Instability in British politics has become the norm, and on the tenth anniversary of Brexit this has never been clearer.
Keir Starmer announced his resignation as Prime Minister and Labour leader, less than two years after his party’s landslide general election victory which brought them back to power after almost 15 years. His successor will become the UK’s seventh Prime Minister since the Brexit referendum.
Once a milestone framed as the moment of taking back control, Brexit is now understood as the beginning of a prolonged period of political instability.
Prime ministers since have come and gone in quick succession, and the structures that once underpinned predictable transfers of power between two parties have become less certain. The result is a political environment defined by churn rather than continuity, where leadership change is constant.
Starmer entered office promising stability after chaotic change among five Conservatives prime ministers since the referendum. With a large majority, Starmer faced problems of his own: unrealistic tax promises during the election campaign, and an inability to make tough political choices.
His resignation reflects a broader pattern rather than a singular failure. The pressures that pushed him out – weak growth, cost of living concerns, internal party unrest and a fragmented political landscape – are the same forces that put his party in power in 2024, and the same ones that have shaped British politics since the referendum.
In trying to replicate Mark Carney’s rescue of the Canadian Liberal Party, the answer for the Labour Party is outgoing mayor of Great Manchester, Andy Burnham, who returned to Westminster as an MP this week. Dubbed the “King of the North”, and the most popular Labour party figure in the UK, according to polling, Burnham’s style is more direct and more focused on living costs, public services, and the role of towns and cities outside London.
Burnham may offer Labour a clearer voice, but he does not escape the central problem. He will enter Downing Street with Labour’s parliamentary majority, but not with a personal mandate from the electorate. That distinction matters. The rapid movement under Starmer from landslide to resignation, and now to a likely Burnham premiership, reinforces the fact that British politics is being reshaped in disorder, between elections, as much as through them.
That is where Reform UK becomes central to the story. Burnham’s return to Westminster is being treated inside Labour as a way to stop Nigel Farage’s advance, but it also shows how far the old party system has been unsettled. Labour is not simply choosing a new leader. It is trying to find a way to hold together voters who want economic security, stronger public services, tighter immigration controls, closer European ties and a sharper break from Westminster caution. Those demands do not all point in the same direction.
Tens years on, Brexit is still a dividing line that poses a major challenge to Burnham as he attempts to lead the party and the country; it continues to shape economic conditions, political identities and the expectation placed on government. What was once a political project has evolved into an enduring context, one that constrains fiscal choices, complicates trade-offs, and continues to influence public sentiment.
For Ireland, Burnham is familiarity at a moment of uncertainty. He has consistently positioned himself as more open to engagement with Europe, and his emphasis on regional development and cross-border economic ties aligns more closely with Irish priorities. His stated support for the Good Friday Agreement framework and closer UK–Ireland relations suggest a more collaborative tone, even if structural tensions around Brexit remain.
There is also a personal dimension, with Burnham having long spoken about his Irish heritage, and the wider migration patterns that linked Irish communities to cities such as Liverpool in the late nineteenth century. While symbolic, connecting international politicians to Ireland is an important part of Ireland’s soft power.
Brexit’s deepest effect has not been the departure from the European Union itself, but the way it has changed the terms of government in Britain. It promised control but left successive prime ministers flailing. Trade is harder, fiscal choices are narrower, migration politics are more volatile, and compromise has become harder to achieve. That is why leadership has become so disposable. Each new prime minister arrives promising to impose direction, only to run into the same unresolved contradictions. Burnham may be a stronger political communicator than Starmer, but he would still inherit a system where authority is easier to claim than to exercise.
