A 174-seat majority (Labour 411, Conservatives 121) won on just 33.7% of the vote - the lowest winning share in post-war history. The modern test case for the whole topic: the biggest cushion since Blair, with almost every other factor working against him.
Hostile press from day one, a soft left pushing back over benefit cuts, Reform UK at 27% in 2026 polling, and a run of early shocks from the Southport riots to the Iran conflict.
Labour took 411 seats to the Conservatives' 121 in 2024 - a 174-seat cushion that lets Starmer lose dozens of his own backbenchers and still legislate, the opposite of Sunak's final year.
The essay use is the contrast with the rest of his row: the biggest majority since Blair, with almost every other factor working against him - proof a big majority alone does not make a dominant PM. The 2025 examiner report names exactly this comparison: Blair's first term against Starmer, two similar majorities, very different room to use them.
Labour won on just 33.7% of the vote - the lowest winning share in post-war history - so the mandate is huge in seats and thin in votes, and critics call it shallow and built on Tory collapse.
This is the 2025 examiner report's FPTP theme made flesh: lopsided seat counts on modest vote shares inflate the appearance of dominant PM power.
The right-wing press has been hostile from day one, and two rows each ran for weeks: the Lord Alli freebies story in 2024 and the Mandelson ambassador story in 2026.
Contrast with Blair, who had The Sun on side and Campbell running the Grid - the media factor can run against a PM from the first morning of a landslide.
No open rival has moved yet, but three wait: Andy Burnham, the popular Manchester mayor who can attack from outside Parliament; Wes Streeting, openly ambitious inside the Cabinet; and Angela Rayner, who resigned as Deputy PM and now sits on the back benches.
The big-beast factor is the one that turns first when a premiership weakens - use Thatcher and Johnson as the precedents.
Over 40 Labour MPs signalled revolt over disability benefit cuts in 2026, and the Reeves Budget split the parliamentary party - the soft left pushing back hard despite the size of the majority.
Pair with the spring 2025 welfare retreat: even a 174-seat cushion did not spare the government a forced climbdown.
The Conservatives suffered their worst result since 1832, but the threat moved rather than vanished: Reform UK hit 27% in YouGov polling in 2026, reshaping the right of British politics from a new direction.
The modern twist on the opposition factor - fragmentation can menace a PM as much as a single strong opponent.
A run of early shocks: the Southport riots in 2024 (where his firm response with fast court sentencing was judged competent and steadied him), Trump's second term disrupting trade, the Iran conflict pushing inflation back up, and lasting division over Gaza.
The factor's rule applies: it is the judged response, not the event, that moves a PM's power - and the economic shocks proved harder to answer than the riots.
The same office Blair held, with almost nothing working: no election win, no members' ballot win, a majority eroding from 80 to roughly 38, a cabinet that attacked him, a party split over Rwanda and the ECHR, Labour 15-20 points ahead, and crises he was rarely judged to have mastered.
The all-minus row - which is exactly why he pairs with Blair in any conditional-power paragraph.
He inherited Johnson's 80-seat majority but it eroded to roughly 38 by the election, through defections, lost whips and by-election losses - The Times tracked the steady drip.
A shrinking majority means every faction holds a veto: this cell explains most of the rest of his row.
He never won a general election - and never even won a members' ballot, having lost the 2022 contest to Liz Truss. He became PM only when she imploded, then delayed going to the country for nearly two years.
The weakest mandate of the five PMs in the grid, and the clearest case for the examiner theme that PMs now need a claimed personal mandate to govern with authority.
Nicknamed Drowning Street, with a posh, out-of-touch image that stuck - and leaving the D-Day commemorations early in 2024 was widely seen as ending his campaign.
The media factor at full negative strength: a single misjudged moment, instantly national under 24/7 coverage, another of the examiner's named themes.
The cabinet attacked him more than it backed him: Suella Braverman's sacking produced a savage resignation letter, and Boris Johnson loomed from the back benches throughout.
