Is British politics just ungovernable?

The News Agents

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Friday, 30 January 2026 - 47 minutes

Keir Starmer is historically unpopular. When he entered Downing Street, his approval rating stood around +10%. Now? The Prime Minister languishes around -50%. It's the steepest drop in support for any governing party still in its infancy. 8 out of 10 people say that Britain is getting worse as a place to live under Labour's watch. One poll conducted towards the end of last year suggested that even Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had more public confidence than Keir Starmer's government.

What on earth is going on? What explains such an instant - and decisive - turn in public mood away from a party and a Prime Minister elected in a landslide? As the Andy Burnham saga has illustrated this week, questions around Keir Starmer's authority seem a permanent feature of the news agenda. Was it always this way? Or is there something new, something unique, to Britain and British politics in 2026?

David Runciman is a professor, an author, and host of the Past Present Future podcast. He is one of Britain's leading thinkers on democracy, power and the state. His book, 'How Democracy Ends', observed the new threats to our political model and honed in on the very modern rot inside the representative democracy of the twenty first century.

Lewis paid him a visit - at his home in Cambridge - for a conversation about whether politics here is now ungovernable, whether political authority is now impossible to maintain, and whether democracy itself is indeed coming to an end.

The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/

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