Politics
Australia’s leadership spill history might still teach the UK what not to do
In the early 2000s, Australia topped the charts for an interesting political indicator: the most leadership spills. Since that time, the Australian Labor Party has tightened down on debate and dissent, perhaps in an effort to look united after bad polling has driven various leaders out of office.
History may be about to repeat itself as governments attempt to silence debate on issues affecting diverse and marginalised communities once again. But it is not only in Australia where this crackdown on dissent is being felt. With the Burnham Bounce in effect, will the UK follow suit?
Do you know who the Prime Minister is?
University of Canberra’s Centre for Deliberative Democracy’s Dr Emily Foley has been studying the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and its policies. Referring to the Kevin Rudd–Julia Gillard–Kevin Rudd period from 2007 onwards, she notes:
When Australians presented to the emergency department with head injuries, they stopped asking them who the Prime Minister was.
People had no idea – even regular people who had not sustained head injuries couldn’t tell you who the prime minister was because it had flipped so many times.
Reporter Rodney Tiffen crunched the numbers in 2015 for Inside Story and counted 72 state or federal leadership spills since 1970, with 31 from 2000 to 2015 alone.
What is a leadership spill?
A spill occurs when the members of a political party decide to change party leadership – usually through a vote; often because someone has mounted a challenge.
Foley said it is not always faction-based:
Australian factional dynamics are really organizational, and whilst they were sort of ideological, I would say that the focus of the factions being there at the moment in the Australian context – it’s about discipline and keeping the party structure with the rules.
If there’s a left Prime Minister, there’ll be a right-factional Deputy. It’s a way to organize conference, but there seems to be at least now far less factional policy warfare within the Labor Party.
Burnham challenged Keir Starmer’s leadership earlier this year. In late July 2026, Ben Carroll ousted Victorian Labor Premier Jacinta Allen.
Foley said the UK Labour Party’s factions functioned differently:
The factional dynamics between the two parties are very different…
Something that I’ve noticed in the UK context, when this spill was happening, it was crazy some of the stuff that these Labour MPs were saying in public, that they would never say in the Australian context. The Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips – she said something that was the most articulate way to describe the modern Labour party, which was about being sick of being made to feel grateful about incremental change…
That was not happening in Australia. So I think there’s this real lack of discipline, both within the factions and within the MPs and the Labor Party in the UK. They were just saying what they thought on the radio, which is crazy.
Polls have an impact
In 2016, writer and researcher Lucy Wark examined the polling data before and after major national leadership spills. She found that the moment a leader polled badly, a spill was not far behind.
She also found that, after a spill, there was negative sentiment for the ALP and positive sentiment for the Liberal Party.
Foley said the polls are often used as justifications:
The polls were kind of predicting it but it’s hard because that’s also a bit chicken and egg, right? Because [Malcolm] Turnbull used those news polls to oust [Tony] Abbott. He said: ‘We’ve lost X amount of news polls in a row, which is why we need to do this leadership spill.’
But Foley also thinks the spills come with consequences:
So something that I think is really obvious is that, because of all the leadership spills and the discontent, what that sort of fostered actually is an overwhelming sense of discipline within the party where the focus is to seem cohesive and united at all costs.
She pointed to ALP Minister Ed Husic’s motion to recognise genocide in Palestine at the ALP Conference in July 2026, which got shut down without debate:
There was this real stance from the media reporting that the conference, which used to be a place of a really intense kind of contest of ideas, is no longer that and and you also hear about that in terms of caucus: that [current Prime Minister Anthony] Albanese tends to run caucus really tight – there’s not many dissenting positions.
So I would say that’s probably a hangover from those years of instability where the [Australian] Labor Party have made it clear that they want to appear united rather than divided.
Husic told the ABC that he didn’t “give a shit” if party colleagues froze him out for speaking on contentious issues.
In 2024, former ALP Senator Fatima Payman crossed the floor on a motion on Gaza to follow what was agreed at the previous ALP Conference and was expelled from the ALP. Foley said:
The parties have professionalized to the point where they are no longer speaking to their rank and file area.
I definitely think the leadership spills would have exacerbated this idea of the ministry in particular wanting to kind of shut dissenting voices down.
Foley also said it would not just be the polls or the spills alone, but the ALP and UK Labour reacting to the rise of other parties:
If you’re looking at a comparative piece, there just wasn’t the threat of One Nation or Reform that there is now, back in those years [2010–2013].
The UK Labour panic
Foley said the electoral loss of more than 1100 local councils was what kicked off the Burnham-Starmer spill:
In the UK, it wasn’t the polls or Reform, it was the fact that the Labour Party lost like 70 percent of councillors – that’s what began everything.
She adds that UK electoral reform might result, but that trust has been damaged too:
As a result, parties are seen to be not doing enough. Then they try to put in reforms. But they’re also very cautious because they’re all running on very thin majorities or very thin support. So then the reforms that they put in tend to be cautious as a result.
She said the UK Labour Party faces the same issues as the ALP:
You know, the Labour Party, for example, is not catering as much to its voter base anymore because that voter base is shifting and changing. They don’t have the social cleavages that would tie them to, say, the union movement as much anymore. They’re factoring in business so there’s all these neoliberal pressures that they are experiencing.
So will Burnham bounce back or like the ALP, build barricades instead?
Featured image via SBS Albanian
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