Seven Prime Ministers in ten years. Andy Burnham will be the seventh. None of them dare name the real problem. I do.  Seven Prime Ministers. One Unanswered Question.Andy Burnham is performing theatre while Britain bleeds By Lim Tean | The Great Game Andy Burnham, Britain’s likely next Prime Minister, has unveiled his big idea: […]

Seven Prime Ministers in ten years. Andy Burnham will be the seventh. None of them dare name the real problem. I do. 

Seven Prime Ministers. One Unanswered Question.
Andy Burnham is performing theatre while Britain bleeds

By Lim Tean | The Great Game

Andy Burnham, Britain’s likely next Prime Minister, has unveiled his big idea: a power shift from London to the regions. This is what passes for bold leadership in Westminster today — rearranging internal furniture while the house continues to sink.

Britain has consumed six Prime Ministers in ten years. Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer — each one broken on the same rock. A seventh, Burnham, is already waiting in the wings. This is not a crisis of personalities. It is a crisis of identity. And until Britain answers where it truly belongs in the world, it will keep destroying its leaders at a pace that would shame a banana republic.

The wound is Brexit. Every Prime Minister since 2016 has been forbidden from naming it.

The numbers tell a damning story. A landmark 2025 study by Bloom, Dhingra and Van Reenen — among the world’s leading economists — concluded that Brexit has reduced UK GDP per capita by 8% compared to comparable economies. Business investment has collapsed by 12 to 18%. And the latest government figures, published just days ago, reveal that FDI projects landing in Britain have fallen 54% over the past decade, hitting a record low of just 1,020 in 2025-26 — with financial services down 36% and advanced engineering down 41%.

These are not abstract statistics. They represent factories not built, hospitals under-resourced, wages that have barely risen in a decade, and a generation of young Britons locked out of opportunities their parents took for granted. Devolution cannot fix any of this. Moving power from Westminster to Manchester does not restore single market access. It does not rebuild the investment pipelines that Brussels membership provided. It does not answer the foundational question of what Britain is for.

If I were Andy Burnham, I would call a second referendum. The people are ready. Europe is ready. Only Westminster is not.

And here is what Labour refuses to acknowledge: the people have moved on. The latest YouGov polling shows 55% of British voters would back rejoining the EU, with only 34% opposed. Ipsos puts it even higher — 58% of likely referendum voters would vote to rejoin. Most remarkably, 57% of Britons now say Brexit was wrong, compared to just 30% who still support it.

Labour has long hidden behind a convenient fiction — that their northern, working-class supporters, the so-called Red Wall, still hate Europe. This was always an oversimplification. It is now demonstrably false. New ECFR polling from May 2026 shows that support for a closer relationship with Europe now unifies the entire Labour coalition — from progressive city voters to former Labour supporters who have drifted toward Reform. The old Leaver/Remainer divide has dissolved. The new divide is on the right, among Conservatives. Labour’s Red Wall excuse is a phantom.

And Europe wants Britain back. Macron has said the door is always open. His ally Gabriel Attal has written openly in Le Figaro of his hope to see Britain return. Germany’s Chancellor Merz signed a landmark friendship treaty with Britain last year, with back-to-back visits from Macron and Merz symbolising Europe’s desire to reintegrate Britain into its strategic core. Spain’s Prime Minister has said he would absolutely support British membership. Finland’s President has said plainly: we need a UK voice in Europe. We really miss you.

Britain was a former member. The institutional metrics — rule of law, democratic governance, economic standards — are all met without question. Re-entry would not be the years-long ordeal of a new applicant. The architecture is there. The will on both sides is there. The polling mandate is there. All that is missing is a Prime Minister with the courage to act.

Instead of calling a referendum that could heal Britain’s deepest wound, Burnham offers us a power shift from London. This is not leadership. It is performance.

Seven Prime Ministers in ten years is the verdict of history on a nation that made a catastrophic choice and then lacked the courage to correct it. Each leader has been consumed by the same impossible task: making Brexit work as promised, while being forbidden by political cowardice from admitting that it cannot.

Burnham may prove the exception. But his opening position suggests otherwise. Britain does not need its power shifted from London to Manchester. It needs a Prime Minister willing to speak a simple truth: Brexit has failed, the British people know it, Europe wants you back, and it is time to go home.

Share if you agree. Britain deserves better than this. 