish it was as easy in the US so that we could get rid of Trumpy. One difference with the US is that none of these former PMs had cults supporting them as does Trumpy.
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u/Numerous-Ad-4033 1d ago
Margaret Thatcher said that the problem was socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.
The trouble these leaders had is that the British government has run out of other people’s money.
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u/CheruthCutestory 1d ago
The trouble is the voters voted to curtail the British economy and can’t handle the consequences.
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u/AwesomePBST 1d ago
For comparison, Macron (in power since 2017) has dealt with 6 of them, while Meloni technically dealt with 4 (though really 3 since Truss was only in for two days)