Will's Word: Is the UK's political instability a lesson for Aotearoa?

The political situation in the UK right now is a textbook example of how quickly a government can squander a massive electoral mandate.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing growing pressure over his leadership after Labour suffered a bruising result in the recent local elections.

What makes it so remarkable is that Labour was handed a landslide victory at the 2024 general election. After years of Conservative chaos, voters gave the party a huge amount of political capital and a clear opportunity to reset the country. Yet less than two years later, that appears to be evaporating.

If you follow politics closely, the backlash against Starmer hasn’t exactly come out of nowhere. It’s felt like a slow-motion car crash for months.

The government has repeatedly reversed course on major issues. Labour initially stripped winter energy subsidies from millions of pensioners before backtracking under pressure.

On immigration, the party has tried to walk a tightrope between tougher rhetoric and progressive values, ultimately managing to frustrate both sides of the debate.

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The result is a government that increasingly looks uncertain of what it actually stands for. And once voters start sensing hesitation and political backflips, confidence disappears quickly.

We’ve seen this story before in New Zealand.

Jacinda Ardern and Labour won an overwhelming majority in 2020, securing a level of political power rarely seen under MMP. But by the 2023 election, that support had collapsed.

Voters who backed Labour in huge numbers drifted away as frustration grew around controversial policy, and perhaps a sense that the government had lost focus.

That’s the real lesson here. Landslides don’t guarantee long-term political success.

If anything, they create even greater expectations.