A Comprehensive, Affectionate, And Entirely Unsparing History Of Every British Prime Minister Who Left For The Wrong Reasons — Arranged Chronologically And In Ascending Order Of Embarrassment
Britain has had 57 Prime Ministers. A remarkable number of them have left under circumstances that a polite person would describe as "sub-optimal" and a direct person would describe as "oh god, not again." What follows is the definitive record. The nation should read it with a cup of tea. The tea will not help. But it is better than nothing.
The Prime Ministers — Modern Era — Exits Ranked By Historical Dignity (Descending)
| PM | Years | Why They Left | The Honest Version | Legacy Sentence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tony Blair Labour | 1997–2007 10 years | Voluntarily stepped down, handing over to Gordon Brown in a "planned transition." | His party had wanted him gone for two years over Iraq. He left before they changed the locks. The transition was planned in the way that a controlled demolition is planned: deliberately, with everyone standing at a safe distance. | Won three elections. Modernised Britain. Iraq. History is still writing the sentence and keeps getting interrupted by Iraq. |
| Gordon Brown Labour | 2007–2010 3 years | Lost the 2010 General Election to David Cameron's Conservatives. | Took over from Blair at precisely the moment the global financial system decided to have a complete breakdown, managed the crisis competently, and was rewarded by the British public with a decisive rejection because he was, his own party admitted, "not great on television." He saved the banks. The banks did not return the favour. | Saved the global economy. Lost the television. History will be kinder to him than the electorate was. |
| David Cameron Conservative | 2010–2016 6 years | Called a referendum on EU membership to silence his own party's Eurosceptics. Lost. Resigned the next morning. | In order to win the 2015 election, Cameron promised a referendum he expected to win, on a question he believed was settled, to a party he thought he could manage. He won the election. He lost the referendum by 52–48. He announced his resignation at a podium in Downing Street while a rendition of Rule Britannia could be heard in the background, because Britain's sense of timing is occasionally immaculate and occasionally devastating and on this morning it was both. | Accidentally unmade the thing his country spent 40 years building. Retired to a shepherd's hut in Oxfordshire. The hut has not been subjected to parliamentary scrutiny. |
| Theresa May Conservative | 2016–2019 3 years | Failed to get her Brexit withdrawal agreement through Parliament. Three times. Then resigned. | Inherited the chaos of the referendum, attempted to negotiate an orderly exit from the EU, brought back a deal, had it voted down by Parliament, brought it back again, had it voted down again, brought it back a third time (having by this point the expression of a woman who knows exactly what is about to happen), had it voted down a third time, announced her resignation in Downing Street while visibly crying, which was the most human moment in British politics of the decade and also the moment that proved that being competent, diligent, and determined is, in British politics, not sufficient protection against being absolutely destroyed by your own colleagues. | Tried three times. Was voted down three times. Left in tears. Her withdrawal agreement, revised slightly, was eventually passed by her successor. She has not commented on this. |
| Boris Johnson Conservative | 2019–2022 3 years | 52 ministers resigned in 48 hours. Left. | Where to begin. Johnson won a landslide in 2019 by promising to "Get Brexit Done," which he did, in the sense that Britain left the EU, and then discovered that leaving the EU was not the end of anything but the beginning of everything. He then: governed through a pandemic while attending parties he said were work events; had an affair that produced a child; promoted Chris Pincher, a man facing multiple sexual assault allegations, to a position of authority; denied knowing about the allegations; admitted knowing about the allegations; explained that he had forgotten knowing about the allegations; watched 52 of his own ministers resign in 48 hours; gave a farewell speech comparing himself to Cincinnatus, the Roman dictator who retired to his farm; and departed saying "Hasta la vista, baby." He has not gone away. | 52 resignations. Partygate. "Hasta la vista, baby." Is currently writing his memoirs. The memoirs will be very readable. They will also contain an explanation of Partygate that does not satisfy anyone. |
