When Prime Minister Keir Starmer led the Labour Party to victory in Britain’s last general election, in 2024, he campaigned on a platform of stability, selling his party as the antidote to years of chaos under a succession of Conservative prime ministers.
Now, Labour’s promise of steady governance seems under threat, as Mr. Starmer battles calls for his resignation from his own party after it suffered heavy losses in local elections last week.
Critics of Mr. Starmer argue that his deep unpopularity makes a new leader necessary if Labour is to stand a chance in the next general election, which must be held by 2029. But some of his allies have pointed to the cumulative damage done to the country by the cycling through of prime ministers under the Conservatives, and warned Labour to be cautious about following suit.
“Britain appears to have become addicted to political drama in relation to its prime ministers,” said Tony Travers, a professor of politics at the London School of Economics. He argued that the fall in Britain’s economic growth rate after the 2008 financial crisis, compounded by the impacts of Brexit, had “made government difficult to the point of impossibility.”
Parliamentary systems, compared to presidential ones, make changing leaders easy, said Mr. Travers, but changing leadership doesn’t change the fundamental challenges facing Britain. They include fragile public services that are still struggling after years of underinvestment and the inflationary impact of the Iran war. Many lawmakers in the Labour Party are wary of potentially starting their own era of rapid-fire leadership changes.
Five Conservative Party leaders led Britain from 2016 to 2024. Here’s how they came to 10 Downing Street — and left it.
David Cameron, brought low by Brexit
David Cameron served as prime minister from 2010 to 2016, during which time he called for the Brexit referendum. He hoped to win a mandate from voters for Britain to stay in the European Union and to end division in the Conservative Party over the issue.
That backfired disastrously when a slim majority of Britons voted to leave.
The day after the vote, Mr. Cameron stood in front of 10 Downing Street and announced his resignation, saying that the country deserved a leader committed to carrying out the will of the people. He initially said he would stay in the post for three months to ensure stability, but after Theresa May won the Conservative Party leadership contest, she was appointed prime minister on July 13, 2016.
Theresa May, also felled by Brexit
Ms. May, formerly home secretary in Mr. Cameron’s government, was the country’s second female prime minister, after Margaret Thatcher. She immediately took up the difficult task of negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union..
Her time in office was dominated by Brexit. She favored a somewhat softer exit from the European Union, which angered hard-line Euroskeptics in the party, and she failed to secure a deal that her party would support. Brexit was ultimately her undoing, too. Facing a cabinet rebellion, in May 2019 she announced plans to resign.
Boris Johnson, forced to resign over ‘Partygate’
Boris Johnson, the wild-haired and bombastic former London mayor, was elected as the next party leader and took up the post in July 2019. He had campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union and was a prominent critic of Mrs. May’s approach to Brexit. He won power by promising to “take back control” of Britain’s borders.
Mr. Johnson went on to lead the party to a large election victory in 2019. A few months later, the country was plunged into the Covid-19 pandemic. And a series of damaging scandals — including gatherings at Downing Street during a national lockdown which became known as “partygate” — forced him to resign in July 2022.
Liz Truss, undone by unfunded tax cuts
There was no real consensus on who would replace Mr. Johnson, but Liz Truss eventually edged out Rishi Sunak in a leadership contest and became prime minister in September 2022.
Ms. Truss, who was foreign secretary under Mr. Johnson, held the premiership for just six weeks — famously outlasted by a head of lettuce — becoming Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister. During her short time in office, a time that included the death of Queen Elizabeth II, she introduced an unfunded tax-cut plan that plunged the country’s financial markets into chaos.
She tried to backtrack, but it wasn’t enough to undo the lasting political — and economic — damage.
Rishi Sunak, voted out in a general election
Mr. Sunak, a former chancellor of the Exchequer, swiftly took up the helm, unopposed in the party’s leadership contest after Ms. Truss’s downfall. In October 2022, he became the first British prime minister of Indian heritage.
The dramas of his immediate predecessors haunted his tenure, and when he called a general election in 2024, his party suffered stunning losses. He spoke to the country in front of Downing Street, saying, “I am sorry. I have given this job my all. But you have sent a clear signal that the government of the United Kingdom must change. And yours is the only judgment that matters.”
Michael D. Shear contributed reporting.
