- After leaving the EU, the country is already on its way to having -on the 28th- its fifth tenant of 10 Downing Street.

- The greatest political stability came from the hand of a Boris Johnson who ended up resigning involved in controversy.

Liz Truss, leaving 10 Downing Street.

The United Kingdom, in search of the fifth prime minister in six years of permanent crisis

When David Cameron called the Brexit referendum, he fulfilled an electoral promise that sought to satisfy the toughest wing of the Conservative party, but he also opened a time of crisis that lasts to this day. The United Kingdom has been in a vicious circle for six years that added another chapter with the resignation of Liz Truss, who has also become the shortest prime minister in the country's history with only 44 days in office. With another crisis hitting London on a political level, whoever arrives at Downing Street will also have to deal with the harsh economic consequences of the war in Ukraine. The never ending story.

David Cameron, the great "distraction"

"I'm leaving so I won't be a distraction." With this phrase, David Cameron left politics at the turn of the summer of 2016. At the beginning of it, in June, the British narrowly chose to leave the European Union. The Tories took a risk that had a lot of political calculation and very little reasoned decision: fearful that Nigel Farage's Europhobic party would take away a good base of voters, they put on the table the option of abandoning the community project. And it was a kind of leap into the void.

Javier Carbonell, associate professor at SciencePo and fellow at Future Policy Lab, explains to 20minutes that what is being experienced now "are the consequences" and draws a simile: "Brexit is like if you are sick, you take the wrong medicine and then you become worse. It is one of the reasons why you are ill, but you were already ill before". Therefore, they see the beginning in two things: "The extremely high degree of inequality that exists in the country and how much it has increased in the last forty years. It has been seen very clearly in the precariousness of work and with diminishing economic and middle class security.

"This, together with the fact that the two main parties proposed the same economic recipes, makes the division become due to cultural issues", the professor develops. In this sense, Carbonell also comments that "it is not something exclusive to the United Kingdom, but there it is much more pressing because neoliberal policies are much larger than in other countries and there is a clear element of loss of empire and nostalgia of a situation of greatness".

For her part, Inés Gómez Durán, a journalist specialized in International Relations, maintains that the key moment of the entire crisis "could be when the Brexit referendum is called, but this would be something very reductionist because it would be said that there is a single cause and It is not like this". For Gómez, "this comes from decades before" and gives as an example "the similarities that are being seen with respect to the economic crises of the seventies, when the famous winter of discontent occurred, for example, and there were many problems of shortages and energy crisis".

“If we go further back, we see from an influence of decolonization to an increase in nationalism with the 2008 crisis to that anti-Brussels sentiment” that led in part to Brexit, he continues. "What has shaped Brexit is still something underlying what is happening: a crisis of national identity," the analyst concludes.

May and the no agreement with the EU

Theresa May promised stability, reaching number 10 on the bounce and demanding that leaving the Union be as traumatic as possible. That is what his nearly three-year term in office boils down to: forging a relationship between London and Brussels that would lead first to divorce and then to lasting friendship. He did neither. He had to face elections, in 2017, in which the Conservatives lost the absolute majority they had and that further complicated his mandate.

After three negative parliamentary votes on the agreement reached with the EU, and after postponing the exit date twice, May's passage through power did not give more of itself. Without an absolute majority in the House of Commons, his fall was precipitated, but the challenges of the United Kingdom did not disappear with this. He left the issue for the next one, precisely with an open door for the most Brexiter wing of the party to close the issue.

Johnson and the shadow of the pandemic... and the 'partygate'

Who picked up the baton from May was Boris Johnson. He passed through Brussels as a correspondent and from there he inherited the animosity towards the European institutions, which made him become one of the souls in favor of leaving, along with Nigel Farage. With Johnson came the greatest mirage of stability that the United Kingdom has experienced in recent years and not only that, but in the 2019 elections, he boosted the Conservative party to an overwhelming absolute majority and its best historical result at the polls.

Those numbers allowed him, on the one hand, to keep the rope taut with the EU and, on the other, to ensure that the agreement with Brussels had the approval of the House of Commons. First issue resolved, but others arrived. The pandemic put his management in check, especially because at the beginning of the crisis he assumed the failed thesis of herd immunity, which he later had to rectify. He weathered the storm as best he could, not without controversy... and ended up falling because of partygate: the prime minister was investigated and fined for organizing parties at the Downing Street residence when citizens were confined and Covid-19 hit with hardness.

Johnson lost the confidence of his party and, although he saved the internal censure motion presented against him, the pressure was so high that he had to give in. And all this despite the fact that his latest purely political decisions raised the status of the United Kingdom: Ukraine found a very firm ally in London in the face of the Russian invasion and Johnson himself emerged as the Western leader with the most visits to kyiv since the beginning of the conflict. But the slab was very big against him internally.

"What is happening is not a purely political problem, but also an ideological one", considers Gómez, "because Brexit has been something more ideological than political or economic because, seen what has been seen, it has become a disaster" by not having carefully weighed the Conservatives the pros and cons of the referendum. From those muds, these muds, although different components are joined. "Now the conservatives are incapable of managing the problems", he wields and defines the situation with two 'souls': "Those who are in favor of having the party in peace, with someone who is not so attractive to the voter in the face of the elections ; and those who want a candidate who is closer to more extreme policies."

On this, Carbonell adds that "the problem has a political translation but it is not only political. The key is that the conservative party is unified on cultural issues, nationalism, Brexit, migration and is quite close to the idea of ​​the average voter, but it is divided on economic issues. With the Labor Party it is exactly the opposite." Likewise, the British majority system "causes the problems that exist, for example, in the rest of Europe between the far-right parties and the traditional conservative parties to occur within the same conservative party, and these divisions are much more evident."

The failed prime minister

And then Liz Truss arrived wanting to be Margaret Thatcher 2.0, with the applause of the most neoliberal wing of the party and promising a drastic turn in the midst of the crisis. His tranquility, on the other hand, lasted literally an hour because only three days after taking office, the death of Queen Elizabeth II disrupted all plans and already included the premier in the history books. The summary of his mandate is simple: he promised massive tax cuts that the markets did not accept. And the alarms went off. From there, the domino effect. Truss changed her finance minister to justify a change in strategy and she was the next to fall. She only lasted 44 days in office.

For Carbonell "the successor has it very complicated because he has to unify the party, something that seems complicated with any of the candidates. Sunak - who is the favorite - does not have the support of the most conservative wing" of the party. "Johnson's problem is that electorally it doesn't work, although if he wins there won't be a new government crisis," he clarifies. That unity "comes first, but it's unlikely." Beyond this, the analyst believes that it should "reinvigorate cultural issues" and gives the issue of the Brexit agreement as an example. That tension "clearly has to do with reviving English nationalism." This, Carbonell concludes, "is what the new premier should do, I think, if he wants to win the next elections, but it is very, very difficult."

Gómez defines the great challenges of those who arrive in a few words: "He has to face the serious crisis that is upon him and if he does it well he can even improve in the polls, and also precisely save the conservative party." Thus, he says, "the logical thing would be to find someone who could solve both things, but perhaps the formation has to choose between one thing or the other: without charisma but a good manager, and try to save the economy, or return for someone who is a little more radical. The UK therefore depends on the choice of a Conservative party which, six years on, still hasn't found itself.