The centrist myth of ‘ungovernable’ Britain

Times columnist Matthew Syed last week bemoaned what he described as the ‘hysteria’ surrounding calls to replace UK prime minister Keir Starmer. According to Syed, Britain has entered an era of permanent leadership speculation in which no prime minister, whether Labour, Conservative or Reform, will ever be secure for long. He concluded with the dire warning that ‘Britain is becoming ungovernable’.

Syed is far from alone in this diagnosis. A growing number of centrist commentators now argue that Britain has entered an age of chronic political instability in which governments can no longer sustain authority or maintain public trust. They have portrayed Britain – and Western democracies more broadly – as increasingly fragmented, volatile and difficult to govern.

Starmer’s trajectory in government has hardly helped this mood of elite despair. He entered Downing Street with a huge majority and the promise that, after years of Tory psychodrama, the ‘adults’ were back in charge. Barely two years later, his popularity has collapsed, and the knives are out in the Labour Party. As of this week, more than 90 of 402 Labour MPs have called on Starmer to resign. A leadership contest appears to be imminent.

Among centrist commentators and their social-media fellow travellers alike, one increasingly hears nostalgia for the supposedly steadier age in which Britain expected two or three prime ministers a decade, not six (and counting). To the centrists, this proves Britain has become impossible to govern – a nation of capricious ingrates forever turning on whoever occupies No10.

But perhaps voters are not so irrational. Perhaps they simply do not wish to be governed in the way that Starmer and his Tory predecessors have been governing. Yet when the public complains about policy and implementation, centrists conclude not that the government has failed, but that the public itself is the problem.

Governing with a reasonable level of public consent need not be this tricky. Governments do not operate in total darkness. Polls, elections and public reactions provide fairly clear signals about what voters want.

A government genuinely interested in democratic legitimacy might try listening. Yet modern governments increasingly campaign on what they think the public wants to hear, only to govern as though the electorate had voted for something else entirely. They then react with bafflement when support collapses.

Immigration is the clearest example. For years, voters have consistently said they want lower levels of immigration. For years, politicians have promised to deliver exactly that. David Cameron promised to bring net migration down. Theresa May promised it, too. Boris Johnson rode to power presenting himself as the man to deliver Brexit and who finally understood the electorate’s desire for border control.

Yet, once in office, all three presided over soaring numbers of legal and illegal immigration. Johnson was the most spectacular case. Having styled himself as the tribune of popular frustration with mass immigration, he went on to oversee an influx of foreigners so unprecedented they now bear his name – the ‘Boriswave’.

Starmer’s own pledge to ‘smash the gangs’ has followed the same pattern. There have been headline-grabbing raids, press conferences and operational announcements, yet the broader picture remains one of record crossings and continued public frustration. All of this has unfolded amid a steady stream of reports about serious sexual crimes committed by illegal migrants, deepening the sense that the government is failing to protect the public.

On this issue and many others, voters are not issuing incomprehensible demands. They want lower immigration, affordable energy, safer streets, functioning services and economic stability. These are hardly exotic requests. Yet successive governments have dismissed demands for them as mere ‘populism’.

The very people complaining that Britain has become ‘ungovernable’ are the same people who have spent decades refusing to govern in accordance with the public’s clearly expressed wishes. Presenting themselves as sober managerial technocrats, they increasingly come across as a caste of haughty administrators unwilling to alter course, no matter how loudly voters object.

Any serious disagreement is treated as evidence that the public has been misled, radicalised or insufficiently educated. Politics ceases to be representative and becomes a series of attempts to impose the correct attitudes on hoi polloi.

The complaint that Britain has become ‘ungovernable’ recalls Bertolt Brecht’s famous satirical line that, rather than changing the government, it might be easier to dissolve the people and elect another. Democracy requires our leaders to adapt themselves to public priorities, not the other way around.

Centrists work from the opposite assumption. The policy framework is treated as settled and largely beyond democratic challenge, while the public is expected to regulate itself accordingly. When voters refuse to comply, their demands are treated not as legitimate democratic claims, but as evidence that democracy itself is malfunctioning.

Britain is not ungovernable. Britons are perfectly willing to support governments they believe are acting in their interests and responding to their concerns. ‘Ungovernable’ is shorthand for the death of the old centrist assumption that politicians can indefinitely ignore public priorities.

When voters reject this arrangement, centrist commentators diagnose a crisis of democracy. In fact, democracy is the one thing the public is still trying to assert.

James Martin Charlton is an English playwright and director. Follow him on X @jmc_fire.