Where Blair's big beast shadowed him and Thatcher's ended her, Sunak's harried him in office - three variants of the same factor for one comparative paragraph.
The party split openly over Brexit, Rwanda, immigration and the ECHR; the Rwanda Bill votes saw the whipping operation break down repeatedly, with MPs defecting and losing the whip.
Party control is where majorities go to die - and his was dying at the same time, which is why the two cells compound each other.
A recovered Labour led by 15 to 20 points for over eighteen months and swept the by-elections - Wellingborough, Kingswood, Tamworth and Selby.
The strongest opposition any PM in this grid faced, against the weakest hand: the relative nature of PM power in one pairing.
He inherited crises and was rarely judged to have mastered them: inflation peaked at 11.1% in 2022, NHS strikes by junior doctors, nurses and consultants ran across 2023, and the mortgage-rate surge after the Truss mini-budget kept hurting homeowners. He made halving inflation a central pledge and could claim some success when it fell - but the wider sense that he could not turn the country around remained.
An 80-seat majority - the largest Conservative win since 1987 - on the clearest single-issue mandate of any modern PM: Get Brexit Done. A personal media brand, a Corbyn-led opposition at its weakest since 1935.
Then the cascade: Partygate, the Pincher affair, and Sunak's resignation in July 2022 triggering over 50 ministerial resignations in 48 hours.
The 80-seat majority of December 2019 was the largest Conservative win since 1987, and it let him drive through Brexit, lockdowns and the Northern Ireland Protocol with little internal resistance.
Read down the majority column for the comparative point: a large cushion strengthened Johnson, Blair, Thatcher and Starmer alike - one factor, five PMs, one paragraph.
Get Brexit Done was the clearest single-issue mandate of any modern PM, taking Workington, Bishop Auckland and dozens of other Red Wall seats - a personal authorisation for one policy, claimed and delivered.
It is the textbook example of the examiner theme of PMs claiming a personal mandate rather than a party manifesto one.
Boris was a personal brand before he was a Prime Minister - skilled at using the media and at dodging it, even hiding in a fridge to avoid an interview in 2019.
The presidential-style theme runs through this cell: a personalised campaign built around a leader's image rather than a party's programme.
Tame at first, then a cascade: Rishi Sunak's resignation in July 2022 triggered over 50 ministerial resignations in 48 hours, and the premiership was over within days.
Johnson fell because of Sunak and Javid resigning, not because of select committee scrutiny - the cell doubles as evidence in the parliament-scrutiny debate.
Strong at the start, collapsed by July 2022: MPs in open revolt over Partygate and the Pincher affair forced him out, 80-seat majority notwithstanding.
The clinching evidence against the presidential-PM thesis - a president cannot be removed by their own party mid-term, yet Johnson was. The checks-on-the-President grid at /topic-packs/us-presidency/president-checks-grid.html runs the other half of that comparison.
He faced Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, whose Labour lost 60 seats - its worst result since 1935. The opposition only sharpened later under Starmer, by which time Johnson's other factors had already turned.
The opposition column's lesson: a weak opponent flatters a PM's apparent power without adding anything durable to it.
His responses shaped the term as much as the events: the Covid vaccine rollout was judged a success and lifted him, and his early support for Ukraine after the 2022 invasion was well received. But Partygate - the parties held in Downing Street during lockdown - was judged a serious failure of honesty, and it turned the public, much of the Cabinet and finally his own MPs against him.
The rare case of a PM destroyed by an event of his own making.
Two landslides and a narrower third win: 179, 167, 66. A clear Change mandate, The Sun switched sides, Campbell ran the Grid, and the Conservatives went through three weak leaders.
The qualifiers: Brown as asset and threat in one person, the 139-MP Iraq rebellion, and the dodgy dossier breaking his media credibility - the era the spatial leadership and presidential-PM arguments were built on.
Two landslides and a narrower third: 179 in 1997, 167 in 2001, 66 in 2005. The 1997 cushion passed devolution, Bank of England independence and the minimum wage with ease.
