Crisis by Habit: Why We Now Expect Prime Ministers to Fall

There is a peculiar modern ritual in British politics. A story breaks. The name "Epstein" appears. A backbencher says something dramatic. Within hours we are told a prime minister's "days are numbered".

It is almost mechanical now.

Peter Mandelson's association with Jeffrey Epstein was not unearthed yesterday. It had been in the public domain for years. When Mandelson was appointed ambassador to Washington, that relationship was known and vetted. The present row turns on how extensive that contact was after conviction and whether the full picture was disclosed during the appointment process. That is serious. It is also specific.

From that, we have leapt to leadership obituary mode.

On what structural basis?

There is no organised leadership bid. No coordinated faction gathering numbers. No cabinet exodus. No confidence motion. Labour retains its majority. The Intelligence and Security Committee is reviewing the relevant material. The police are investigating Mandelson. Institutions are functioning.

What we are seeing is narrative inflation.

And part of the reason it inflates so easily is that the country has been conditioned to expect collapse. Four Conservative prime ministers in fourteen years rewired expectations. Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak. Leadership became disposable. A wobble meant a resignation letter. A bad week meant a removal van.

That was not normal British politics. It was a governing party fracturing under Brexit pressure and market reality. But the habit stuck. We now instinctively read every controversy as the prelude to execution.

So a Commons climbdown becomes "authority shot". A handful of irritated MPs becomes "days numbered". The word "Epstein" guarantees maximum emotional voltage, and the news cycle obliges by turning ambiguity into crisis.

None of this means Starmer is untouched. Political capital is cumulative. A public retreat dents it. He built his brand on probity and caution, so anything that jars with that narrative stings harder. But embarrassment is not structural failure.

British prime ministers fall when three conditions align: public polling collapse, internal coordination against them, and a credible successor waiting in the wings. Those mechanics matter more than headline temperature. None of them are currently in place.

If the Intelligence and Security Committee produces evidence that Starmer knowingly approved something materially worse than what was understood at the time, the calculus changes. Evidence changes things. That is how constitutional systems are supposed to work.

Until then, much of what we are witnessing is a press corps trained by fourteen years of Conservative self-immolation, projecting instability onto a situation that does not yet justify it.

Heat is not the same as structural failure. And in British politics, unlike the last few Tory years, prime ministers do not automatically fall just because the headlines shout that they should.