Today, Explained - Anarchy in the UK

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

The UK is about to have its seventh prime minister in 10 years. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Count Binface is running to replace Reform UK Party leader Nigel Farage for a seat in Parliament. Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's a big day for England. They're facing off against Argentina in the Men's World Cup in Atlanta. But back home, things are kind of messy. Voters are big mad. Yet another prime minister is about to lose his job. And one of the main opposition figures is being challenged by a guy called Count Binface, who wears a trash can on his head. Oh my goodness.

Looks like something out of Star Wars. National policies. Nationalize Adel. Build at least one affordable house. Clyde nurses pay to that of ministers. Rename London Bridge after Phoebe Waller. I'll make cyclists to disobey the highway code. I have to ride unicycles instead. Sadly, today explained from Vox will not be about Count Binface.

Instead, we're going to talk about the political chaos that's led to this moment where voters are excited about a man wearing a trash can on his head. Explain. Today explained Sean Ramos firm, we asked Tom McTag, editor-in-chief at New Statesmen in the UK, to join us and tell us why they're about to have their seventh prime minister in a decade. We are living through very weird times here in Britain. So we're just not used to this. You know, we sort of prided ourselves on being this island of stability in a crazy world. You know, we could smugly look out on. countries like Italy or Australia as they churned through their prime ministers and we just held steady with Margaret Thatcher for 10 years or Tony Blair for 10 years. And now we have become Italy, only with bad weather and worse food. I think big picture, we're actually not

that different to the rest of the Western world in this regard. In at least all of the same reasons that cause disquiet in the United States or in France or in Germany are the same kind of reasons that are causing political disquiet here. So, you know, immigration. So everyone's coming here. Poor economic growth. Wages need to be raised a lot more. Living standards, not improving as quickly as we're used to. Inflation post-pandemic. Inflation, bloody hell. Everything has just gone so up. All of that comes together. And it creates similar forces that you see in the US, right? So we have, you know, electoral coalitions,

the rise of people who can communicate super well on social media in the New Age, who grab hold of attention. But, you know, our woke culture is not protecting the interests of the British people. Green Party just hit a major milestone for the first time. Allowing people to come into Britain on those boats is directly endangering. for safety of women and children in our country. I think it's disgusting. It's just that I think what is happening here

is that that is happening in our parliamentary context rather than in a presidential context where you elect a president and they are there for a full term, whether they're unpopular or not. Here, if you lose the confidence of the public or the confidence of members of parliament, then suddenly you can be out on your ear

within weeks or months. Well, let's talk about the last time there was a major shift. It was in 2024 when voters had become wary of the Conservative Party, right, in the UK? And that's when they elected the Labour Party and its leader Kier-Starmorant office. They elected them with a landslide. A Labour landslide and then some. We did it! An astonishing majority they got in the House of Commons.

enough to basically do whatever you want. Now it has arrived. Change begins now. But I think once he'd gone into power, he didn't really know how he wanted to change the country. He stood on a manifesto of change, in quotes. You know, it was a kind of hopey changey thing, as you guys put it,

without much substance to him. I just do not accept that Britain is broken. There are so many opportunities to make a difference. In one sense, he was quite a small, conservative matter. He wanted to just get this thing working again, and he thought you could do that through sensible, incremental, rational, technocratic change. And I think that analysis has proven fundamentally flawed. He's just made mistake after mistake as Prime Minister, whether it's the repeated U-turns, whether it's his failure to tell a convincing narrative to the British people.

It turns out that for many people, he's not been the Prime Minister they hoped he would be. How do you think Keir Starmer's done in the last year? One word. One word. One word. One word. What follows Keir Starmer? Does the Labour Party retain control of Parliament?

Yes. So the Labour Party, it's the Labour Party fundamentally has kicked out its own Prime Minister. It's, you know, based on the fact that he was deeply, deeply unpopular in the country and they thought if they hung around with this guy any longer, that they were all screwed, basically, and that they would all lose their jobs. That's the reason why he's been removed from power. He lost the support of his members of Parliament and his cabinet, who eventually turned on him and looked to the man who's going to replace him, a guy called Andy Burnham, who is the mayor of Greater Manchester.

