Starmer Begone: Another failure leaves number 10

Keir Starmer and Donald Trump at the Gaza “peace summit” in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Photo: Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street.

This is one of the most remarkable ways to fall from grace. Leading British Labor to a deceptively landslide victory over moronic, confused, decrepit fools. Affirming a period of stable government, if not exactly boring, at least reliable after several periods of madness under the Tories gone wrong. But that wasn’t the case. Sir Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation as Prime Minister on June 22, showed himself to be incompetent in several respects: not being able to communicate well, not being particularly fluent (fake the “hostages” for “sausages”), an appalling lack of judgment (the appointment of the Epstein-dirty Lord Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington), unable to put in place what we most expected: a captivating story, a cohesive but specious unity. Economic growth was the order of the day, but where has it gone?

What the British voter got, however, was the July 2024 decision to scrap winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners, which was followed by a U-turn in May last year. It retained the policy introduced by the Conservatives in 2017 limiting benefits to the first two children in a family, only to be scrapped in last year’s budget. To target the rising Reform Party, he took inspiration from the rhetoric of its leader, Nigel Farage, and promised that a mandatory digital ID card would be stored on mobile phones as proof of a person’s right to work in the UK. This policy was also abandoned.

In foreign affairs, where he was supposedly most comfortable, Starmer has been incredibly receptive to Israel’s ruthless campaign in Gaza, explicitly approve the denial of electricity and water supplies to Palestinian civilians as a means of “self-defense.” The real terrorists, it seemed, were at home, embodied in the direct action group Palestine Action, which the Starmer government banned, putting it in the same league as ISIS or Boko Haram. He also appeared to feign ignorance of the ongoing genocide case before the International Court of Justice. begin by South Africa towards the end of 2023 against Israel, or the issuance of arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Starmer came to power following Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat by Boris Johnson in 2019, after which he set about purging his party of the radical influence left by his predecessor. Nothing he did suggested he was anything other than a creature of the establishment, whatever his trumpeted credentials as a progressive human rights lawyer. In the event of an abuse of power, he was likely to be there to defend it. The landmark biography of Oliver Eagleton, The Starmer project (2022), is implacable on this point: Starmer combined “intervention abroad with repression at home”. As director of public prosecutions, he prosecuted hacker Gary McKinnon (Starmer was furious when then-Home Secretary Theresa May halted extradition to the US) and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, while sparing, for example, the police responsible for the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station and frustrating efforts to charge Home Office officials responsible for the death of migrant Jimmy Mubenga.

Other works on Starmer do little to arouse feelings of sympathy for this seemingly decent character. Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire of The timesfor example, offer the devastating Go up (2025). Starmer, the authors show, became the chosen spearhead of Morgan McSweeney, founder of the think tank Labor Together and later Starmer’s chief of staff. This shadowy man had a worldview characterized by “a certain fanaticism, paranoia and moral certainty”. (The slime from the Mandelson affair was enough to make McSweeney fall on his sword.) The aim of the spear was unambiguous: to target Corbynism under the guise of combating anti-Semitism, thus becoming “the great deception”. That of Paul Holden Fraud (2025) expands on the theme, revealing McSweeney and Labor Together’s use of undeclared donations to the Electoral Commission from hedge fund managers and pro-Israel figures to discredit Corbyn. Starmer’s decency remains well hidden.

Andy Burnham’s victory heralded, at least for Starmer, the arrival of a murderous spirit. The now former mayor of Greater Manchester had shown exactly what he thought of his constituency by running for the seat of Makerfield, which he won by almost 25,000 votes (55%) compared to 15,696 votes for Reform (35% share) and 3,111 (7%) votes for the even more right-wing Restore. Much is made of it: Burnham as a knight armed against the reactionary forces of Reform and Restore while restoring Labor’s focus. But Burnham is an old newspaper, an echo of the Blair years, a man who voted for the Iraq war and against an inquiry into its legality, but who was sure, two decades later, to play politics by suggesting regret.

Starmer’s fall is also another reminder of the changing political context of popularity and demise. Britain, post-Brexit, appears to be in a mood to torch its prime ministers, seeking to light the fire sooner than a leader can find the necessary bearings. (Seven PMs in a decade At least that’s the impression we’re given by strategists, focus group apparatchiks and party wallahs. The saturated social media audience is fickle and will turn around, tasting the next morsel of misinformation, the next tasty morsel of misinformation.

A notable trend following the by-election has been a complete disregard for what might politely be called the factual record. Rumors, gossip, chatter and gauzy nonsense filtered through the bulletins with wearying force, featuring purported conversations between Starmer and his wife regarding his future. Starmer loyalists demonstrated their undying loyalty by telling the press how the man felt during a weekend of anguish. The press stable had effectively anointed Burnham before any party vote or decision. There was an inexorable feeling of a vacated post, of the dismissal of its occupant, of the passing of the baton. And not a single British vote was involved in the process. Yet another PM fail. What a democracy, and what a beautiful Westminster democracy at that.