India, June 23 -- As Keir Starmer announced his resignation, tears in eyes, outside the official home at 10 Downing Street, protesters at nearby Whitehall blared Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy', the anthem of the European Union. The timing was not lost on anyone. Starmer quit on June 22, almost to the day, ten years after Britain voted to leave the European Union.

Starmer's party had at the time opposed Britain's exit from the EU, but once it was done it had to work around it. That remains a central theme of how popular sentiment and the consequences of Brexit have shaken UK's politics into an uncertain mess.

Starmer is the sixth prime minister to leave office in the decade since the June 23, 2016 referendum, a rate of political turnover descr...