On October 20, British Prime Minister Tras announced his resignation, and at this time she was only 45 days before taking office, so she became the shortest-lived prime minister in British history.

In the past few months, the British political arena has continued to turmoil and personnel changes frequently. A tweet a few days ago summarized this chaos in a rather humorous situation: my son has experienced four Chancellors of the Exchequer, three House Ministers, two Prime Ministers and two monarchs in his life, and he is only four months old.

It should be said that since the Brexit referendum in June 2016, British politics has fallen into a drift. Since then, Britain has changed five prime ministers in six years. After 2006, Japan had a seven-year seven-phase situation, and now, Britain is nowhere to be inferior.

From the past, Britain was a relatively conservative country with tradition, a relatively stable political arena, and it was not so frequent that it became like this now?

Brexit opened Pandora's box

Let's first look at why these recent prime ministers stepped down.

Cameron stepped down because of the Brexit referendum. Before this, his political career should be said to be smooth sailing and his public opinion was highly supported. The reason why he agreed to hold a Brexit referendum in June 2016 was mainly because he was too careless and had a fluke mentality. He believes that the Brexit referendum cannot be successful. Since so many people want to hold this referendum, I will let you hold it. If you fail, you will give up. In other words, his fundamental problem is that he lacks political judgment and underestimates the public opinion basis of Brexit too much. He did not prepare seriously before the referendum. In the end, he missed the front line. When Brexit became a reality, he could only pass the championship.

took over him by Theresa May . She was originally a European-staying faction, but she didn't want to leave the EU in her philosophy, but she was reluctant and entangled inside. In addition, she lacked personal abilities and could not control such a complicated situation. Moreover, the Brexit faction represented by Johnson has been making trouble for her, which made Theresa May ended up in a dismal way. Although she is the second female prime minister in British history after Thatcher , her performance is really not satisfactory.

Johnson took over her. Johnson turned out to be the mayor of London, and his reputation was relatively high at that time. This person can be said to have brought the speculative political camp to the extreme. He may not be so opposed to EU in his heart, but he found that Brexit could be used as a political operation to achieve personal ambitions. Because if the European Remaining Party has always had the upper hand, he would have no chance, so he must find another way to achieve his personal goal by manipulating Brexit and rejecting the European Remaining Party.

In the end, he succeeded. Through a series of bewitching slogans fabricated by the Brexit faction, many British people felt that the EU was the source of chaos that took away their happy lives. So on June 23, 2016, Britain left the EU in a daze. At the moment of its release, a large number of British talents woke up from their dreams and began to search online for "What is the EU?", Johnson made a move again, drove Theresa May off the stage and replaced him.

Johnson, who is not a good person, began to let go after he took office. After the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, the UK once implemented a very strict blockade, and the people could not even go out. Instead, Johnson held several large-scale parties at the Prime Minister's Office, inviting guests widely, and did not take the blockade order seriously at all. After the scandal was exposed, he still stubbornly apologized, but in the end he couldn't hold on, so he resigned. Tras, who took over him, is not very reliable. Before she took over as Prime Minister, she was a British foreign minister. In early February this year, due to the tense situation in Russia and Ukraine, she went to Russia to visit and tried to mediate, and met with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov .During the talks, she couldn't even understand some basic geographical common sense between Russia and Ukraine, and eventually she had to rely on the British ambassador to Russia to mediate it. Lavrov looked impatient at the time. At that time, someone sighed: I didn’t expect that Britain would decline to such a level, and the former British Empire actually chose a person of such a level as the foreign minister.

In addition to the poor business level, one of the big problems for Tras is that his political stance is unstable and he changes his mind, which is in line with Johnson. When she was studying, she was a member of the Liberal Democratic Party of and tried her best to criticize the Conservative Party. Later, she might have found that the Conservative Party is more powerful and then turned to the Conservative Party camp. She was once a European-staying faction, but when she found out that the Brexit faction had the upper hand, her position immediately turned around. Later, she had a firmer position on the issue of Brexit than anyone else.

And Tras's prime ministerial career has not been smooth since the first day. The important reason for her election is that the Conservatives cannot accept the ethnic and religious background of her rival Sunak, so they have to choose her. But the British people did not like her. On the day of Tras' election, a large number of British people gathered at the Prime Minister's residence and demanded that she step down. At that time, Tras's poll support rate was only 12%, the lowest record for successive British prime ministers.

