Every UK Prime Minister Since Brexit Ranked From Bad to Worst

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of the author.

Britain had spent decades working up the image of a dull government that was dependable. A government that made sure the bins got collected on time and the potholes got fixed.

And then it held a referendum.

Since voters chose to leave the EU in June 2016, there has been crisis after crisis — an inflation index that keep rising, a global pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the rise of anti-immigration sentiment, and most recently, the Iran war in the Middle East threatening a global recession. 

David Cameron, the man who called the vote, belongs to the before-times. He quit the morning after and no one has since been able to fare well against the onslaught.

That’s the cruel premise here. We’re not ranking UK prime ministers after Brexit successors from good to bad, because the former doesn’t exist. We are ranking them from merely disappointing to downright catastrophic. One failed honorably. One failed dishonestly. And one failed so fast she didn’t even outlast the wilting of a vegetable.

Theresa May (2016-2019) was the honorable casualty

May took the keys to Downing Street in July 2016. She then spent three years trying to deliver a Leave vote she had argued against, having backed Remain before her appointment.

Her signature line — “Brexit means Brexit” — was a lesson in how not to put your foot in your mouth. She triggered the two-year Article 50 countdown in March 2017, then committed the unforced error that doomed her: calling a snap election to pad her majority and then losing outright. (via NPR) 

The first defeat in January 2019 was the heaviest blow a British government has ever suffered. Per the Institute for Government, the 230-vote margin utterly dwarfed the previous modern record set back in 1924. Her own benches revolted in great numbers, with Public Choice counting 33 ministerial resignations over Brexit alone.

May was personally honest about it all and was never found to have lied to Parliament. Corruption didn’t cause her downfall. She simply set impossible red lines for herself and failed to deliver on them.

Rishi Sunak (2022-2024) was the competent loser

Rishi Sunak took over in October 2022 to mop up after the Truss inferno. To his credit, the markets stopped screaming almost at once. He was also Britain’s first prime minister of Indian heritage.

The trouble began with his plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. The Supreme Court struck down the plan as unlawful — and according to Al Jazeera, only four people were sent to Kigali. The bill ran to roughly £700 million of public money, an insane figure for negligible results.

Then there was the matter of his wealth — valued at around £640 million. Other controversies hastened his fall, but the biggest one has to be insulting D-Day veterans by leaving its 80th anniversary early to record a TV interview. (per NBC News)

Keir Starmer (2024-2026) and the case of the squandered landslide

On paper, Keir Starmer’s inclusion on this list might come off as discordant. In July 2024, Labour took 411 seats and a commanding majority (per the House of Commons Library), yet it managed it on roughly 34% of the vote.

Starmer’s first defining move was cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners. According to YouGov data compiled by Statista, it was the single least popular thing his government did.

Then came the Peter Mandelson scandal. Starmer fired his ambassador to Washington after the Epstein files exposed his ties to the sex offender. The crisis engulfed his party for months, and by autumn 2025, only 13% of the voters were satisfied with his performance, against 79% who were not, per Ipsos.

On June 22, 2026, Starmer announced he would step down — leaving Britain to now brace for its sixth prime minister in seven years.

‌Boris Johnson (2019-2022) was the liar who got things done

Boris Johnson had real achievements, like a thumping 80-seat majority in 2019, finally executing Brexit, and managing early vaccine rollout in the UK. People also praised his steadfast backing for Ukraine. 

The only catch? He was also, by the formal verdict of Parliament itself, a liar.

The scandal that ended up burying Johnson was Partygate, the revelation that Downing Street had thrown gatherings during lockdowns, at the very moment ordinary Britons were practically denied sitting with dying relatives. 

In April 2022, the Metropolitan Police fined Johnson over one such gathering, making him the first prime minister found to have broken the law while in office, per Quartz.

Partygate cast a long shadow on government integrity, the kind that hadn’t been seen in decades. As for Johnson himself, he never quite recovered.

Liz Truss (2022) was the worst, and it isn’t even close

Liz Truss lasted 49 days, the shortest premiership in British history. In that short window, she did more harm than almost anyone in that position. The Conversation framed her entire tenure around a single act of self-sabotage.

We are of course referring to the £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts — heavily tilted toward the wealthy — that caused government borrowing to spike, and pension funds to be dragged to the edge of collapse.

The economy took a devastating hit. Days before the end, Truss insisted that she was “a fighter and not a quitter.” She resigned the next morning. The media dealt the finishing blow by putting her up against a a supermarket lettuce, asking which one would wilt first.

Truss has since blamed everyone but herself. The markets, the institutions, the bureaucrats, you name it. But the mortgage payers of Britain — still dealing with the aftermath — know better.

(featured image: Image by ©UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor, CC BY 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons)

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.