In the UK’s parliament after 2019, cabinet ministers have typically held their positions for only eight months on average. This finding comes from a report that compared political stability in 17 countries, revealing that Westminster struggles in several areas.
The report, titled “Strong and Stable,” examined parliamentary and governmental stability over the last 50 years. It looked at 10 different aspects and used various electoral systems for comparison. The findings showed that proportional voting systems do not necessarily lead to more instability than the UK’s system. In fact, often the opposite is true.
One of the most striking findings about British politics is the short tenure of cabinet ministers. Between 1974 and 2023, the average tenure in the UK was 2.1 years. This was one of the lowest among the countries studied, with only Australia, France, and Italy having shorter tenures.
Swiss ministers, on the other hand, averaged 6.4 years in office, and Luxembourg’s ministers averaged 5.7 years. This information comes from the report prepared for Make Votes Matter, an organization advocating for proportional representation.
The longest average tenure for a UK cabinet minister over this 50-year period was 2.8 years, from 1997 to 2001. Even this was shorter than the lowest average tenure in Germany, which was 3.1 years from 1994 to 1998.
The situation has worsened in recent years, with the average term of UK ministers since the 2019 election being just eight months. The report criticizes this as far from a strong or stable government.
Part of this period includes the very brief tenure of Liz Truss as Prime Minister. While the average term for UK Prime Ministers is around 4.8 years, Truss’s term of 49 days is the shortest among all 17 countries studied since 1974.
When looking at the durability of entire cabinets, the UK also ranks near the bottom. However, it still performs better than Belgium, Ireland, and Italy, with British cabinets reaching 60% of their maximum duration on average.
The report, which compared 50 years of politics across countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and many more, found no evidence that the UK’s first-past-the-post voting system offers the stability its proponents claim.
One metric examined was the number of early elections. Canada and the UK, which do not use proportional representation, completed only 69% and 76% of full parliamentary terms, respectively. In contrast, countries with proportional representation systems, like Finland and Switzerland, completed nearly 100% of their terms.
The study also looked at electoral and ideological volatility. It found that systems based on proportional representation did not necessarily lead to more changes in seat composition or ideological shifts than non-proportional systems.
Alberto Smith from Make Votes Matter commented on the findings. He stated that frequently changing secretaries of state every eight months is not a sign of strength or stability but rather indicates chaos. He emphasized that this is not just a statistical outlier but part of a long-term trend of increasing instability in the UK.
Smith criticized the first-past-the-post system for leading to frequent and significant policy shifts, which waste time and resources. He contrasted this with countries that use proportional representation, where the need for cross-party consensus on major issues allows for a more long-term approach to policymaking, supported by a majority of the public’s votes.