Keir Starmer's crisis is bad for Britain

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  Hi there, it's Jason Palmer here,

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  co-host of The Intelligence, our daily news and current affairs podcast.

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  This is Editor's Picks.

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  You're about to hear an article from the latest edition of The Economist, read aloud.

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  Enjoy.

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  In Britain, political instability has become chronic.

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  The story is grimly familiar.

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  A once-triumphant Prime Minister's poll ratings plummet and Downing Street turns into a bunker.

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  A distant scandal suddenly becomes existential and the Cabinet belatedly offers its support.

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  A coup fizzles after an impassioned address to MPs in which the leader promises that everything will be different.

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  But it isn't.

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  The Prime Minister's authority is shot and the government limps on.

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  In a way, the humiliation of Sakir Stammer,

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  Britain's fourth Prime Minister in four years,

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  is greater than that of his Conservative predecessors.

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  After a landslide win in 2024, he boasted of governing for a decade,

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  but local elections in 12 weeks' time may finish him off.

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  The revelation that Peter Mandelson, his former ambassador to America,

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  was appointed despite secure knowing of the length of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein,

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  has shattered the Prime Minister's image as dull, but competent and incorruptible.

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