not the worst PM of my lifetime, or even of the past 5 years, but I think the most disappointing one. Wasting a huge win by courting the losers and their voters is the weirdest political strategy I can remember
And it's always Labor/Labour that does this. The ALP (Australia) is exactly the same, appeasing the right and failing to represent its constituency. It's so madly frustrating. When the Australian right gets in - like the British Tories - they go berserk and smash the place into rubble. I admire them for their energy and zero quantity of fucks even as I damn their eyes.
true, but somehow managed to get zero credit for the things that actually benefit the electorate. His leadership really is a lesson in the importance of communications
Plausibly because a lot of the biggest things he actually had to be bullied into. Let's not forget he removed the whip from a bunch of his own backbench MPs for voting for one of the policies he claimed as a success in his resignation speech.
His leadership is a lesson in the importance of having a moral centre- which he didn't seem to have, hence there was no long term, long range goal for the country to aim for.
And his handling of his glasses and wardrobe expense in his initial Italian trip isn't the conduct of a decent, simple man.
Actually, he accepted them and declared them in the normal way but the right wing press went through his Parliamentary expenses and tried to make something of it because there was nothing else to talk about. I think he was a shit prime minister and I despise his lack of backbone on Gaza, but I’m not going call him out for filling in his parliamentary expenses. Did you perhaps not notice how much Badenoch claimed at the same time?
He probably does have a ‘moral compass’ but he seemed to believed it was an electoral liability and tried hard to not let it get in the way. He was utterly wrong on this.
The Palestine Action ban and ‘terrorist’ designation are insane. However much positive stuff Labour achieved, this is an absolute stain. The only thing I can say on the positive side is that the Tories and Reform would probably have done the same and worse. And Labour was the only practical alternative.
Seems a bit weird to criticise someone for being absent of any political direction in the same column as referring to Corbyn as a ‘moron’. Also pretty fucking rude to anyone who believed in the principles of Corbynism, even if it was badly executed and ultimately bullied out by the right of the party.
Indeed, agreed. I am disconcerted with the anti-Corbyn tone. I liked Corbyn’s principles and policies a lot. Plenty to criticize, of course. The mishandling of antisemitism was a grave, grave error. Unforgivable, even. But to call it ‘a leadership cult for a moron’ is a rather crude evaluation and I had expected more nuance from Ian.
Still an’ all, Ian is an aces commentator and has my deep respect.
Well, a crude evaluation which also expresses my own disillusionment with Corbyn - whom I voted for as leader. Loving his manifestos, horrified by his inadequacies, I ended up disgusted and very anti. We were offered things we were never going to get.
Something similar with Starmer, except did he even have a manifesto? - I just felt relieved that Tory banditry had stopped, but I’d lost interest, Starmer was a stasis, a lull.
It’s not the support for Corbynism that Ian is talking about, it’s the refusal to accept even the slightest criticism of what he did or didn’t do. There are still people pointing out that he won more votes in 2019 than Starmer in 2024(blithely ignoring the fact that there were five parties competing at the last election)because they have to prove the superiority of their candidate seven years down the line.
I certainly agree that the need to keep proving Corbyn's superiority is odd, as is the unwillingness to see the man's many faults. But how do we interpret the words' It was a leadership cult for a moron'? If this is aimed at pig-headed supporters, then fair enough; but the use of moron in the singular leads me to conclude Ian here refers to Corbyn himself.
Yes, warmly agreed. Of course one can see how people simply wanted a bit of hope, a bit of proper leftiness - but how unrealistic that political movement became.
This is absolutely spot on, Ian. It is the disappointment of no real change, followed by the moral backsliding because Starmer seemed fixated on winning the *next* election rather than doing anything with this win, that has frustrated me so deeply.
As your old friend Alex Andreou said on his podcast over the weekend (wrt moving to a PR system), if a Tory govt had been elected with the same majority & there was something they wanted to do, but maybe it hadn't been explicitly in the manifesto, don't you think they'd just DO IT? There are things Starmer could do with his majority & he just let it lie there.
He should never have been PM & I'm still gobsmacked that he ever wanted to be, given his disdain for politics. If I were his family I would honestly be pretty angry to be put through all this when he had no real passion for it.
The thing that annoyed me most was Starmer's complete failure on human rights.
Whether we're talking about immigrants, protestors, trans people or Gaza - he just didn't think of the legal consequences of his policies for human rights.
Given his background, that's bizarre.
Compare his record to what he said when being elected Labour leader & you can see why I think of him as utterly dishonest.
Unfortunately, in that, he followed in the footsteps of many other Labour leaders.