Tras, who just came to power, was eager to fulfill his campaign promise and quickly promulgated the largest tax cut policy in the UK in decades, including the cancellation of the plan to raise corporate tax to 25%, the cancellation of the highest first-level income tax rate of 45%, and the significant reduction of stamp duty, which means fiscal revenue will be reduced. At the same time, due to the soaring energy prices, the British's energy expenditure was very heavy. In order to please the people, Tras promised to set an upper limit on each energy bill, and the excess was subsidized by the government, but where did the money come from? have no idea.

After calculation, this energy subsidy requires £60 billion, and the UK's fiscal deficit is already at its highest point in history. In this way, only going out but not in, the finances are likely to be unable to hold on, and the market begins to panic, so the stock market and bond markets have three kills, and the exchange rate of pound against the US dollar dropped to nearly 1:1. Later, the Bank of England had to take corresponding measures to avoid worse situations.

Tras found that the momentum was wrong and immediately canceled the tax cuts. At the same time, he turned the blame on the Chancellor of the Chancellor Kwoten, saying that he did this, and I had no idea. This completely violates the public's cognitive bottom line: How could you not know? Therefore, Trass is incapable of her position in terms of ability and political character, and her resignation is expected.

Sunak (left) and Trass, Queen Elizabeth II Convention Center, London, UK, September 5, 2022. At that time, Sunak lost in the Conservative Party's top election (Visual China/Photo)

The British in chaos was in trouble. According to

, Sunak was the one who replaced Trass.

Sunak is an Indian descent. His ancestors immigrated from India to the British colony at that time. In the 1960s, Sunak's parents immigrated from Kenya to the UK. The couple was engaged in the medical industry. The father was a doctor and the mother was a pharmacist, and the family was wealthy. Sunak studied at a private school since he was a primary school student. He studied at Oxford University in (Philosophy, Politics and Economics). Later, he studied at Stanford University in the United States, where he met the daughter of Murty, the founder of Infosys, an Indian IT outsourcing company, and got married. Sunak himself was previously engaged in the financial industry, and his wife, one of the few rich second generations in India, became the most wealthy British rich man.

Two months ago, the Conservative Party felt unacceptable to Sunak's Indian and Hindu background. In addition, his status as a rich man gives people a feeling of being unearthful, so he chose Tras, but Tras's rule was a mess. In order to save the situation, the Conservative Party could not take care of so much.

Sunak at least understands economics, which is his plus point. However, the current UK's national debt has exceeded 2 trillion pounds, and the financial burden is heavy. No matter how capable Sunak is, he is still a clever man who can cook without rice. "Where does the money come from" will be his biggest challenge.Major institutions have predicted that the UK economy will enter negative growth this year, and it is unknown how long Sunak can last.

The chaos in the British political arena is not unrelated to the decline in its international status in recent years. When everything goes well, it is often easy for a country to reach a consensus at the elite level; once something goes wrong, it will give some ambitious people an opportunity to take advantage of it. They will attack them for their own personal gain. After going up, they often don’t stay for a long time due to lack of ability, so that the government frequently changes its commanders.

Brexit cannot be separated from a series of deep-seated reasons. The process of globalization has created a large group of frustrated people in the UK. They either lost their jobs due to industrial transfer and their factories relocated to third-world countries and their economic status declined; or they felt that when the UK was originally the EU, a large number of low-wage workers from Eastern Europe squeezed out their jobs and benefits... In the end, the dissatisfaction of these frustrated people broke out in the Brexit referendum.

However, after Brexit, the situation in the UK did not improve, but instead there was a shortage of middle and lower-level workers. One of the important reasons for the previous UK energy crisis was that the lack of tanker drivers led to the hindrance of transportation. Originally, most of these driver positions were filled by workers from Eastern Europe. After Brexit, these people were forced to leave.

In addition, after Brexit, the market for goods and services in the UK further narrowed. The most important trading partners were EU member states. Now the trade exchanges between the two sides are much more complicated than before. At the same time, the free trade agreement with the United States has not made any progress. At this stage, Britain seemed to have lost its status and was not as good as before. A landmark event was that the total amount of GDP in the UK was overtaken by India in early September this year.

When the situation is unstable, Scotland , Northern Ireland and Wales have always had calls for independence to varying degrees. Since Brexit, the demand for independence in these places has become increasingly louder.

develops according to this trend, and this drifting state in British politics will last for a considerable period of time.

Special written by Southern People Weekly Zhao Lingmin