MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Today, the former mayor of Manchester, England, filed his candidacy to become the United Kingdom's prime minister. Andy Burnham wants to succeed Keir Starmer, who has resigned as leader of the U.K.'s ruling centre-left Labour Party. So far, Burnham is running uncontested. He could be in office by the end of next week. He would be the country's seventh prime minister in 10 years, and that is a lot, even in a parliamentary system. This revolving door has some Britains asking what has made their country feel so ungovernable. From London, NPR's Lauren Frayer reports.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: It's become a familiar scene. A lectern gets dragged out into Downing Street, and everyone knows what's coming.
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DAVID CAMERON: I think the country requires fresh leadership to...
FRAYER: That was Prime Minister David Cameron 10 years ago, followed by Theresa May.
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THERESA MAY: I will shortly leave the job that it has been the honor of my life to hold.
FRAYER: Tearfully relinquishing...
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MAY: ...the opportunity to serve the country I love.
FRAYER: Even her successor, Boris Johnson, sounded uncharacteristically serious, if only for a moment.
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BORIS JOHNSON: How sad I am to be giving up the best job in the world. But them's the breaks.
FRAYER: His successor, Prime Minister Liz Truss, famously vowed...
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LIZ TRUSS: Mr. Speaker, I am a fighter and not a quitter.
FRAYER: ...But then quit the next day. Ultimately, they all say some form of what Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and, finally, Keir Starmer articulated.
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RISHI SUNAK: I would like to say, first and foremost, I am sorry.
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KEIR STARMER: Every decision I've taken has been about putting the country I love first.
FRAYER: I asked the U.K.'s most famous election expert, John Curtice, about this revolving door. And he said this is a typical American question.
JOHN CURTICE: It's the difference between a parliamentary democracy and a presidential system, that you can change prime ministers in the middle of a term. That's how you hold prime ministers to account.
FRAYER: But most parliamentary systems have multiple parties. If a party gets, say, 20% of the vote, it gets 20% of seats in Parliament. In the U.K., though, it's winner takes all in each district, which leads to exaggerated majorities and reinforces a two-party system, centre-right Conservative versus centre-left Labour, mirroring the British class system, Curtice notes.
CURTICE: Middle-class people predominantly voting Conservative, working-class people predominantly voting Labour, that's all gone.
FRAYER: Globalization has changed that, he says. Heavy industries have moved overseas, college degrees are more essential and more expensive. It's exacerbated inequality and left some voters feeling left out.
CURTICE: Now it seems that we've got a rise of populist parties. Politics are fragmented. We're now in a world of multiparty politics, and politics is no longer about left versus right.
FRAYER: He says fewer people are in the centre, and social media is amplifying the extremes. Now, this is happening to centrists globally. But what's unique to the U.K. is a certain referendum that happened 10 years ago.
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DAVID DIMBLEBY: The British people have spoken, and the answer is, we're out.
FRAYER: That's the legendary British broadcaster David Dimbleby announcing the results of the Brexit referendum. Britain was still struggling to recover from the 2008 financial crisis when voters decided that exiting the European Union might bring some relief. John McTernan, former political secretary to centre-left Prime Minister Tony Blair, says it did the opposite. The country has lost about 6% of its GDP, according to the Bank of England.
JOHN MCTERNAN: This is a period in which Britain's done the most harm to itself. This period of instability is related to the fact that the country has not had a pay rise for 20 years. If you hadn't had a pay rise 20 years, if your listeners haven't had a pay rise 20 years, they might be going, something's going wrong. They might be getting angry.
FRAYER: He says that anger has been directed toward the governing class, fueling the rise of populist parties and speeding up this revolving door of British politics. Now, it's possible the U.K. has just had a 10-year run of mediocre politicians.
JOSHI HERRMANN: I think what we've had in recent years is people who've got, like, two or three of the skills that you need, but not all of them.
FRAYER: Joshi Herrmann is founder of the Mill, a news outlet in Manchester, England, where the presumptive next prime minister, Andy Burnham, is from.
HERRMANN: Being the British prime minister is a really difficult job. There are fewer checks and balances on your autonomy and your ability to act if you have a parliamentary majority. And the downside of it is, you have much less stability. Your MPs can kick you out at any time. That's the double-edged nature of British democracy, and it requires someone who's got an incredible set of skills.
FRAYER: Especially in times like these. Burnham seems to recognize that. He's even talked about changing the system to proportional representation that would give more power to upstart populist parties. Herrmann says it's probably not the first thing on his list, though. He'll enter parliament with a majority and will likely exercise his autonomy and ability to act before those same forces that claimed his predecessors - globalization, inequality and political fragmentation - come for him.
Lauren Frayer, NPR News, London.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELMIENE SONG, "MARKING MY TIME") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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