I wonder if Burnham understands that the big thing that he has to change is Labour?
Very astute. I am not sad to see him go. Someone who sacrificed the morality and decency we thought he would demonstrate, to the crass electoral dictates of Morgan McSweeney. Starmer is an object lesson for us, but not an experiment I would care to repeat. Sad to see that his failure was essentially due not to hubris but to cowardice, to a lack of moral backbone.
That advisor McSweeney (but no publicly visible comms person?) and also with Glasman & Tufton/Koch links needs scrutiny (but media avoids?), not only opaque but whiff of foreign influence?
Also how the RW MSM seemed able to drop a poll or a Labor grandee's opinion versus Starmer, every week to dominate the RW MSM cycle, or if lacking any content, here's Nigel Farage.....rinse and repeat....
Some hideous home goals despite his obvious intention to do good. Criminalising protestors against the genocide in Palestine being top of my list. Others mentioned in your excellent article. Otherwise an effective statesman abroad. Clearly well liked. Supported Ukraine, brought us into a more adult relationship with the EU that will hopefully blossom into membership.
“A decent man in there somewhere”. Your article is filled with evidence that speaks against this idle notion, so why proffer it? His viciousness, for those outside his own family, was Johnsonian with a tempered legal edge.
Absolutely. If there's a decent man in there somewhere he's been kept very well hidden. "Every decision I have taken has been about putting the country I love first..." As I listened to his words on the radio this morning, I imagined he was talking about Israel.
Starmer's ejection is evidence that the job is actually becoming impossible. I might disagree with his predecessors but the fact that nobody has stayed a full term since 2016 - thank goodness in most cases but that's beside the point - could point to a structural problem rather than selecting the wrong individuals.
Or the opposition found around Tufton St. and RW MSM ecosystem; nothing British except alleged Russian asset Farage who was allegedly wooed by (Tanton Network's) Steve Bannon pre Brexit?
A long game strategy (see Nancy MacLean 'Democracy in Chains') by US fossil fuel Atlas Koch and Tanton Networks with Murodch led media & Russian influence behind Brexit; frequent leadership changes preclude good long term policy.......
Excellent article. I was overjoyed at the election of a Labour government. At last the performative cruelty to refugees would end. At last trans people would be able to be visible again. What we got was the 'island of strangers' speech and the EHRC's guidance that trans women had to use the men's loo. Yes. I feel no joy, just disappointment.
I doubt any of us feel joy when we see a decent man lose his job. And I have to disagree with you... I think he was a decent man, rather than "...scheming and Machiavellian". He was no more possessing of those qualities than Punch (a la Punch & Judy). He was a puppet, put in place, (and controlled), by the Labour machinery that purged the party of what it should have stood for: left-wing policies that benefit the majority.
I also think you are being over generous, claiming, "Starmer managed to turn 2019’s historic election defeat into 2024’s historic election victory. The incumbent Tories were at an all time low approval rating; the right-wing vote was fractured due to Reform; resulting in a Labour landslide with only a 1.6% increase over their 2019 result. Our FPTP system is what handed Labour a landslide, not Starmer.
So, I would modify your original assessment: "An innocent dull good man"
To: "An innocent dull good puppet”.
It will interesting to see if Burnham will take on the "Labour machine", or become another puppet of it.
The NEC is the governing body. My reference to the "Labour machine" is aimed at the cabal of insiders, influencers, consultants, advisors, and so on, who have turned a party that represented the working class, into "New Labour". e.g.: the people who weaponised antisemitism to oust Corbyn.
This is incoherent. He was a man of integrity, but he had no morality, you say….
In politics, as Harold Wilson used to say, pragmatism rules, not naive idealism: “politics is the art of the possible”. Every political leader has to understand that basic truth, and every commentator, too.
Okay, let’s clarify: if you only looked at his career as a QC he was a man of integrity. He took on the press Barons andMcDonald’s he fought for the miners and did an incredible job of work against the death penalty.
Then somehow he became a grotesque mirror image of himself; the politician who could not even call out the reintroduction of hanging for Palestinians, who over saw the despicable immigration rules that Ian has a enumerated and whilst rightly supporting violence against Jewish people seemed pretty indifferent to whatever was happening to the Palestinians and Muslims in Britain. If you only looked at the first half of his career, you would have expected him to be a decent and principled Prime Minister. Unfortunately like Dorian Gray selling his soul for eternal youth, Starmer outsourced his to Morgan McSweeney and seems to not have noticed what a morality free zone McSweeney is.
