Two Democracies, Same Problem: Leaders Without Staying Power

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John Major just said something that should make every democrat nervous, even if he was talking about the other side of the Atlantic.

The former Conservative PM told the BBC that Britain keeps swapping out prime ministers like a failing restaurant cycles through head chefs, and it’s letting young people down. He’s right, obviously. Since 2016, the UK has had five different prime ministers. That’s not governance. That’s performance art.

But here’s what made me sit up: Major’s complaint—that constant leadership changes prevent tackling long-term problems—lands at the exact moment when America is watching something far more unsettling unfold.

We’re not swapping out leaders. We’re consolidating power through fear.

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The Chaos Thesis vs. The Control Thesis

In London, the problem is instability. Every new PM comes in with different priorities. Strategy gets abandoned. Investment gets frozen. Long-term thinking dies the moment the next scandal hits.

In Washington right now, the problem is the opposite. Trump just moved on James Comey’s former position by firing the attorney general and installing an interim successor. Current and former officials are saying this creates incentives for even more extreme behavior. The message is clear: execute my demands or you’re gone.

One system is too loose. The other is tightening.

Major’s era—the 1990s—had its own chaos. The Major government limped from crisis to crisis after inheriting Thatcher’s divisive legacy. But Major was still bound by institutions. Parliament could threaten him. The party could remove him. He had guardrails. When he called a leadership contest in 1995 to settle things, he won—but the point was that he could be removed through process.

What’s happening in Trump’s Justice Department isn’t process. It’s precedent.

The moment you fire an attorney general and don’t immediately nominate a permanent replacement, you’re signaling that the person in the role can be removed for insufficient loyalty. Acting officials don’t have the same protections. They don’t have the same incentive to say no. And everyone watching knows it.

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Britain’s Fragmentation Problem Is Actually More Interesting

Labour’s London squeeze tells you something crucial about where British politics is heading. The party’s losing votes to the Greens and independents in the capital—places where it should own the entire board. That’s not normal. That’s what happens when voters don’t believe you’re serious about anything anymore.

Look at the “globalise the intifada” chant issue. Starmer came out hard, calling it racist and saying Jews feel scared. That’s leadership. That’s also expensive. He’s now got to enforce party discipline around language and symbols, which means taking on activist members who see that differently. It’s necessary, but it costs him in inner-city London where some voters see pro-Palestinian politics as non-negotiable.

Then you’ve got the Restore Britain crypto donation mess. A Labour MP raised concerns, the Electoral Commission got involved, money got refunded. The machinery worked. But the fact that a fringe party accepting crypto donations from shady sources is even newsworthy tells you something: trust is so low that any connection to dubious money becomes a scandal.

This is what happens when leadership becomes a revolving door. Institutions stop working because nobody thinks anyone’s staying long enough to be held accountable.

My Take

I think Britain’s problem and America’s problem are two sides of the same coin: democracies under stress produce either chaos or concentration, and neither one is stable.

Major’s warning about constant prime minister changes is real, but I’d go further. The actual damage isn’t just lost long-term planning. It’s that voters stop believing anyone’s in charge. When Keir Starmer became PM in 2024, there was relief. Relief. Not excitement. Relief that finally someone might stay put. That’s how low the bar has fallen.

America’s heading in the opposite direction, but toward an equally dangerous place. Trump’s consolidating power by making it clear that disloyalty equals removal, and he’s doing it through the machinery that’s supposed to check him. The interim attorney general exists at his pleasure, not Congress’s. That’s not normal.

What scares me more than either scenario is that both seem to satisfy a part of the electorate. People want someone in control, even if the trade-off is accountability. They want clarity, even if it comes with authoritarianism. They want strength, even when it looks like punishment.

The real question is which system breaks first. Britain’s breaking slowly—you can watch it in election results and party donations and voters peeling away to alternatives. America’s might break faster because the mechanisms of concentration are accelerating. But both break if you let them run long enough.

Here’s what I genuinely don’t know: whether the institutional pressure in either country is strong enough to reset. Britain’s got history. Five prime ministers in eight years is wild, but the country’s still functioning. No coups. Parliament still meets. The civil service still turns. Maybe it’s more resilient than the chaos suggests.

America’s institutions have survived Trump once. Whether they survive the second act depends a lot on whether people in the bureaucracy decide the rules still matter, or whether Comey’s indictment and the attorney general’s firing have already made clear that loyalty beats rules.

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What I’m Watching

• The Hegseth confirmation and follow-up personnel loyalty signals (immediate to mid-February). He testified for a second day on the Iran war, civilian deaths, and other issues. The real tell will be whether Trump replaces anyone in defense or intelligence who shows signs of independence. Each early removal reinforces the fear message.

• Labour’s next electoral result in a London seat (whenever a by-election occurs). If the Greens or independents take a traditionally safe Labour seat in the capital, it’s a sign Starmer’s lost control of his base before he’s even settled in. That would mirror the fragmentation pattern and suggest the instability feedback loop is still running in London.

• Whether the Met police scandal around Zack Polanski’s criticism of knife attack officers becomes a political wedge issue (next 4-6 weeks). Sir Mark Rowley’s “disappointed” comment is defensive language. If this becomes a broader debate about civilian safety vs. police tactics, and if either party tries to weaponize it, watch how Starmer handles it. His response will show whether he can actually command discipline or if he’s going to get pulled in multiple directions.

• Any indication that an interim official in the Biden remnant of the federal government refuses an order (ongoing). This is the canary in the coal mine for whether institutional resistance to concentrated power is real or theater. One firm no from an unexpected quarter changes the whole game.

We’re not at the end of either story. But we’re past the beginning. And both stories are getting darker before they get clearer.