It is with some sadness that this result brings an end to my wonderful nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester. I always knew one day I would seek. to go back to Westminster to complete that unfinished business. Tell us a bit about him. I mean, they call him the King of the North? Yeah, you know, like the Game of Thrones stuff,

he's going to sort of come down with his, I don't know what even know what they're called, white walkers, is it, or something? It is. He's been styled by some as the King of the North, but who really is Andy Berman? The country isn't where it should be. It is stuck in a rut,

and clearly we can't go on like this. The north of England is, I guess the equivalent is the Rust Belt Midwest kind of vibe. It's seen as a place that is a bit more down to earth. It's a bit more post-industrial. You know, it's got more economic problems. It's a place which used to be rock-solid labour, but has moved to the right. Manchester, long contested as England's second city, but now a potential blueprint for the whole of the UK to change direction.

A city that once lost its aspirational residence to London, that trend now firmly reversed. Today, more people are arriving from the capital than moving to it, eager for a slice of Manchester's success. And so I think there is an opportunity here for Andy Burnham to win the next election and stick around for a bit longer. You know, you talk about leaders in the UK thus far having lacked demand, or perhaps a broad vision for the country. I wonder if the person who has those things right now is Nigel Farage. Could you tell our audience a bit about him? Yeah, sure. I mean, Nigel Farage was the man that was introduced to America by Donald Trump as Mr. Brexit. He is the figure on the populist right of British politics who has stood

outside of the Conservative Party, the traditional party of the right here, and challenged it for not being conservative enough, for not being patriotic enough, for not being tough enough on borders and immigration. The Conservative Party is not on the right, in any measurable way. 14 years that brought us the highest tax burden since 1947, 14 years that saw mass immigration

All of the things that, you know, happened to the Republican Party from the Tea Party, right, or from Donald Trump. It's just he did that from outside of the Conservative Party. And he is a kind of charismatic figure, a very good public speaker, very hard to pin down, speaks kind of fluently and off the cuff. Fancy a Peroni, a pinnestella, Ed Miliband says that to save money, pubs should serve lager, one. warmer. He is a cretin. Imagine it, warm lager. And he, I think something like the six or seventh time of trying,

was finally elected to the House of Commons at the last election for his insurgent populist party called Reform UK. And from that position, he has taken the party into the lead in the polls. But something else is going on now, where because he is a prospective future Prime Minister, he is facing a level of scrutiny that he hasn't faced before.

Who's the 32-year-old convicted fraudster who funded Nigel Farage? I've got to ask you a question about this five million pound gift from this crypto billionaire. With all due to your respect, what's it going to do with you? Nigel Farage has resigned. But there's a twist. Farage has quit his seat in Parliament in order to trigger a special election in which he says he will run and plan. to win, thereby returning to the House of Commons.

Now, so far, one of the only few who say they will stand in the Clacton by-election is Count Binface. Good morning from space. Hello to you. First question, why would an intergalactic space warrior want to stand to be the MP for Clacton? Why not? It's a good question. Tell me about your manifesto. What can you offer? So all sorts of stuff is going on in British politics, which sounds completely wild. People are looking at the situation, this run of prime ministers, this ascendancy of Nigel Farage, who's a bit of incompetent and a bit of a firebrand, I suppose. But they look at the situation and they say the UK has become ungovernable.

What would you argue the situation is, Tom? Look, I would argue that it's parliamentary democracy and its messy kind of fundamentals. You know, Britain is a country, like many countries in Western Europe, which is struggling to work out how it's going to make its way in the world in the 21st century, in a world where so many of the assumptions which we have come to take for granted no longer appear to be holding. A United States that is a trusted ally, that is changing, free market economics, you know, global free trade appears to be ending. And you add into that social media, AI revolution, all of this. And it feels like actually I think the turmoil in British politics is just a reflection of a kind of turmoil in the world and in the global. economy. You know, you can see the same sorts of questions going on in Canada, in Australia, France and Germany. I don't think any one really has the answers yet, and Britain certainly

doesn't. Find Tom's work at Newstatesman.com. The UK is going through some of the same frustrated political motions we're seeing elsewhere, sure. But there is something exceptionally British about this mess, and we're going to hit that next on Today Explained. Support for the show comes from Chime. Ding-dong. Chime is changing the way people bank by offering rewarding fee-free banking. They're not like traditional old banks that charge you overdraft,