| Liz Truss Conservative | September–October 2022 45 DAYS | Her mini-budget crashed the pound, collapsed the bond market, required Bank of England intervention, caused mortgage rates to spike overnight, necessitated the sacking of her own Chancellor, and resulted in her new Chancellor reversing every policy she had announced. She then resigned. | Truss arrived at Downing Street promising Thatcherite supply-side economics — unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy during a cost-of-living crisis, presented with the confidence of someone who had read extensively about the 1980s without fully absorbing the context in which the 1980s occurred. The financial markets responded within approximately 45 minutes with what economists call "a loss of confidence" and what this reporter calls "the bond market laughing until it needed to sit down." The pound fell to its lowest against the dollar since 1985. The Bank of England intervened to prevent a pension fund crisis. Kwasi Kwarteng, her Chancellor, was sacked after 38 days. Her replacement Chancellor reversed everything she had done. She then resigned, noting that she "cannot deliver the mandate" she was elected on, which was technically accurate in the way that saying "the Titanic cannot complete its voyage" is technically accurate. | 45 days. Shorter than a BBC mini-series. The lettuce lasted longer. A newspaper ran a livestream of a lettuce to see which would outlast the other. The lettuce won. This happened. It was real journalism. |
| Rishi Sunak Conservative | 2022–2024 2 years | Lost the 2024 General Election to Keir Starmer. Labour won their largest majority since 1997. | Sunak was the right person at the right time in the specific sense that, after Liz Truss, a sensible person reading a spreadsheet correctly was all Britain required of its Prime Minister. He stabilised things. He then called a snap election on a rainy day, standing at a podium in the rain, as a triumphant Labour campaign song played from somewhere nearby — "Things Can Only Get Better," a song Labour had famously used in 1997 — while he addressed the nation with water visibly dripping from him. He lost 250 seats. It was, even by the standards of British political exits, a remarkably wet ending. | Steady. Competent. Gave a speech in the rain. Lost 250 seats. "Things Can Only Get Better" played. Things did get better, briefly, and then produced Starmer, which is where we are. |
| Keir Starmer Labour | 2024–? 22 months so far | To be determined. Eurasia Group gives a 35% probability he is gone by September. Starmer gives a 0% probability. The pound gives approximately 2–3% probability per news cycle. | Won the largest Labour majority in 27 years. Is now the most unpopular PM on record. Has been told to resign by 80+ of his own MPs. Has responded by saying he will get on with governing. Is currently governing. The government has four fewer ministers than it did on Monday. The governing continues. | To be written. This space has been reserved. The tea rooms are fully booked. |
The Daily Star newspaper, on October 14, 2022, began a live-stream of an iceberg lettuce, lit with a small spotlight, styled with a blonde wig, with the question: "Which will last longer — this lettuce or Liz Truss?" The stream ran 24 hours a day. The lettuce held up remarkably well. Truss resigned six days later. The lettuce was described by the newspaper as "the clear winner." The lettuce received more positive press coverage in its final days than Truss did in her entire tenure. The lettuce did not comment. The lettuce had, by this point, begun to wilt slightly, but was still structurally coherent, which put it ahead of the mini-budget.
This is not a metaphor. This is not a satirical embellishment. A national British newspaper ran a 24-hour lettuce livestream against a sitting Prime Minister and the lettuce won. The country that produced Shakespeare, Newton, Darwin, and the National Health Service spent the autumn of 2022 watching a salad vegetable outlast its own head of government. Britain contains multitudes. All of them are bewildering. Most of them are, in retrospect, magnificent.
Since 2016 — a decade defined by the referendum, its aftermath, and its aftermath's aftermath — Britain has had six Prime Ministers. Their average tenure: approximately 18 months. The average tenure of a British Prime Minister between 1945 and 2010 was approximately seven years. The country has, in the last decade, consumed prime ministers at a rate approximately five times the historical norm. The pound, the bond market, and the nation's collective blood pressure have adjusted accordingly. The tea, which is Britain's true constitutional constant — the one institution that has remained stable, reliable, and available in every crisis since approximately 1750 — continues to be brewed. This is perhaps the only data point that provides genuine comfort.
