Leadership Changes, Nothing Else Does
Exploring Political Dissent in the UK
In the UK, it looks like the Prime Minister is facing a genuine challenge to his leadership as scandal surrounds his appointment of Peter Mandelson (a long-time friend of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein) to the role of Ambassador to the United States.
It’s an odd one at the outset. Mandelson is revered by politicos as an excellent strategist and decision-maker, but this is now his third resignation: first for failing to declare a loan, second for his conduct in relation to lobbying on passport applications for an overseas business leader.
More worrying this time is the allegation that Mandelson shared cabinet meetings with Epstein, which is now the subject of a police investigation.
Sir Keir and his senior advisors are all facing calls to resign.
Underneath this is a concern we need to explore. If the Prime Minister does resign, we’re faced with the truth that no British Prime Minister has survived a full election cycle since David Cameron, who took on this role in 2010 in the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government. He then, of course, resigned during his second term after Britain voted to leave the EU in 2016. Since then, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and now Keir have taken on that role in a decade.
Each change was preceded by an ever-moving media schedule and various challenges. Theresa May could not control a parliament to navigate Brexit. Boris Johnson faced Covid and made errors of judgement that made his position untenable. Liz Truss went bold and big with a budget that threatened economic collapse. Rishi became the face of a stagnating Conservative Party, which leads us to Keir.
He is the face of a political elite (not just Labour) that the British public now seem irritated with.
I write a great deal about a term I call ‘dissensus’ or ‘dissent’ that is rising in populations, making them seek political figures from outside the normal political parties: Trump, Meloni, Bukele, and Milei; and in the UK, Farage and Jeremy Corbyn. In this article, I don’t want these to be the focus.
What today’s short form is about is systems. When we look at the constant churn of leaders, what does that say about traditional democratic systems that don’t seem agile and responsive enough to the world around them, causing flux whenever they meet with challenge?
Each change presents a challenge which politicians, civil servants, and political strategists need to face.
Brexit demonstrated what happens when you build intricate functions of governance with other sovereign powers without the consent of the populations you govern. From the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s, the UK population were never truly consulted on this decision, leading to disenfranchisement as work, markets, and society changed around them. It wasn’t that the EU was hugely unpopular, but leaders, politicians, and the administration of government built around this political behemoth never truly checked for the consent to continue. And where that was withdrawn, all those systems had to be rebuilt.
The question here is: apart from a referendum on the original Maastricht Treaty, how could consent have been increased (not through marketing, but through bringing the public onboard across civic life into the tangible benefits of the systems being created)? Think outside of tours of parliaments, and more about the decisions being made and the benefits. How could we have involved the public more in the creation of new systems, instead of pointing to European election cycles with low turnouts as the mechanisms to do so?
Dissent came from systems that were built by architects who thought what they were building would be appreciated only after the curtain came down, never once checking to see the benefits to those who would inhabit it.
Then we move to Theresa May. We were faced with a parliament that largely consisted of supporters of the European Union, so we had lawmakers who, despite their best efforts, were not partial to this decision. Thus the mechanism of governance slowly ground to a standstill, requiring a new election as political parties reshuffled to adjust to the challenges of fulfilling the mandate of the referendum. This exposed something greater: that parties themselves had become disconnected from the general public, electing faces into geographic regions that, when actually tested, did not represent the views of the electorate. As someone who voted Remain, I still respected the decision of Brexit and curiously watched.
Dissent built here as political parties tried to navigate around that decision and had recruited parliamentarians who had no real connection with the public they represented. Seats had become rewards for party members who signed up to party political missions and vision, disconnecting from civil life and service.
The government of Boris Johnson was mired in Covid and the response to a public health challenge that was unprecedented. However, the Prime Minister continuously faced challenges about his conduct in practising what he preached and how his ministers behaved. The public also became irate at how public money was awarded to associates of the party as billions were spent to keep the economy afloat and the NHS running.