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All investing is subject to risk, you guys. Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor. Today explained. My name is Idris Kalloon, and I'm a staff writer at The Atlantic. And for the Atlantic, you recently wrote a piece titled How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi. And the first question I have to ask you is, what did Mississippi do to you? It didn't do anything, but, you know, Mississippi is America's poorest state. And it's often the benchmark that people compare themselves to both in America and outside of it.

And we chose the comparison to make the point that actually, you know, living standards in the UK have stagnated. That's really what's gone on here. And for 18 years, wages have not grown. GDP has barely grown. And the result is that, you know, over that time period, America was growing spectacularly. And now America's poorest state is on par with the UK. But really, the story here is about what went on in the last 20 years and, why the UK is kind of stuck in place economically.

And you reported this story out in Britain, right? How does this poverty you're talking about manifest? Because I imagine people go to London for Wimbledon or something, they're not feeling the poverty that you write about. Yeah, London's, you know, a great global cosmopolitan place, and it's a great place to be. But in the same way that you don't get a feel for America by visiting New York or San Francisco,

London itself doesn't tell you the whole story. And, you know, it is the kind of thriving metropolis in the UK. And a lot of the rest of the country is not doing nearly as well. You know, one thing that I think people are astonished to learn about the UK is that salaries are very, very low. So Americans who are interested in moving to the UK will often encounter salary offers that are a half, maybe a third, less than what they're making here. Junior doctors, for example, have been on strike 15 times in the UK over. their salaries. So last month for my normal salary, I made about £3,000.

What would be your starting salary as a doctor? So starting around 30K, for tax. If you're a British civil servant, which again, you know, they're this, you know, kind of the backbone of the British state, their salaries are less than 36,000 pounds a year. I'm a civil servant. I won't give you my exact salary, but in my job, it starts from about 26,000 pounds. So the pay isn't brilliant, but apparently the pension is good in the end. Do you won't show roughly how much you make on an annual basis?

43. And do you think you're paid fairly for the work that you do? No. So London is doing really well, but outside of it, things are much worse. It's comparable. One researcher, Anna Stansbury, told me, to the gaps between East and West Germany. That's kind of as big as we're talking. So unless you're going to those places, you're not fully capturing what the experience of being British is

and participating in the British economy. And you went to one such place. You left London and went to a place called Stoke-on-Trent, which a lot of people might not be familiar with. Can you tell us why you went there and what you discovered? So Stoke-on-Trent used to be the ceramics capital of the UK and really of the world. And so the urban landscape of the Staffordshire Pottery is developed,

with pot banks and housing crowded closely together. The next day, Queen Mary visits the potteries and pays an informal call at the famous Wedgwood factory, one of the oldest in Britain, and which carries the name of British craftsmen all over the world. And it used to be dominated by these structures called bottle kilns. These are these massive ovens that used to fire in the air. All of those kilns are not working anymore.

The number of ceramics pottery that are left are very, very few. When I visited, one of the few remaining kilns had trees growing in the crevices because of how, you know, just dilapidated things had become. And it wasn't just the things that declined over the decades, but it was also an immediate kind of recession. So a small number of ceramics workers had continued up until this point. And a lot of them are now going out of business because electricity costs have tripled in the last few years in the UK. They have some of the most expensive electricity in the world. People across Scotland are facing a huge rise in their energy bills.

Industrial electricity prices have soared since the pandemic. They're higher than Italy, Germany, France, and more than four times the price of costs in the US. And that obviously is not good for older industries like ceramics, but it's also not great if you want to be attractive for new industries like AI. How do we get to this point where the economy in England and across Britain is so depressed. So the turning point is really the financial crisis. Another nail-biting day for dealers on the London stock market.

