Britain's Brexit Balance Sheet: Seven Prime Ministers in Ten Years and a Country Searching for Stability

Then-prime minister David Cameron had initiated the referendum to placate the EU-critical faction within his own party. "He himself had passionately campaigned for remaining in the EU. Yet British voters voted for a departure," the analysis states. "On the morning after the vote, 24 June 2016, Cameron announced his resignation." His term of office had begun on 11 May 2010 and ended on 13 July 2016.

Cameron's party colleague and successor Theresa May failed because of the demands of the Brexit hardliners within her own ranks. Boris Johnson, who had helped deliver the Brexit victory in 2016 and implemented it in 2020, also "stumbled shortly afterwards," as the NZZ writes. "The same had previously happened to the Conservative prime ministers Theresa May and Boris Johnson: they stepped down after losing the support of their parliamentary group."

Economic Drag Marks

Liz Truss was a special case: in 2022, she had to step down after only 49 days in office. "Johnson's Conservative successor Liz Truss, in turn, had to go after just 49 days, after her economic policy had triggered panic on the financial markets." The economic turmoil caused by Brexit continued under her successor Rishi Sunak, who "sacrificed his job for an early general election, which the Conservatives lost," as the analysis notes.

In July 2024, Labour's landslide victory brought Keir Starmer to the top. "Keir Starmer moved into 10 Downing Street," the NZZ writes. "On Friday he had still shown a fighting spirit and ruled out a resignation. But just three days later he announced his withdrawal from 10 Downing Street." Despite a comfortable majority, his own faction forced him to resign because of political missteps and "disastrous poll numbers."

The economic balance sheet is sobering. "Nevertheless, waiting times for a specialist appointment in the national health service exploded," the NZZ reports, citing the situation in the NHS. British public debt now stands at 95 percent of gross domestic product, after the 2008 financial crisis caused economic growth to collapse by 7.5 percentage points within two years and tax revenues plummeted.

Warnings and Perspectives

Calculations by the Center for European Reform show that British exports to the EU are twelve percent lower than in a counterfactual scenario of EU membership. "With effects on per capita economic growth: This figure is six to eight percent lower," the NZZ summarizes research by the economist Nick Bloom for the US National Bureau of Economic Research. Brexit supporters had argued that Britain could reinvent itself economically, "as 'Singapore on the Thames', for example – a relatively deregulated financial hub."

According to current polls, around 58 percent of Britons now consider the EU departure a mistake. Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at London's King's College, sees this as a cause of the new instability at Downing Street. In a statement to the NZZ, he declared: "It was promised that Brexit would solve some of our economic and political problems by allowing us to take back control and make sovereign decisions."

Portes warns of a further deterioration: "The ongoing economic stagnation and the continued absence of any rise in living standards increase the likelihood that we will end up with a far-right government." In the polls, the right-wing populist party Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, is currently ahead. Should the former mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, as appears likely, become Starmer's successor, he would presumably continue the incumbent's pragmatic course of EU rapprochement.

BBC political journalist James Landale draws an international comparison: "the world looks on amused at the country that was once known for its stability." Britain, once praised for the political continuity of the Thatcher era with the "Big Bang" deregulation of 1986 and the Blair breakthrough of 1997, is ten years after the vote of 23 June 2016 grappling with a political leadership crisis without recent precedent.