Keir Starmer: a political obituary

On Monday, following much media speculation, Keir Starmer announced to the nation that he would be standing down as prime minister and leader of the Labour Party. This follows an extremely tumultuous period for the former DPP in both roles, and honestly, this was overdue. His promises to do better than the fourteen years of Conservative misrule that preceded him – a very low bar for success – have proven to be hollow. Labour Together, Lord Alli, Peter Mandelson, winter fuel payments – I’m reluctant to condemn him in the same terms as Boris Johnson for sleaze and scandal, but the parallels are difficult to deny.

But on the other hand, was it really that bad? Starmer’s incompetence as a communicator and the bias of the right-wing media meant he always faced an uphill battle to control the narrative, and he undeniably has important achievements to his name. Raising the minimum wage, improved workers’ and renters’ rights, VAT on private school fees – most people would consider these good things. So how did we end up here?

In this article, I’ll endeavour to examine the two years of Starmer’s premiership and the six of his party leadership. What did he do right? What did he do wrong? Most importantly, why? Why has it all fallen apart so catastrophically?

Where did it all go wrong?

Starmer’s first and biggest mistake was to tie himself in with Labour Together. This right-wing think tank was operating within the Labour Party before Starmer was elected leader. Founded by Morgan McSweeney and bankrolled by millionaires (with donations that weren’t declared to the Electoral Commission), this group dedicated itself to destroying the Corbynite left. Jeremy Corbyn represented a return to true Labour values that hadn’t been seen since the 1980s: nationalisation, distribution of wealth, member participation. He took a moral stand against the excesses of Thatcherism and New Labour and ultimately had a set of core principles that he did not deviate from. At a fundamental level, he understood what the Labour Party is meant to be and what it should exist for. And Labour has always been a broad church, incorporating varying views on how to achieve a fairer, more just society, and internal strife and disagreement is an inevitable consequence of this. Labour Together do not understand what Labour is. To take dodgy donations from millionaire donors (and begin investigations into the journalists that report on them) in order to undermine a democratically elected leader was an insult to what Labour is supposed to be, and Starmer throwing his lot in with these people destroyed any moral legitimacy he could have had.

Starmer getting involved with Labour Together, who orchestrated his leadership campaign and wrote the 2024 Labour manifesto, is one of several examples of the other fundamental problem he never overcame: his lack of ideology. In a 2016 interview with The New Statesman, Starmer declared that prioritising ideological purity over winning power was a ‘dereliction of duty’. At face value, he wasn’t wrong, but he apparently took that to mean he should have no clear ideology at all. In this sense, he was perfect for what Labour Together wanted in their candidate – a blank canvas that would say whatever was convenient at the time – but disastrous for leading a government. Starmer’s 2024 campaign slogan of ‘Change’ was too vague. ‘Change’ on its own sounded great after fourteen years of Tory chaos, but what would change? How would it change? Why would it change? These questions were never answered with any clarity. To strive to appear above ideology after all the factional infighting of the Corbyn years was all well and good, but that came at the price of appearing to not stand for anything at all. Tony Blair referred to Starmer’s politics when he became leader as ‘vaguely progressive’, and he never evolved from that. Because he never articulated a clear ideological position, Starmer was never able to create a vision that people could buy into and believe in. He declined to outline the ‘why’ as well as the ‘what’ – what was he prime minister to achieve? Tony Blair had principles – loathsome principles, but principles nonetheless. Ed Miliband had principles, but didn’t know how to articulate them. Jeremy Corbyn was too principled for his own good. Starmer? Nought.

Due to his lack of principles, Starmer tried to appeal to every voter, and ended up appealing to none. It’s important to remember where this Labour government started from in 2024 – a landslide majority, yes, but with 33.7% (9.7 million) of the vote. That’s not a fair result. Discussions about electoral reform and changing the voting system are beyond the scope of this piece, but I think it’s fair to say that not many people voted Labour because they genuinely believed in what Starmer was promising, but rather just because they wanted the Tories out. I know that’s why I voted Labour. One of the many sins of New Labour was assuming that Labour would always have the working-class vote, no matter what. Winning these voters’ trust back has been Labour’s modus operandi ever since, with varying degrees of success. Starmer went down a different road – assuming that the left-wing vote was secure, he began pandering to the right-wing vote with the rise of Reform UK. However, Starmer’s Powell-esque rhetoric on immigration and attempts to cut benefits at a time when cost of living is still a major concern have failed to swing small-c conservative voters back towards Labour (if indeed they were ever there). Meanwhile, he’s alienated left-wing voters, particularly younger ones, leading to the rise of the Greens. Ultimately, he has proven unable to operate effectively in an era of populist, vibes-based politics that contrasts negatively with his dull, results-will-speak-for-themselves style of leadership.

And the scandals. Oh, the scandals! For someone who so passionately decried the Tories for their endless sleaze, Starmer abandoned the moral high ground almost as soon as he’d walked into No. 10. First, Labour peer Lord Alli made multiple donations to Starmer, which he did not properly declare, and was rewarded with a Downing Street pass for his trouble, normally reserved for government employees. He also shot down a proposed plan for the 2024 manifesto that would clamp down on foreign donations into British politics. In this way, Labour under Starmer showed they were subservient to the same corporate interests as the Tories and would ultimately answer to the wealthy ahead of the voters. There’s also the small case of Peter Mandelson (I refuse to call him ‘Lord’). Having the Prince of Darkness still intimately involved with Labour politics about twenty years past his use-by date was always going to end badly, especially when you had Morgan McSweeney (basically Mandelson updated for the 21st century) calling the shots. But every student has a master. Really, appointing Mandelson, a man who described Jeffrey Epstein as his ‘best pal’, as ambassador to the US was a politically astute move. Mandelson, after all, would have inhabited the same murky underworld as the people he’d be dealing with did. However, political expediency can never excuse appointing people with those kinds of associations to high positions. Mandelson was sacked twice from Tony Blair’s Cabinet for corruption; even aside from his Epstein connections, he never should have been considered for any kind of government role. McSweeney took the fall for it, but really, Starmer should have followed him out the door at that point.

