Is British politics just ungovernable?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK commercial banking, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:10.5 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:15.4 | Now, breaking news. Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, says that he has applied to stand in the Gorton and Denton by-election. |
| 0:23.5 | Dage left, a potential challenge for the Labour leadership from Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. |
| 0:28.8 | If Fandy wants to return to Parliament, I'll try and make time between now and the by-election. |
| 0:34.3 | Go and look some doors for him. |
| 0:35.2 | This situation with Andy Burnham, it looks like a car crash. I mean, Andy Burnham is incredibly popular in my part of the world. Why would Kirstama sign a piece of paper, which basically says, Dear Kirstama, I would like your job. You're sincerely, Andy Burnham. Breaking news, Andy Burnham has been blocked by the Labour Party's National Executive Committee from running in the forthcoming Gorton and Denton by-election. |
| 0:57.0 | Andy Burnham's doing a great job as the Mayor of Manchester, but having an election for the Mayor of Manchester, when it's not necessary, |
| 1:06.0 | would divert our resources away from the elections that we must have. |
| 1:10.0 | It is simply untrue to say that I was top of the our resources away from the elections that we must have. |
| 1:16.6 | It is simply untrue to say that I was told that I would be blocked. |
| 1:22.6 | We've just seen a week where the Labour Party leadership has almost been litigated in plain sight. There was much written about the Burnham-Starma spectacle, much florid talk about Kirstama's refusal |
| 1:29.6 | to accept Burnham being a sign of strength, the flexing of prime ministerial muscle which left him |
| 1:35.4 | stronger. In fact, in every sense, it was a sign of profound frailty. Had Stama felt secure in his |
| 1:43.0 | position, had his political project been going well, |
| 1:46.0 | he would have been indifferent to Burnham's possible return to Parliament. He might have even |
| 1:50.7 | been able to take a risk, dare him to bet his long-standing opponent's political capital, |
| 1:56.4 | political career that in any mid-term by-election, Burnham might lose it, taking him out politically |
| 2:03.0 | forever. He might even have felt able, had he won, to invite him into his cabinet. As it stood, |
| 2:10.0 | Stama was afraid, rightly afraid. Not that Burnham would lose, but that he would win, |
| 2:16.3 | afraid of an opponent whose political cachet, |
| 2:19.3 | unlike his own, is real, a rare thing to say about a Labour politician right now, |
... |
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