Is Britain ungovernable? | The Economist Insider

英国真的没救了吗

Insider

2026-05-15

47 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

Sir Keir Starmer—Britain’s beleaguered prime minister—has played a good hand terribly. When Labour ousted the Tories in the last general election it won a thumping majority and a mandate to revive a stagnating country. Two years on, Sir Keir’s poll numbers have collapsed, his party has been hammered in local elections and his MPs and ministers are turning on him. The prime ministership that was supposed to show Europe how to save centrism now looks unsaveable.  What went so wrong? Is Sir Keir uniquely incompetent or has Britain itself become ungovernable? Join Edward Carr, our deputy editor, and a panel of our journalists as they make sense of the chaos in Westminster, explain why Britain can’t seem to keep a prime minister and ask whether centrist politics has a future—in Britain or anywhere else.
更多

单集文稿 ...

  • Sakhir Starmer is doomed.

  • Just two years after he won a thumping majority, his MPs are rebelling and one member of his cabinet has resigned.

  • More may soon follow to challenge him to become Britain's next prime minister.

  • Sakhir remains defiant, but few expect him to stay in office for long.

  • How long?

  • We're not sure.

  • But one thing we do believe, his prime ministership is done.

  • I'm Edward Carr, The Economist's deputy editor from our studios in London.

  • Welcome to The Insider.

  • For today's show, I've assembled a top team of Westminster watchers.

  • We have Sasha Nauter, our Britain editor, Duncan Robinson,

  • our Badger columnist and political editor, and Archie Hall, our acting economics editor.

  • Welcome to all of you.

  • You've had a very busy week and it's not over yet.

  • Our cover this week poses the question I think I want to answer today, which is Britain ungovernable?

  • And it breaks down into three parts.

  • The first is very quickly to look at the extraordinary events that are unfolding in Downing Street,

  • even as we 're in this room now.

  • The second is to look at Britain as a case study of how centrist leaders are struggling to govern Europe,

  • whatever has gone so wrong.