With the resignation of Keir Starmer, the UK is set to have its seventh prime minister in 10 years.
This is a far cry from a country that was once touted for its ability to produce stable and long-lasting governments compared to other European nations, due to its first-past-the-post voting system, the principle of parliamentary sovereignty and its evolutionary tradition of governance.
Since 2016, the political turmoil and polarisation that followed the Brexit referendum, frequent scandals in the previous right-wing Conservative government, and an ailing economy have meant that not a single British prime minister has managed to survive a full parliamentary term from one general election to the next — cycles that are typically meant to last five years.
David Cameron, who campaigned for the UK to remain in the EU, stepped down during his second term in July 2016 after losing the Brexit vote; Theresa May left the post three years later after repeatedly failing to get her Brexit deal through parliament; and Boris Johnson left the job in September 2022 following numerous scandals, including revelations he attended otherwise prohibited parties during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
His successor, Liz Truss, stayed in the post for only 49 days, becoming the shortest-serving prime minister in British history, after her government’s mini-budget sparked severe financial market turmoil.
Rishi Sunak was then defeated by Starmer’s centre-left Labour Party in the 2024 general election, having been in office for just under two years, and bringing the Conservatives’ 14-year rule to an end.
Now Starmer himself has announced his resignation amid pressure from his own MPs after Labour plummeted in the polls and suffered devastating local election results, and amid controversy over Starmer’s appointment of the UK’s ambassador to the US.
With Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, most likely poised to take the leadership of the Labour Party and therefore become the UK’s seventh prime minister since 2016, the country now finds itself at the centre of online claims that it is “ungovernable” and that it has the highest leader turnover rate in Europe.
Others say that other countries are worse, comparing the office of prime minister specifically (rather than presidents or other heads of state or government) across European states in the same time period.
But which of these claims are true? How does the UK compare in the number of leaders it’s had between 2016 and 2026?
To ensure as fair a comparison as possible, we matched UK prime ministers against the individual European Council members who have held executive power in each EU nation over the past 10 years. The title of this role varies by country: some are presidents, some are prime ministers, and some are chancellors, for example.
British prime ministers were themselves European Council members before the UK left the EU in 2020.
We did not exclusively compare the office of prime minister in each country, as some posts did, because the role varies across the continent. Our count includes any leader who has served at any point between 2016 and 2026, and anyone who left office during that time and returned at a later period is only counted once.
With all this considered, Bulgaria is top of the leaderboard, coming in with 10 unique prime ministers between 2016 and 2026, owing to years of political instability and fragile coalitions.
The UK and Austria are in joint second place with seven, once the incoming British prime minister is factored in and excluding short-term acting chancellors in Austria who temporarily exercised office between governments but were never formally sworn in as permanent chancellors.
Italy was once seen as the poster child for countries with a conveyor belt of leaders, famously cycling through dozens of governments since World War II at an average rate of about one per year, often with a new prime minister. Now, though, it comes in joint third place with Latvia and Slovakia at five leaders each.
At the bottom of the table are a number of EU countries with only two leaders between 2016 and 2026, including two French presidents, two Portuguese prime ministers, and two Spanish prime ministers.
Europe’s differences make it hard to fully compare
Of course, each country has a different system of government, and leaders across the continent are voted in in different ways, meaning some positions are more stable than others.
Some, such as the UK, have a parliamentary system, in which there is both a head of government (the prime minister) and a separate head of state (a monarch or ceremonial president). Voters elect members of parliament, who then select the prime minister (usually the leader of the majority party or coalition). Prime ministers and their cabinets are accountable to parliament, which can remove the executive through a vote of no confidence.
Others, such as Cyprus, have a presidential system, where a president is the sole head of government and head of state. They are elected directly by the public and generally cannot be removed simply because they lose parliamentary support.
Others still have semi-presidential systems, where a directly-elected president, who serves as head of state, and the prime minister share executive powers. This is the case in the likes of France and Romania. The prime minister and cabinet are accountable to both the president and parliament, the latter of which can force the prime minister to resign via a vote of no confidence.
The president, however, generally serves a fixed term and cannot be simply removed by parliament, although some countries have constitutional procedures for impeachment in exceptional circumstances.
All of this to say that, in true European fashion, it can be difficult to make direct comparisons between leaders across countries, as they all function in different ways.
For example, the president of France is voted for directly in a presidential election, while the prime minister of the UK is the leader of the party that commands a majority in parliament, traditionally after a general election.
This means that, if the party wants to change leadership, as was the case with Starmer, the country doesn’t need to hold another general election. Instead, the ruling party chooses a new leader who then slots into the role of prime minister.
Other European countries, meanwhile, have governments that are made up of fragile coalitions, meaning that if one coalition partner pulls out, the whole government could topple, and a new one, including the prime minister, would need to be built from scratch.
Direct comparison of PMs also not fully clear
This also shows why posts comparing the number of prime ministers specifically (rather than heads of state or government) across Europe and the world are misleading, as their roles differ depending on the country.
Sometimes they hold the highest office in the land, and at other times they are presidential appointees and are often used as an administrative shield for the head of state.
This explains why some countries that don’t operate in a parliamentary system, such as France, have indeed had their own revolving door of prime ministers in recent years. Indeed, if we were to compare the changes in the office of prime minister in Europe since 2016 specifically, the UK doesn’t actually feature in the top three.
France has seen nine, largely caused by the political crisis between 2024 and 2025 in the wake of legislative elections that returned a hung parliament split three ways. The deadlock, coupled with budgetary disputes, led to a swift handover of power from Gabriel Attal to Michel Barnier, then to François Bayrou, and finally to current Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu.
Bulgaria’s 10 prime ministers in the same time period are the result of extreme political fragmentation and the inability of parties to form stable majority coalitions. In April, voters went to the polls for the eighth time in five years and seemingly put an end to the instability: the left-wing populist party Progressive Bulgaria won a landslide victory, and Rumen Radev was named prime minister.
Romania, meanwhile, has had 11 prime ministers since 2016 (counting each individual only once, in the case they ever returned to office). The country’s governments have been unstable for years, with the last time a prime minister completed a term being in 2008.
Most recently, Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s government fell in May after losing a vote of no-confidence in the wake of a political crisis and controversial pension reforms, although he remains in office for now as caretaker.