Starmer got some things badly wrong, but he got others pretty well done. He was an improvement on his immediate predecessors, so I’m not going to join the mob in trying to lynch him. Right now, being the senior occupant of No. 10 is a shit job, as King Burnham will find out.
No, I agree with you that it shouldn’t be a zero sum game. There needs to be nuance in our criticisms, but it is very strange that he was an incredibly principled lawyer he did a lot of high profile pro bono cases, and it was just as ifhe was so out of his depth in politics that he allowed himself to be guided by people who had no morals.
I wonder if we expect too much of our PMs. Kier Starmer had to deal with Trump and his chaotic global interventions. External events have dominated domestic policy (tarrifs, Iran) The government was also hamstrung by the fiscal deficit it inherited and the policing of fiscal policy by the bond markets. The relentless campaign of misinformation fomented by Russia and the US, amplified through social media, and the dogged campaign by most of the newspapers to undermine Kier Starmer were also headwinds. I think Kier Starmer will be remembered for his decency, his staunch support of Ukraine, his careful resetting of the UK’s relationship with Europe and his opposition to Trump’s ridiculous Iran war. In time, I believe people may be nostalgic for the time of his premiership.
not the worst PM of my lifetime, or even of the past 5 years, but I think the most disappointing one. Wasting a huge win by courting the losers and their voters is the weirdest political strategy I can remember
And it's always Labor/Labour that does this. The ALP (Australia) is exactly the same, appeasing the right and failing to represent its constituency. It's so madly frustrating. When the Australian right gets in - like the British Tories - they go berserk and smash the place into rubble. I admire them for their energy and zero quantity of fucks even as I damn their eyes.
Correct about Australian Labor . Re the Right , it will take years to recover from the Howard era .
I cannot forgive him for his behaviour towards trans people.
Achieved a fair amount in two years though.
true, but somehow managed to get zero credit for the things that actually benefit the electorate. His leadership really is a lesson in the importance of communications
Plausibly because a lot of the biggest things he actually had to be bullied into. Let's not forget he removed the whip from a bunch of his own backbench MPs for voting for one of the policies he claimed as a success in his resignation speech.
Nigel Farage got “gifted” 5 million quid-hello?!!
His leadership is a lesson in the importance of having a moral centre- which he didn't seem to have, hence there was no long term, long range goal for the country to aim for.
And his handling of his glasses and wardrobe expense in his initial Italian trip isn't the conduct of a decent, simple man.
Actually, he accepted them and declared them in the normal way but the right wing press went through his Parliamentary expenses and tried to make something of it because there was nothing else to talk about. I think he was a shit prime minister and I despise his lack of backbone on Gaza, but I’m not going call him out for filling in his parliamentary expenses. Did you perhaps not notice how much Badenoch claimed at the same time?
The glasses? Give me a break
He probably does have a ‘moral compass’ but he seemed to believed it was an electoral liability and tried hard to not let it get in the way. He was utterly wrong on this.
Not the worst. But did nothing. Also lacked the spine to stand against Trump
Realistically the best pm of the last 15 years.
Very sad, but probably true.
Better than his five immediate predecessors. But still poor. Clearly something is wrong with our way of selecting leaders.
Is PR part of the answer? I don’t know, but I am clear that First Past the Post is part of the problem.
First past the post is a big part of the problem…and replacing it is an important step along the road to changing our political culture.
I feel you've let him off lightly in terms of his support of Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza, but otherwise very good as ever.
I will always be grateful to him for his holding Johnson to account and getting the Tories out.
I didn't have high expectations of what would be achieved in Government, but I expected them to at least be trying to do the right things.
Sadly that wasn't the case, especially with regards to immigration, Gaza, and right to protest.
The Island of Strangers speech was truly disgusting.
Locking up pensioners for holding up a sign - good god.
His downfall is entirely self-inflicted, and it is hard not to conclude a lack of morals and in some cases cowardice.
The Palestine Action ban and ‘terrorist’ designation are insane. However much positive stuff Labour achieved, this is an absolute stain. The only thing I can say on the positive side is that the Tories and Reform would probably have done the same and worse. And Labour was the only practical alternative.
100%. If Burnham doesn't change tack on Palestine the bleed to the Greens will continue and possibly accelerate - deservedly so.
Correct in every detail . In no way was Starmer a leader .
Seems a bit weird to criticise someone for being absent of any political direction in the same column as referring to Corbyn as a ‘moron’. Also pretty fucking rude to anyone who believed in the principles of Corbynism, even if it was badly executed and ultimately bullied out by the right of the party.
