Belirsiz Kişi
23 June 2026•Update: 23 June 2026
The writer is a professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London and co-author of the book, The British General Election of 2024.
British politics – and I say this as someone who’s had a lifelong fascination with it – used to be a fairly predictable affair, even, some would say, a little dull. Brexit, however, has helped to change all that – and probably for good.
Until 2016, the center-left Labour Party and the center-right Conservatives alternated in power, while voting for other parties was seen as pretty much a waste of time. Now, however, we’ve entered an era of five- or six-party politics and – even more incredibly, perhaps – we’re about to see our seventh prime minister in 10 years.
Starmer's resignation
After transforming Labour’s fortunes as opposition leader, Keir Starmer found governing the country far more difficult. A series of early missteps and his failure to effectively communicate an inspiring sense of direction saw his government lose votes to both its right and its left, causing Starmer’s personal ratings to fall below even those of his party. It was a situation that his colleagues could only put up with for so long. The dam finally broke after his longtime rival, Andy Burnham, returned to parliament this week and triggered Starmer’s resignation.
Brexit, of course, isn’t the only reason for Britain’s shift from comfortable to chaotic politics. The British party system has been fraying at the edges since the early 1970s when the Liberal Party began to attract more support and nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales began to win seats at Westminster. The electorate has become steadily more volatile and less deferential. As a result, parties that used to be able to count on people’s votes now have to earn them – something that has simultaneously become increasingly difficult as fiscal constraints, slower economic growth, and the increased demand on public services imposed by a rapidly ageing population have made it much harder to deliver the often unrealistic pledges that British politicians, running scared of the electorate, still insist on making.
From comfortable to chaotic
One way they chose to try to square the circle was through mass migration – importing cheaper labor to keep the cost of social care and healthcare down, to fill skill shortages, while attracting plenty of overseas students in order to boost the finances of the UK’s burgeoning university sector.
That policy – not least because it was never advocated openly and honestly – triggered a backlash that helped bring about Brexit in the first place and has bedeviled British politics ever since.
Public concern about immigration rose steeply as people began pouring in from the Central and Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004 – an influx that, together with the migration crisis that hit Europe in 2015, was partly responsible for the Leave vote in 2016.
The second stage of that backlash followed the decision to liberalize the post-Brexit immigration regime by a Conservative government that had promised voters to "take back control" of the country’s borders. This was mainly in the wake of fears that the closure of the labor market during the Covid crisis would do severe short-term damage to the economy.
The third stage has centered on irregular (now labelled "illegal") migrants, mainly from South Asia and the Near and Middle East, coming across the English Channel in small boats and claiming asylum, obliging the government to spend untold millions of pounds keeping them housed in hotels while their applications are decided.
The immigration backlash
The backlash has led to violent street protests in some places but has mainly led those voters uncomfortable with migration – primarily white, older, less educated voters living in small towns, nearly all of whom voted Leave in 2016 – to move away from both main parties (but in particular the Conservatives) and towards the populist radical right in the shape of Reform UK, the rebranded Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage.
Conversely, many "progressive" voters (the vast majority of whom voted Remain in 2016) quickly grew disillusioned and disappointed with Labour after it came to power in 2024 and, in a misguided attempt to win back voters lost to Reform, talked in performatively tough terms about immigration. Labour showed little initial sympathy with the plight of Gazans, showed little sign of wanting to significantly reverse Brexit, and insisted on sticking to ‘fiscal rules’ that have made it difficult to finance the degree of change that its voters were hoping for. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was turning the UK’s so-called ‘special relationship’ with the United States into a cruel joke.
Somewhat ironically, then, Brexit has made politics in Britain and the country’s ability to project its power internationally look much more, well, European than was the case before the country voted to leave the EU 10 years ago today. And yet there is no chance in the short term of a return to the bloc. True, opinion polls suggest a majority of Brits now regard Brexit as a mistake and claim they would now vote to rejoin. But they also suggest relatively few people have, in fact, changed their minds, as well as pointing to a marked reluctance to reopen such a painful and polarizing debate.
All of this leaves Britain in a profoundly unstable, even dysfunctional state – unable to come to terms with the fact that it has ambitions and pretensions way beyond both its means and the capacity of its politicians to match them in the real world. The biggest favor Andy Burnham, our next prime minister, could do the country would be to admit that this is the case. I don’t know about you, but I won’t be holding my breath.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.
