Into the Bermuda Triangle: How Prime Ministers Fall

ABSTRACT

Eleven years after David Cameron promised ‘stability and strong government’; nine years after Theresa May pledged ‘strong and stable leadership’; and two years after Keir Starmer vowed to ‘stop the chaos’, the UK has its seventh prime minister in a decade. Most analyses emphasise either the failings of individual leaders, the challenges confronting modern governments or the erosion of state‐capacity and party loyalties. Yet such accounts are quite present‐centred: they rarely ask whether the challenges facing government today are worse than in previous eras, nor do they pay much attention to earlier periods of churn. This article explores periods of volatility across two centuries, identifying a series of common pressures: the detonation of an explosive political question; periods of financial strain and public debt; disruptive forms of media; and party succession‐crises. It notes that such periods can also be creative, and warns against attempts to rebuild an old political settlement.