Can anyone govern the United Kingdom? People are starting to wonder now that the alleged administration of Prime Minister Keir Starmer has fallen into chaos and his Labour Party is attempting another lurch to the left.

Mr. Starmer is probably a lame duck after disastrous local elections across England, Scotland and Wales this month exposed his unpopularity. Labour lost nearly 1,500 local-council seats, and lawmakers in the national Parliament are worried they’ll be next in an election due by 2029 if they don’t ditch Mr. Starmer. So far he refuses to step aside voluntarily.

This is creating a chaotic contest to replace a leader who technically isn’t leaving. The most popular contender is Andy Burnham, a longtime party figure who’s currently mayor of Manchester. His allies have engineered a parliamentary by-election in June that they hope will let him re-enter Parliament and then run for Mr. Starmer’s job. This assumes he can defeat a candidate from Nigel Farage’s rising Reform UK party in a region moving to the right.

Mr. Burnham might solve Labour’s political problem for a time to the extent he’s more popular than Mr. Starmer, especially among Labour’s disputatious base. But he’d make the party’s, and Britain’s, economic problems worse. He supports a 50% top income-tax rate, more welfare, and re-nationalizing much of British industry. None of this will cure the malaise and pessimism rotting the economy from the inside.

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