{"id":37379,"date":"2026-05-15T16:39:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T16:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/37379\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T16:39:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T16:39:18","slug":"westminster-and-farce-is-the-united-kingdom-an-ungovernable-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/37379\/","title":{"rendered":"Westminster and farce: is the United Kingdom an ungovernable country?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LondonBritish politics has been advancing for decades like a Shakespearean farce: the characters change, but the pattern repeats. Long before Brexit, As political scientist Nick Dickinson of the University of Exeter reminds us in ARA, &#8220;before the Brexit referendum, six of the first fourteen prime ministers since 1945 came to Downing Street by replacing their predecessor and not after an election.&#8221; In recent days, this infection has spread again through the so-called Westminster bubble. The patient is now the Labour Party, threatened by Nigel Farage&#8217;s far-right, which swept them in English local elections and the national elections in Scotland and Wales last week. <\/p>\n<p>The party faces an existential crisis, and more than ninety Labour MPs have called for the head of the premier, Keir Starmer. All of this has recalled the interminable infighting of the Conservatives between 2016 and 2022, when the famous black door of 10 Downing Street opened and closed with surprising ease.<\/p>\n<p>The new revolt could end with Starmer&#8217;s slow-motion fall, at the hands of his own party members. He would be the seventh prime minister in a decade. Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss (Conservatives) suffered it firsthand. David Cameron resigned following the defeat in the Brexit referendum (2016) and Rishi Sunak lost the July 2024 elections, when Labour won with a much more than comfortable majority. It hasn&#8217;t even been two years since then, but Starmer is already doomed.<\/p>\n<p>    A &#8216;premier&#8217; on life support<\/p>\n<p>Is the United Kingdom ungovernable? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ara.cat\/internacional\/europa\/starmer-reinici-ajornada-rebel-lio-no-avortada_1_5733429.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">In a speech with which he intended to relaunch his leadership<\/a>, the still premier said no on Monday. But the fact is that the man is on life support, while waiting for the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to return to Parliament in the coming weeks. If he wins a very difficult by-election in a territory within his city&#8217;s metropolitan area where the Reform Party is replacing Labour, Burnham will launch a hostile takeover for the keys to Downing Street. In the best-case scenario, the sense of instability will continue for the next two or three months. <\/p>\n<p>ninety Labour MPs have called for the head Nick Dickinson agrees in highlighting that &#8220;the British economic model has been broken for almost two decades.&#8221; And he adds: &#8220;All governments have had to face the problem of very limited public spending, which restricts the capacity to undertake large projects. It is the main long-term problem after immigration.&#8221; Immigration, paradoxically, rocketed after Brexit when Nigel Farage, and the conservatives who supported him, assured it would decrease. It ended up backfiring on the Tories; not on Farage. Quite the opposite. And he exploits the vein while pointing fingers everywhere. <\/p>\n<p>Here enters another element of 21st-century politics: the influence of social networks, which has led to what Rory Stewart, former minister to Theresa May \u2013<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ara.cat\/internacional\/europa\/the-rest-is-politics-podcast-omple-teatres-regne-unit_130_4664784.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">very popular for his podcast <\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ara.cat\/internacional\/europa\/the-rest-is-politics-podcast-omple-teatres-regne-unit_130_4664784.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The rest is politics<\/a>, and author, among others, of the book Politics on the edge\u2013. It hasn&#8217;t even been two years since this, but Starmer is already condemned.<\/p>\n<p>A &#8216;premier&#8217; on life supportSome political actors use digital mobilization better than others. &#8220;The best many politicians could do is step away from it a bit, because networks do not represent all of society. They often end up overreacting to very loud campaigns or criticisms that do not reflect general opinion,&#8221; says Tom Caygill in turn, who also recalls the idea that &#8220;social networks have completely changed the rhythm of politics and information, but many governments continue to act with an analog mentality in an environment that is fully digital&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p>    A crumbling palace<\/p>\n<p>One of the leading intellectuals of the Reform Party, the sociologist and former professor at the University of Manchester Matt Goodwin, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/GoodwinMJ\/status\/2043576708457001471\" rel=\"nofollow\">uses them in an inflammatory way<\/a>. But for this former candidate of Farage&#8217;s party for the Commons in one of the districts of the great northern city, &#8220;the networks do not fuel the problem, but reveal it&#8221;. The statement may be debatable. His most recent book is Suicide of a nation. Immigration, islam, identity. <\/p>\n<p>The thesis, very summarized, is that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ara.cat\/opinio\/gran-reemplacament-josep-ramoneda_129_4183757.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">of the Great Replacement<\/a>. According to him, the United Kingdom is experiencing a crisis caused by massive immigration, multiculturalism, and the loss of a shared national identity. Goodwin argues that the demographic increase of communities of immigrant origin \u2014especially Muslim\u2014 is altering the British cultural and political balance. He never says anything about wealth redistribution and progressive tax reform. Quite the contrary: taxes should be lowered. <\/p>\n<p>                                    <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"lazy\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns=&quot;http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg&quot; viewBox=&quot;0 0 16 9&quot;%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" alt=\"The Palace of Westminster from the bridge of the same name.\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The fake news,One of the leading intellectuals of the Reform Party, the sociologist and former professor at the University of Manchester Matt Goodwin, Much Ado About Nothing&#8221;, rumors and maneuvers run even faster. The result is that an institutional architecture from the 20th or even the 19th century does not fit into the world of the 21st century.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the most visual metaphor for the situation is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ara.cat\/internacional\/europa\/plagues-rates-coloms-risc-d-incendi-palau-westminster-cau-trossos_130_5451370.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">degradation of the Palace of Westminster<\/a>. Seen from the outside, it is impressive. When you walk through its corridors, the cracks that betray the ruin are seen with incredulous eyes. And yet, the 650 Members of Parliament continue to postpone the budgetary decision on its urgent reform because it will have an astronomical cost and no one dares to take the step: there would be a lot of demagoguery about it.<\/p>\n<p>But any day the palace will fall on the heads of Conservatives and Labour. Now, the emergency architect is called Andy Burnham. The details of his plans are yet to be known. Despite everything, many have already assumed that he will be able to reconcile the interests of those who supported Brexit and oppose immigration with those who voted for the EU and live in cities where English is not the only language spoken. If he fails, by 2029 or sooner, Nigel Farage will finish demolishing Westminster. And the comedy will become a great tragedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LondonBritish politics has been advancing for decades like a Shakespearean farce: the characters change, but the pattern repeats.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[18661,4312,1158,18660,2397,2392,2955,5,18662,2391,6,4230],"class_list":["post-37379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","tag-an","tag-and","tag-country","tag-farce","tag-is","tag-kingdom","tag-the","tag-uk","tag-ungovernable","tag-united","tag-united-kingdom","tag-westminster"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116579582844224550","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}