And finally, Starmer’s biggest moral failure: Gaza. His recognition of Palestinian statehood only came after he’d said that Israel had the right to cut off water, electricity and food to Gaza in self-defence, and after his government continued to supply the Israeli regime with weapons. To put it bluntly, he aided and abetted a genocide. He refused to back a motion for a ceasefire in the Commons and ordered spy flights over Gaza. For a highly accomplished human rights lawyer, this raises the question of what he did it for if he wasn’t going to carry forward those principles into government and apply them to one of the grossest human rights violations of our time. And this coincides with the proscription of the group Palestine Action as a terror group, which has resulted in pensioners being arrested for holding up placards. His recognition of Palestinian statehood and condemnation of the most extreme Israeli politicians were too little, far too late and can be dismissed as just more of his many, many U-turns.

So, how do we sum up Starmer’s many deficiencies? Ultimately, it was his association with Labour Together and the party’s right that meant he was a dead man walking from day one. His willingness to be the face of the grand designs of others, to be a political jellyfish, meant he could never be a source of inspiration or a figure people were willing to invest trust in. Simply not being the Tories was never going to be enough long-term. If he’d articulated a clear set of principles and objectives, shown some backbone in cases like Gaza and Mandelson, he’d still be in a job. Sometimes, it is just that simple.

Where did it go right?

Starmer undeniably got a lot wrong. But that is not to say his premiership was a complete dud. Number one: the Renters’ Rights Act. To say that Labour under Starmer remained subservient to the ultra-wealthy isn’t wrong, but that doesn’t mean they did absolutely nothing to try and improve people’s lives a bit. The RRA banned no-fault evictions and bidding wars and imposed rent limits, in which rent could not be raised more than once a year and increases had to be communicated with two months’ notice. There was also the Employment Rights Act, introducing statutory sick pay and extended parental leave and redundancy pay. And, of course, there’s the minimum wage increase. Landlordism in theory isn’t a bad thing, but in our case, it’s created a situation in which housing stocks are hoarded and rented out at inflated rates. Starmer went some way towards tackling unfair, exploitative practices in the housing and job markets, and managed to upset all the right people who inevitably complained about pesky workers’ rights driving away investment. As argued above, Starmer never articulated what he stood for or what his moral mission was, but he did inadvertently show that growth for growth’s sake, without a rise in living standards, is pointless.

Starmer’s other major area of success (Gaza being the glaring exception) came in our dealings abroad. He and his government signed multiple lucrative trade deals, including with India and the Gulf states. He also managed to maintain an apparently good working relationship with Trump in the US, despite multiple embarrassing tweets emerging from his Cabinet ministers decrying Trump as an ignorant bigot during his first term and Starmer refusing to involve the UK with the Iran conflict. Additionally, he improved relations with the EU, signing the UK back onto the Erasmus scheme and signing a defence pact with the member-states. This is not the soft re-entry into the EU that the right-wing media presents; rather, it is a pragmatic acknowledgement that Britain cannot go it alone in an increasingly unstable international environment, especially considering that the US under Trump is behaving more like an adversary than an ally. Starmer was right to accept Brexit – it remains a democratic vote, no matter how bad the fallout – and was astute in finding ways to work within (or around) its parameters.

Starmer’s successes are understated. A lot of this is his own fault, as he remains an uncharismatic, uninspiring communicator who consistently failed to make the political weather. That being said, he was faced with a right-wing media that were never going to give him the time of day, no matter what he did. Perhaps we’ll see the positive changes he made play out well in the long term. He proved that social democracy can still deliver improvements in people’s lives, but never had the courage (or, indeed, the ability) to make that argument clearly and convincingly.

Conclusion

So, how can we sum up Starmer’s two years as prime minister and six as Labour leader? In short, a massive missed opportunity. As stated, ingratiating himself with shady forces inside and outside the Labour Party doomed his long-term prospects. He outed himself as a man without a plan once he’d broken the left, someone with no principles of his own who’d do the bidding of others who had nefarious designs on the party. He pandered to voters who were never willing to give Labour a chance whilst driving away those who were, directly contributing to the rise of both Reform and the Greens. Gaza was a moral failing as bad as Tony Blair and Iraq. What good he did was drowned out by media noise, his own incompetence as a communicator and his previous bad decisions, which have far outnumbered the good. History will remember him as a weak, easily swayed, indecisive leader who severely, perhaps irreparably, damaged Labour’s chances of establishing a dynasty. If Reform win the next election, he’ll be looked to as one of the main reasons why. We can only hope Andy Burnham will adequately clean up the mess – but that’s a story for another day.

DECLARATION: Statements about Labour Together and Lord Alli are sourced from the book Get In, by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, about Starmer’s rise to the Labour leadership and the beginning of his time as prime minister.