Dissent grew because the systems of governance allowed ministers to award public money, as previous leaders had done, to associates. The systems presented holes that could be navigated around. This is where other scandals in this period also added dissent, as the British public saw this as a continuation of other money-related issues such as tax avoidance by the wealthy, who can hire accountants, lawyers, and advisors to find loopholes needed to reduce their contributions. This is in itself an act of dissent by a class who also do not feel their obligations to pay large sums on their assets, land, purchases, businesses, and income is actually their duty.
Liz Truss and her appointed chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng then embarked on a short term in which they announced a budget that slashed £45 billion in tax cuts for the purpose of stimulating growth. It did not. This budget caused panic in bond markets and severe financial market chaos, a sharp fall in the pound, and forced emergency intervention from the Bank of England.
The dissensus here was actually first from a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who acted in dissent of the established status quo. Bond markets, taxes, and fiscal responsibility were all linked together in how the brand of the United Kingdom was viewed by investors, allies, and others. Once the British public saw that pensions and mortgage rates would be affected, Liz Truss’s days were numbered. The lesson here being: what does political dissent (making decisions outside of the status quo) face? What are the actual decisions that leaders can make when the world we inhabit is full of complex, interconnected systems? How do leaders communicate the short-term chaos for perceived long-term change benefits?
Rishi Sunak, much like Gordon Brown, was a Prime Minister elected by the party, and when faced with a general election was voted out. The public dissented because in the UK, the position of Prime Minister is seen not in the old sense as the leader of parliament, but as the leader of the country. The lesson is clear: parties voting in this key position need to understand that the public want a say in who leads them, not the restricted membership of a party.
Which brings us to Keir. The dissent around Mandelson is real and serious. It presents questions of how someone like Peter Mandelson was appointed in the first place. How do our systems of governance allow elected leaders to appoint individuals like Mandelson? What did our security services consider? What did our vetting services really think? Which leads to thinking about power itself in governance: how is it that our elected roles are open to so much scrutiny? What are our processes for vetting in our democracy?
The deeper issue here is not guilt by association, but the absence of visible institutional thresholds. In any functional system, there should be relationships, environments, or risk profiles that automatically trigger scrutiny, not because wrongdoing is proven, but because proximity itself carries risk.
The public does not expect intelligence or security agencies to explain everything they know. But they do expect reassurance that someone, somewhere, is drawing hard lines. Silence in these moments does not read as discretion. It reads as absence.
Taken together, these episodes point to a deeper structural problem, not just of individual morality, but of systems that no longer correct themselves fast enough to retain public trust.
The dissent we see today is real, and we need to think of how our systems of governance can be fixed to prevent the slow, grinding loss of trust caused by repeated elite failure to adapt the system to reality.
What keeps breaking trust (and why it compounds) is a pattern of systemic failures that have become impossible to ignore. Rules without consequences have become the norm. Scandals don’t collapse governments anymore; they evaporate into process. Investigations take years, outcomes are vague, accountability is symbolic. The public concludes the rules exist only to discipline them.
Cronyism looks structural, not accidental. Covid contracts, procurement shortcuts, revolving doors: even when legal, they violate the moral contract of fairness. The defence ‘it followed the rules’ is now actively corrosive, a phrase that deepens rather than resolves public suspicion.
The system is so procedurally dense that responsibility becomes untraceable. Power diffuses upward, blame diffuses outward. Citizens experience governance as something that happens to them, not with them: a distant machinery they can observe but never influence.
Leadership churn compounds the problem. Six prime ministers in ten years doesn’t signal dynamism; it signals a system unable to stabilise or self-correct. Change at the top without reform underneath feels theatrical, not meaningful. Each new face promises renewal but inherits the same broken machinery.
Finally, ethics are managed internally. Oversight bodies are appointed by those they oversee. Sanctions are framed as personal failure rather than systemic weakness. Trust cannot survive closed-loop accountability. When the system investigates itself, finds itself wanting, and changes nothing, the message is clear: accountability is performance, not principle.
It's time we start questioning our systems of governance: how they are built, constructed, maintained, and managed better. This is just one reading of the pattern. What am I missing? What would real accountability look like? I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts—both on the problems I've overlooked and the fixes that might actually matter.
Excellent read. Very interesting points