Blair 1997 is the office at full power - six of seven factors green at once - and the benchmark every other row in this grid is measured against.
A clear Change mandate built on the 1997 manifesto and the education, education, education pledge - a programme the electorate could name, voted for at landslide scale.
Pair with Starmer's 33.7% for the sharpest mandate contrast the grid offers: two huge majorities, two very different authorisations.
Strong early: The Sun switched to Labour and Alastair Campbell ran the Grid, coordinating every government announcement from the centre. Then the dodgy dossier over Iraq in 2003 broke his credibility, and the asset became a liability.
The Grid itself outlived him - kept by every PM since - making this cell evidence for the Downing-Street-machine theme too.
Gordon Brown was his greatest asset and his greatest internal threat in one person - a decade-long shadow operation inside his own government. Robin Cook resigned over Iraq in 2003 in a textbook conscience resignation.
The Brown relationship is the strongest single example for the power-lies-with-Cabinet side of any PM-versus-Cabinet essay.
139 Labour MPs voted against the Iraq war in 2003 - the largest backbench rebellion since the 1840s - and top-up fees scraped through by five votes. Even the era's most dominant PM could not whip his party on the issues it cared most about.
Use it to show party control decays before majorities do.
Weak Conservatives through Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard, until David Cameron arrived in late 2005 and forced Blair onto the back foot. Three opposition leaders came and went without ever threatening him.
The opposition factor at maximum assistance - and a reminder that it can change while a PM is still in office.
Foreign policy shaped the premiership: he was widely judged to have responded well to 9/11 and to the 7/7 London bombings in 2005, strengthening his standing as a crisis leader. But the decision to join the Iraq War in 2003 was judged wrong by much of the public and the Labour party, and it cost him a level of trust he never regained - even though he won the 2005 election.
Three consecutive wins - 43, 144, 102 - no PM since has matched it. A clear mandate to curb the unions and roll back the state, the Iron Lady brand, and an opposition split by the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
The end came from inside: Westland drained authority, Lawson and Howe resigned, and Howe's 1990 resignation speech plus Heseltine's challenge ended her premiership.
43 in 1979, 144 in 1983, 102 in 1987 - no PM since has won three consecutive elections. The 1983 and 1987 cushions gave her the room to fight the miners and drive privatisation through.
With Blair 1997, this is the office at full power - the row to set against Sunak's when the question asks whether PM power is fixed.
A clear Change mandate: curb the unions, roll back the state, privatise - and it was delivered, with British Telecom, Gas and BA all sold.
A mandate claimed, executed and renewed twice at the ballot box: the strongest mandate row in the grid.
The Iron Lady image - originally a Soviet insult - was embraced and turned into the brand, while Saatchi and Saatchi produced the Labour Isn't Working poster.
An early case of the personalised, presidential-style politics the 2025 examiner report names: the leader's image doing the party's electoral work.
A talented cabinet that turned on her: Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech in 1990 and Michael Heseltine's leadership challenge ended her premiership within weeks of each other.
The defining big-beast case - in any essay ranking the constraints on PM power, Howe and Heseltine are where the ranking starts.
Strong for most of the decade, then lost: the Westland affair in 1986 and the Lawson and Howe resignations drained her authority until the party withdrew its consent.
Three election wins did not save her - the proof that party control, not electoral success, is the factor a PM cannot govern without.
A weak, divided Labour, with the SDP-Liberal Alliance splitting the anti-Conservative vote and handing her the 1983 and 1987 landslides.
The clearest case in the grid that PM power is relative: her dominance owed as much to the opposition's arithmetic as to her own factors.
Her responses both made and broke her: firm handling of the Falklands War in 1982 was judged a success and is widely thought to have won her the 1983 election, and the year-long stand in the miners' strike of 1984-85 was also seen as a win. But the Poll Tax of 1989-90, and the riots that followed it, were judged a serious misjudgement - and the loss of public and party confidence helped end her premiership.