Indeed, agreed. I am disconcerted with the anti-Corbyn tone. I liked Corbyn’s principles and policies a lot. Plenty to criticize, of course. The mishandling of antisemitism was a grave, grave error. Unforgivable, even. But to call it ‘a leadership cult for a moron’ is a rather crude evaluation and I had expected more nuance from Ian.
Still an’ all, Ian is an aces commentator and has my deep respect.
Indeed , this comment on Corbyn is about the only time I couldn’t agree with his insight .
Well, a crude evaluation which also expresses my own disillusionment with Corbyn - whom I voted for as leader. Loving his manifestos, horrified by his inadequacies, I ended up disgusted and very anti. We were offered things we were never going to get.
Something similar with Starmer, except did he even have a manifesto? - I just felt relieved that Tory banditry had stopped, but I’d lost interest, Starmer was a stasis, a lull.
It’s not the support for Corbynism that Ian is talking about, it’s the refusal to accept even the slightest criticism of what he did or didn’t do. There are still people pointing out that he won more votes in 2019 than Starmer in 2024(blithely ignoring the fact that there were five parties competing at the last election)because they have to prove the superiority of their candidate seven years down the line.
I certainly agree that the need to keep proving Corbyn's superiority is odd, as is the unwillingness to see the man's many faults. But how do we interpret the words' It was a leadership cult for a moron'? If this is aimed at pig-headed supporters, then fair enough; but the use of moron in the singular leads me to conclude Ian here refers to Corbyn himself.
Yes, I suppose you do have a point. I think it might be a retrospective frustration to give Ian the benefit of the doubt. I think once we got to.
« Oh Jeremy Corbyn » at Glastonbury we were in peak cult, and JC was happy to go with it.
Yes, warmly agreed. Of course one can see how people simply wanted a bit of hope, a bit of proper leftiness - but how unrealistic that political movement became.
I would hope that he wouldn’t have to do an Origin Story episode for everything to understand the nuance of it
Corbynism died after 2 election losses, stained by anti-semitism, obsessed with ideological posturing and uninterested in winning power.
If you read my top comment you’ll see why I thought it was inconsistent
Agreed. Maybe let’s not call people morons lightly.
A superb summary. Thank you
This is absolutely spot on, Ian. It is the disappointment of no real change, followed by the moral backsliding because Starmer seemed fixated on winning the *next* election rather than doing anything with this win, that has frustrated me so deeply.
As your old friend Alex Andreou said on his podcast over the weekend (wrt moving to a PR system), if a Tory govt had been elected with the same majority & there was something they wanted to do, but maybe it hadn't been explicitly in the manifesto, don't you think they'd just DO IT? There are things Starmer could do with his majority & he just let it lie there.
He should never have been PM & I'm still gobsmacked that he ever wanted to be, given his disdain for politics. If I were his family I would honestly be pretty angry to be put through all this when he had no real passion for it.
The thing that annoyed me most was Starmer's complete failure on human rights.
Whether we're talking about immigrants, protestors, trans people or Gaza - he just didn't think of the legal consequences of his policies for human rights.
Given his background, that's bizarre.
Compare his record to what he said when being elected Labour leader & you can see why I think of him as utterly dishonest.
Unfortunately, in that, he followed in the footsteps of many other Labour leaders.
I wonder if Burnham understands that the big thing that he has to change is Labour?
I guess we need to let him know our feelings before he starts.
And keep on letting him know.
Yes. Important!
Very astute. I am not sad to see him go. Someone who sacrificed the morality and decency we thought he would demonstrate, to the crass electoral dictates of Morgan McSweeney. Starmer is an object lesson for us, but not an experiment I would care to repeat. Sad to see that his failure was essentially due not to hubris but to cowardice, to a lack of moral backbone.
That advisor McSweeney (but no publicly visible comms person?) and also with Glasman & Tufton/Koch links needs scrutiny (but media avoids?), not only opaque but whiff of foreign influence?
Also how the RW MSM seemed able to drop a poll or a Labor grandee's opinion versus Starmer, every week to dominate the RW MSM cycle, or if lacking any content, here's Nigel Farage.....rinse and repeat....
Some hideous home goals despite his obvious intention to do good. Criminalising protestors against the genocide in Palestine being top of my list. Others mentioned in your excellent article. Otherwise an effective statesman abroad. Clearly well liked. Supported Ukraine, brought us into a more adult relationship with the EU that will hopefully blossom into membership.
I hope he remains - maybe foreign Secretary.
“A decent man in there somewhere”. Your article is filled with evidence that speaks against this idle notion, so why proffer it? His viciousness, for those outside his own family, was Johnsonian with a tempered legal edge.
