The resignation of Sir Keir Starmer as British Prime Minister is the latest political soap opera drama that the UK has served up to the world in the ten years since Brexit. However, what is really going on in the UK has deeper implications than mere political drama, and shows a disturbing pattern right across the Western World.
Starmer is the fifth prime minister since Brexit, or the sixth if one includes David Cameron who resigned immediately after the referendum. This is an exceptional period of instability in British governance, utterly without precedent. The office of British Prime Minister, eminently grand and stable since the eighteenth century, has become a mere transitory position permanently at the mercy of opinion polls, angry backbenchers and a truly vicious 24/7 media which thrives on political bloodshed and cares about little else. One is reminded of the chaotic Italian premiership of the mid and late 20th century, or the French Third Republic with its dozens of prime ministers in the years 1870 to 1940. But this is something that historically the British people are not used to at all.
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