Shares in the country's biggest banks were sold down and down again. Up until that point, the UK had been growing pretty strongly through the Blair years. They were very, very comparable to American living standards. And after the financial crisis, things just fall apart, really, for the country. So wages just don't increase after inflation. From 2008 to 2024, there's no movement. I mean, maybe 1% cumulatively.

Productivity, which is really the ultimate engine of growth in any economy, also comes very close to stopping over that time. In the UK, there's a National Health Service, and, you know, everyone is insured by right. The quality of the National Health Service has also taken a beating over the last 10 years. And so, you know, these are kind of headline numbers, but like what happened? I think after the financial crisis, a decision was taken by the conservative government at the time to reduce spending. This was a policy known as austerity. They knew the spending cuts were coming, and now Britons know just how deep and painful they'll be. The biggest losers following the Chancellor's emergency budget in June, according to a think tank, are the country's poorest.

And it cut things like benefits, it cut local government services, it hurt the NHS in terms of its capital budget, and all of those things caused kind of scarring in terms of the population, in terms of their ability to eventually go on and do economically productive things. It is also one reason that Britain voted for Brexit. Well, that's a bit rude to say to keep people out of our country, but to give our people jobs and that.

where it does spin for foreign people. All our resources are pushing limits, schools, hospitals, NHS, everything. And the places that were harmed the most that saw the greatest, you know, cuts in austerity were the places that voted for Brexit by the largest margin. Stoke-on-Trent kind of pops up again there. It experienced very, very large cuts in government services. And it was, you know, voted overwhelmingly for Brexit to the point that one politician called it the Brexit capital of the UK. And does Brexit make the Brexit make the Brexit? their fortunes better or worse?

I don't think there's anyone who could say that Brexit has made things better for the UK, even supporters of Brexit. Britain has had big ideas for how to change its economic fortunes, and I think one of the most telling examples is HS2, which is the high-speed rail line that was supposed to connect London with Birmingham and with Manchester leads. In 2009, Britain decided to take a step into the future. With the promise of economic growth, low-carbon travel, more capacity,

and some of the fastest trains on Earth. It has tripled in costs to more than $100 billion. It's going to take 30 years to complete. It is not even going to go to Manchester. It's not even going to go to Leeds. It's just going to be a line from Birmingham to London, which already exists. It's going to cost 100 billion pounds. And it's going to have, you know, it's been beset with all of these permitting problems.

There's going to be a special bat structure. This is the HS2 Bat Tunnel, a 100 million pound, one kilometer shed, to protect the estimated 300 bats in woodland nearby. I don't really see why we should spend 100 million quid on basically a cage for a high-speed train. Like bats fly in the air, they can just fly over. Well, that is the key thing. Why can't they fly over? And you see this kind of problem replicated in all sorts of British ambitions, big and small.

So there was an effort to study whether or not you should build a tunnel underneath Stonehenge. So, you know, they studied for 30 years whether or not you should just go underneath. And I think they spent almost 180 million pounds and ultimately came up with nothing. Like literally nothing was built. It was just spent studying the problem. And that is, you know, something that's very familiar to Americans, this kind of pathology. But it is just prevalent all over Britain. And with the current crisis of leadership we've got in the UK, do you see there being more harm before you actually have solutions being implemented?

So if someone who's just written something quite pessimistic about Britain, I feel. feel a bit optimistic about the leadership change. Andy Burnham was the mayor of Manchester, which has been one of the places that has actually been the exception to the rule of British doom and gloom. And I think that the story that he's able to tell about how he's going to improve things in the country is a compelling one. But I think the fact that Starmor failed really reinforce the idea that neither party knows how to fix it. And I think if Burnham is also unable to do things, at that point, I think that people inevitably turn to Farage and they turn to other parties.

And so I think that the stakes are quite high in terms of governance because I think that what comes after him is not a labor or a conservative prime minister or someone else. As you heard earlier, Adrease wrote how Britain became as poor as Mississippi for the Atlantic. Miles Bryan read it for today, explained Jolie Myers edited Miles, David Tadishore and Patashore. Patrick Boyd listened carefully and Gabriel Dunatab says Count Binface would be a miracle. Why not?