Can Anyone Govern Britain -- or America?

As Britain gets ready for its seventh prime minister in just 10 years, it's time to ask whether the parliamentary system itself is broken.

That might explain not only why landslide election victories don't translate into stable leadership in Britain but also why America's Congress is so feckless.

Is representative government an idea whose time has passed?

In Europe as well as America, leftists prefer that judges and bureaucrats wield permanent power, as supposedly impartial experts who know best how to stop the weather from changing and how many genders there are.

Britain's Labour party started out as a vehicle for the working class, in theory.

It was closely connected to the country's major industrial unions — but Britain in the 21st century has lost most of its hard industry, and Labour is now led by the same kind of socially left-wing, technocratic wonks that make up the "inner party" of the Democrats in this country.

Brexit, passed by the British people in a referendum 10 years ago this week, proved Labour had lost the working class — the party elite favored remaining in the European Union, but working-class voters themselves cast their ballots for "leave."

Unfortunately, the Conservative party's elite also favored "remain" — Prime Minister David Cameron himself did, and losing the Brexit referendum compelled him to resign.

Yet Cameron was followed by another Conservative PM, Theresa May, who had also been a remainer.

It took a third Tory PM, Boris Johnson, to follow through on the voters' mandate, but Johnson proved to be Britain's Joe Biden where immigration was concerned, unleashing the "Boriswave" of mass migration, which flooded Britain with some 4 million newcomers from places like India, China, Pakistan and Nigeria.

Personal scandals forced Johnson from office before the scale of the damage his policies did came to light — but bond markets didn't tolerate Johnson's successor, Liz Truss, for long.

That left Rishi Sunak to lead the Conservatives in 2024 to their first general election defeat in 14 years. In that time, Conservatives had given Britain same-sex marriage, bigger government, deeper debt, more green-energy regulation and record-high immigration.

Labour more than doubled its number of seats in Parliament with Keir Starmer leading the party into the election, yet the landslide didn't translate into any mandate for him.

His popularity soon slid and polls indicated the Reform party would win the next election, making Nigel Farage prime minister.

Labour is now gambling its problems are personal, not political, and once Starmer has made way for a new PM — virtually certain to be Andy Burnham — its majority will be salvageable.

Burnham is even more left-wing than Starmer: at least as far left on social issues and even more enthusiastic about nationalizing industry.

Farage is wagering Starmer wasn't the millstone around Labour's neck — the party's politics are.

But even as traditional parties of the left and right elsewhere in Europe have decayed in ways much like those of Britain's Tories and Labour, new populist parties have struggled to win and maintain power.

Farage has to contend not only with Labour and what's left of the Conservatives, but also with a small but vociferous insurgency to his right, the Restore party.

All this suggests Burnham or Farage can't count on enjoying a tenure longer than Starmer's or Sunak's.

Parliamentary elections haven't produced a stable British government by anyone in the last 16 years.

What are the odds the next election, which has to be held by August 2029, will do so?

Congressional elections here also keep producing majorities that can't govern, either because control of House and Senate is divided or the majority party in one or both chambers is itself divided and unable to legislate.

The two parties have been rapidly alternating control as well. It's been nearly 20 years since either was able to hold onto the House or Senate for more than a decade.

Democrats have the upper hand when Congress is weak because federal bureaucrats, and judges capable of issuing nationwide injunctions, continue advancing Democratic designs on their own.

Fed up with this, many conservatives have come around to the idea only a brash and strong president, like Trump, wielding unitary executive power, can rein in the administrative state and activist judges — Congress can't.

Two-hundred and fifty years ago, Americans rejected the legitimacy of a British parliament that taxed us without giving us an effective say in government.

It's another revolutionary situation if voters in Britain or America today feel unrepresented — or misrepresented — by the legislators they put in office.

On both sides of the Atlantic, members of parliament and of Congress are going to have to work harder and listen a lot more attentively to what voters are demanding if representative government is going to survive much longer: What we're seeing now is how parliaments die.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 06/16/26: University Professors Against Academic Freedom
• 06/09/26: Pope Leo Courts the Global Left
• 06/02/26: A Mass-Graves Myth Is Media Malpractice
• 05/28/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/26/26: Dems Face Midterm Disappointment
• 05/12/26: Dems finally come clean 'bout their radical design
• 05/05/26: The Silenced Generation
• 04/28/26:Colleges Are Making Political Violence Worse
• 04/21/26:Immigration Amnesty by Any Other Name
• 04/14/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 04/07/26: A New Extreme in Gerrymandering
• 03/17/26: Why Are Senate Dems Making Air Travel Worse?
• 03/10/26: Cuba Should Accept Trump's 'Friendly Takeover'
• 03/03/26: Immigration Enforcement Saves Lives
• 02/24/26: How a Party Offends Its Voters
• 02/17/26: Why Are Anti-ICE Activists Building Borders?
• 02/10/26: A Japanese Lesson for Troubled Britain
• 02/03/26: The Trump Coalition Wins But the GOP Brand Doesn't
• 01/27/26: Canada Should Warm to Trump's Arctic Plans
• 01/20/26: From Rock to Tech, Talent Flees Taxes
• 01/13/26: Woman Who Weaponized Car Against I.C.E Endangered Her Life -- and Yours
• 01/06/26: Tim Walz Personifies Dems' Decline
• 12/30/25: Harvard Says Yes to Discrimination, No to Western Civ
• 12/23/25: JD Vance Gets America's Creed and Heritage Right
• 12/16/25: Trump's Inflation Trap
• 12/09/25: Biden's Immigration Debacle Is the Media's, Too
• 12/02/25: 'Iryna's Law' and the Bad Judges Who Make It Necessary
• 11/26/25: Marjorie Taylor Greene's Exit Is a Warning to Republicans
• 11/19/25: Trump Hasn't Lost Hispanics (Yet)
• 11/11/25: Trump's Tariffs on Trial
• 10/28/25: MAGA Makes Allies Great Again
• 10/21/25: How To Make the AmericaS Great Again
• 10/16/25: Columbus Day Celebrates Our Civilization
• 10/09/25: Why Sharpies Are Made in America Again
• 09/30/25: Assata Shakur and Other Parents of Political Violence
• 09/09/25: Who's Accountable for Autopen Pardons?
• 09/02/25: Gender dysphoria is a mental-illness, NOT an all-encompassing delusion
• 08/26/25: Trump's Industrial Policy Is Realism, Not Socialism
• 08/19/25: Is Gavin Newsom the Dems' Answer to Trump?
• 08/12/25: Just Say No to More Marijuana
• 08/05/25: Will the GOP Make Libs Generous Again?
• 07/30/25: Trump's Trade Lesson for Economists (and the World)
• 07/22/25: Whose Politics Canceled Stephen Colbert?
• 07/08/25: A Big Beautiful Test of GOP Principles and Discipline
• 07/01/25: Dems Need Populism, But Not Zohran's Sort
• 06/25/25: Secure Borders Win Wars Like This One
• 06/18/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/17/25: WEIRD Protesters Should Stay Home
• 06/04/25: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print