British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was felled by a curse haunting most Western leaders — a failure to deliver change to voters who’ve lost trust in the capacity of modern politics to make their lives better and more affordable. Starmer, who announced his resignation Monday only two years after winning a parliamentary landslide, was unable to push through his program in an era of political chaos, stigmatized institutions and wrenching economic disruption. He’s not alone. From the UK to Germany to France to the United States, leaders tap voter anger to get elected and promise to restore prosperity. But once in power, they often find it impossible to fulfill their promises, after failing to free-up entrenched political systems, control their parties, counter global economic forces or to overcome the cacophony of politics in the age of social media. Their shortcomings only exacerbate public cynicism about democratic politics, fueling populism on the right and left and vacuums that can be exploited by extremists. The modern political maelstrom raises the question of whether the current crop of Western leaders lacks the skill and magnetism of past giants like Margaret Thatcher in Britain, Helmut Kohl in Germany or President Ronald Reagan. Or is something more fundamental happening? Have Western societies become ungovernable? And if leaders can’t enact the change they promised, why should voters retain trust in democratic institutions? The consequences in an era of political strongmen preoccupied Barack Obama — who knows something about promises of hope and change getting dinged up — in his speech at the opening of his presidential center in Chicago last week. The former president condemned critics who say, “appeals to democracy and civic participation are corny and old fashioned and boring and naive” and argued that democratic governance was the only true path to change. Why Starmer failed But the downfall of leaders like Starmer calls Obama’s thesis into question. He promised competence after years of turmoil in Britain following the vote to leave the European Union. But a series of policy U-turns, ideological battles in his Labour Party and his own clumsy inability to articulate a clear political story drained his momentum. He was hampered by Britain’s low-growth economy and a related lack of cash to beat crises in health care and public services or to restore a hollowed-out military. Despite efforts to shield citizens from high energy costs, Starmer ultimately was unable to surmount worries about the cost of living, including high prices for food and housing. Instead of ending the political chaos, Starmer became a primary cause of it. Britain, once a bulwark of political stability, is now awaiting its sixth new prime minister in a decade following its Brexit vote to leave the European Union, after having only four in the previous quarter century. France’s President Emmanuel Macron reacts during the closing press conference of the G7 summit, in Evian, eastern France, on June 17, 2026. Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images Political decay is endemic in other Western democracies. French President Emmanuel Macron will leave office next year after failing to implement his post-ideological reform program of modernization and economic liberalization that he promised as an Obama-style hope merchant when first elected in 2017. Macron could not defeat French trade union power and the monolithic French state. His two terms featured public unrest and a succession of failed prime ministers, and his tin eared political touch left him branded as an elitist. Far from saving the political center, he may destroy it since the French far-right National Rally party has its best chance yet to win power after next year’s presidential election. Both Starmer and Macron were handicapped by their inability to rally the country behind their visions while in government. They are not alone in telling a compelling story in election season, then losing track of the narrative in office. Take President Donald Trump, for instance, who has failed to heed the message that US voters have sent often in recent years — that they can’t meet basic costs despite a generally robust economy. Trump, who is often distracted by his desire for revenge against his foes, blasts “affordability” as a Democratic hoax. His apathy was highlighted last week when he gushed that his new Air Force One reached “a level of luxury that nobody’s ever seen before.” No wonder Trump’s approval ratings are matching record lows, exacerbated by his unpopular war on Iran, and that Democrats are hoping for major gains in the midterm elections in November. President Donald Trump steps out of the new Air Force One, in a hangar at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland on June 19, 2026. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images The jinx of incumbent power is also being felt in Germany, where conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz is hugely unpopular just a year after taking office. Merz is struggling to restore the high economic growth Germans long took for granted, offering an opening to the rising far right AfD anti-immigrant party. In Australia, center-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tasted early success and won reelection last year. But his star is fading amid housing and affordability pressures. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has so far bucked the trend — despite Trump’s claim during a feud that erupted at the G7 summit that her “level of popularity” is falling. In nearly four years in power she’s brought continuity that post-World War II Italian politics has lacked. Two leaders of industrialized nations are facing their first tests. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi won a huge mandate last year. While she is encountering some headwinds in the Iran war energy crisis, she remains a dominant domestic force. And Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has shown a deft political touch domestically, winning an election triumph last year on an anti-Trump platform while organizing “middle powers” on the international stage to counter the US. The grave task facing the next British PM The tumult in industrialized democracies offers grim omens for Britain’s next prime minister, who is likely to be Andy Burnham. Most recently the mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham won a special election last week that will return him to Parliament after an earlier stint there. Starmer’s resignation on Monday acknowledged Burnham’s unstoppable momentum among Labour lawmakers. (In Britain, prime ministers are not directly elected. Leaders of the biggest party in the House of Commons are tasked by the monarch with forming a government). Burnham’s story echoes Carney’s in that it was only made possible by public distrust in existing leaders. Both men were outside parliament but cast profiles in leadership and new political thinking that convinced their parties to ditch sitting prime ministers. Carney’s effective ouster of his fellow Liberal, former prime minister Justin Trudeau, paid off when he won power in his own right. Burnham has a maximum of three years to save Labour, with the populist right-wing Reform party of Trump buddy Nigel Farage widely tipped to win the next general election in 2029. Carney and Burnham were figures of authority as a former central banker and big city mayor. But they prospered because they were seen as outside national politics. They may therefore be better positioned to renew modern democracy. Their ascent exemplifies a theory recently laid out in an essay by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He wrote that the challenge of modern democracy was “the ability to get big things done. To have leaders who are not problem-managers but problem-solvers.” He went on: “The politics of the future may be better understood by those presently outside politics.” Andy Burnham sits in a taxi after he arrived in London, on June 22, 2026. Kin Cheung/AP Burnham, presents himself as just that kind of figure. Despite being a former member of Blair’s Cabinet and the beneficiary of a Cambridge University education, his habitual attire of a black T-shirt and no tie marks him as a challenge to the elite London establishment. He’s from the North, the former engine of Britain’s industrial might that was eviscerated by globalization. In US terms, it’s as if the mayor of a city like Detroit suddenly became president. First, Burnham must restore hope in politics. Then he must tackle a task facing most Western center-left leaders — winning back working-class voters who’ve defected to parties like Reform or Trump’s MAGA movement. “Everyone knows that politics isn’t working,” Burnham said Thursday, after an election victory in which he trounced the Reform candidate, thereby creating a microcosm of his mission on the national stage. “Tonight could, just could, be the turning point,” he added, promising to bring back “something we’ve lost — hope — hope for the future.” Almost every current Western leader once promised something similar. And unless Burnham can restore faith in politics to forge change and make voters feel a little better off, he will share their fates. And his failure would raise fresh fears about the future of Western democracy itself. The post Why the forces that felled Keir Starmer threaten so many Western leaders appeared first on Egypt Independent.
