From Cameron to Starmer, every prime minister since 2016 has been shaped in some way by Brexit (Photo credit: AP)
Once again, a British prime minister walked out of Number 10 Downing Street to announce an early departure. As Keir Starmer confirmed he would step down after less than two years in office, one familiar resident remained unmoved by the drama: Larry the Cat, Downing Street’s long-serving feline, now preparing to welcome a seventh prime minister during his tenure.Starmer’s resignation is the latest chapter in a remarkable decade of political instability that began with the Brexit referendum in 2016. Since Britons voted to leave the European Union, six prime ministers have come and gone: David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and now Starmer. Each entered office promising solutions to the country’s challenges, only to find themselves battling the political and economic aftershocks of Brexit.
Six prime ministers, one wound
The churn at the top has been relentless. David Cameron (2010–2016) resigned the morning after the referendum result came in. Theresa May (2016–2019) spent three bruising years trying to pass a withdrawal agreement that Parliament rejected six times before she too quit. Boris Johnson (2019–2022) eventually secured a deal, only to be toppled by a cascade of self-inflicted scandals. Liz Truss (2022) lasted just 45 days, her tenure ending in a catastrophic mini-budget that sent the pound into freefall. Rishi Sunak (2022–2024) attempted a reset, but could not overcome the accumulated exhaustion the electorate felt towards the Conservative Party.
Starmer arrived in July 2024 carrying the promise of an ending. Labour’s landslide 411 seats out of 650 was the largest parliamentary majority in a generation. Standing on the steps of Downing Street, he pledged to “restore respect to politics” and lead a government of “public service”. After years of soap opera, Britain wanted boring. Starmer intended to deliver it.He did not.
The man who promised stability, and couldn’t deliver it
Starmer’s selling point was his very lack of drama. A former human rights lawyer who rose to become Director of Public Prosecutions — Britain’s chief prosecutor — he entered Parliament in 2015 at the age of 52. He was methodical, forensic, and deeply serious.The early signs were not good. A furore over accepting free gifts, designer spectacles, Taylor Swift concert tickets, damaged him before he had properly begun. Policy reversals followed, including a deeply unpopular decision to cut winter fuel payments to pensioners. His popularity, already fragile — Labour had won with only 34% of the popular vote, many of those ballots cast by voters angered at the Conservatives rather than enthused by Labour, never really recovered.
Having won a freakish majority, Sir Keir made little use of it. He left scant impression on our kingdom and is likely to be filed among history’s feeblest non-entity PMs.
Quentin Letts in an Op-ed for the Daily Mail.
What ultimately finished him was the appointment of Lord Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to Washington. Mandelson, a veteran Labour figure, was seen as well-placed to navigate Donald Trump’s second term. It seemed shrewd. It proved catastrophic. Documents published in September 2025 revealed the depth of Mandelson’s ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Starmer sacked him, but further revelations followed — including suggestions that Mandelson had shared sensitive government information with Epstein — and the crisis deepened. The final blow came when it emerged Mandelson had been appointed despite failing security checks for the role. Starmer’s insistence that he had not known rang increasingly hollow.
Brexit’s bill comes due
Starmer’s downfall unfolded against an economic backdrop that Brexit has done much to shape. A landmark study by economists at Stanford University and the Bank of England, published ahead of the referendum’s tenth anniversary, estimates that Brexit has reduced UK GDP by between 6% and 8% over the past decade. Business investment is estimated to have fallen around 12% to 13% below where it would otherwise have been, with employment and productivity each depressed by roughly 3% to 4%.
The damage has been gradual rather than dramatic, a slow-acting toxin, as analysts describe it, arriving via four main channels: persistent uncertainty that weighed on investment; lower expected demand; reduced innovation and productivity within firms; and a disproportionate hit on the most internationally exposed, and typically most productive, businesses. UK goods exports have fallen 8% compared to pre-referendum levels, even as services exports — Britain remains the world’s second-largest services exporter — have grown by 48%.
The Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, has become increasingly candid on the subject, acknowledging that leaving the EU has lowered growth, reduced productivity and shrunk the size of markets British firms can easily access. Even Lord Philip Hammond, who served as chancellor under Theresa May, accepts the verdict of most economists. “Every respectable economist in the world agreed that cutting ourselves off from the single market would make us poorer,” he said. “And people voted to do it.”
Reform rising, Labour falling
Labour’s local and regional elections results in May proved the final straw. The party was routed. Within days, a sequence of events began that would make Starmer’s position untenable. Resignations followed. Challenges mounted. And Andy Burnham — the former Greater Manchester mayor who had spent months positioning himself as Starmer’s replacement — stood for a by-election in Makerfield and won decisively.Burnham’s victory crystallised what many Labour MPs had suspected: that the party needed a new face capable of holding off Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which has established itself as a potent force across much of England. “I would do anything to stop Farage,” said one Labour lawmaker who broke cover to push for a leadership change. Even some of Starmer’s most loyal cabinet allies privately urged him to step aside for an orderly transition rather than drag the party into a damaging contest.By the weekend before his resignation, Starmer had retreated to Chequers, the prime minister’s country residence. His wife Victoria, to whom he had increasingly turned for counsel through the crises of recent months, was with him. When he emerged, his mind was made up.
What comes next
Nominations to replace Starmer as Labour leader will open on 9 July and close when Parliament rises for its summer recess on 16 July. Burnham is the overwhelming favourite. If no challenger emerges, he could be in Downing Street within days of nominations closing. Starmer has pledged a successor will be in place by 1 September.Britain, then, is about to acquire its seventh prime minister in a decade. The deeper question is whether any leader can escape the shadow of 2016. The Brexit settlement remains contested — Labour politicians, including the health secretary Wes Streeting, have begun invoking the possibility of rejoining the EU, though former EU Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has warned that member states would “cold-shoulder” any such overture. What the country needs most, Lord George Bridges — a Brexit minister under May — argues, is for someone in power to finally answer the question that has eluded every prime minister since Cameron: “What kind of country do we want to be — and flowing from that, what economy do we want to build?”Starmer’s resignation is, in many ways, the latest chapter in a story that began on a June morning ten years ago. The referendum has not finished with Britain yet.