Absolutely. If there's a decent man in there somewhere he's been kept very well hidden. "Every decision I have taken has been about putting the country I love first..." As I listened to his words on the radio this morning, I imagined he was talking about Israel.
I’m sure your imagining was far more correct than Starmer would dare to admit .
Starmer's ejection is evidence that the job is actually becoming impossible. I might disagree with his predecessors but the fact that nobody has stayed a full term since 2016 - thank goodness in most cases but that's beside the point - could point to a structural problem rather than selecting the wrong individuals.
Or the opposition found around Tufton St. and RW MSM ecosystem; nothing British except alleged Russian asset Farage who was allegedly wooed by (Tanton Network's) Steve Bannon pre Brexit?
A long game strategy (see Nancy MacLean 'Democracy in Chains') by US fossil fuel Atlas Koch and Tanton Networks with Murodch led media & Russian influence behind Brexit; frequent leadership changes preclude good long term policy.......
Excellent analysis, as ever. Just one quibble - can you use Yaxley-Lennon's actual name, or at the very least put his alter-ego name in double quotes?
Should we not call people by the names they choose for themselves?
Excellent article. I was overjoyed at the election of a Labour government. At last the performative cruelty to refugees would end. At last trans people would be able to be visible again. What we got was the 'island of strangers' speech and the EHRC's guidance that trans women had to use the men's loo. Yes. I feel no joy, just disappointment.
I doubt any of us feel joy when we see a decent man lose his job. And I have to disagree with you... I think he was a decent man, rather than "...scheming and Machiavellian". He was no more possessing of those qualities than Punch (a la Punch & Judy). He was a puppet, put in place, (and controlled), by the Labour machinery that purged the party of what it should have stood for: left-wing policies that benefit the majority.
I also think you are being over generous, claiming, "Starmer managed to turn 2019’s historic election defeat into 2024’s historic election victory. The incumbent Tories were at an all time low approval rating; the right-wing vote was fractured due to Reform; resulting in a Labour landslide with only a 1.6% increase over their 2019 result. Our FPTP system is what handed Labour a landslide, not Starmer.
So, I would modify your original assessment: "An innocent dull good man"
To: "An innocent dull good puppet”.
It will interesting to see if Burnham will take on the "Labour machine", or become another puppet of it.
I always thought the Labour machine was the NEC, which is filled with Starmer supporters, and likely over time will be with the next leader's.
The NEC is the governing body. My reference to the "Labour machine" is aimed at the cabal of insiders, influencers, consultants, advisors, and so on, who have turned a party that represented the working class, into "New Labour". e.g.: the people who weaponised antisemitism to oust Corbyn.
This article explains it a lot better than I can:
https://graceblakeley.substack.com/p/the-labour-machine-always-wins?r=1qcfzl&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
This is incoherent. He was a man of integrity, but he had no morality, you say….
In politics, as Harold Wilson used to say, pragmatism rules, not naive idealism: “politics is the art of the possible”. Every political leader has to understand that basic truth, and every commentator, too.
Okay, let’s clarify: if you only looked at his career as a QC he was a man of integrity. He took on the press Barons andMcDonald’s he fought for the miners and did an incredible job of work against the death penalty.
Then somehow he became a grotesque mirror image of himself; the politician who could not even call out the reintroduction of hanging for Palestinians, who over saw the despicable immigration rules that Ian has a enumerated and whilst rightly supporting violence against Jewish people seemed pretty indifferent to whatever was happening to the Palestinians and Muslims in Britain. If you only looked at the first half of his career, you would have expected him to be a decent and principled Prime Minister. Unfortunately like Dorian Gray selling his soul for eternal youth, Starmer outsourced his to Morgan McSweeney and seems to not have noticed what a morality free zone McSweeney is.
Starmer got some things badly wrong, but he got others pretty well done. He was an improvement on his immediate predecessors, so I’m not going to join the mob in trying to lynch him. Right now, being the senior occupant of No. 10 is a shit job, as King Burnham will find out.
No, I agree with you that it shouldn’t be a zero sum game. There needs to be nuance in our criticisms, but it is very strange that he was an incredibly principled lawyer he did a lot of high profile pro bono cases, and it was just as ifhe was so out of his depth in politics that he allowed himself to be guided by people who had no morals.
I wonder if we expect too much of our PMs. Kier Starmer had to deal with Trump and his chaotic global interventions. External events have dominated domestic policy (tarrifs, Iran) The government was also hamstrung by the fiscal deficit it inherited and the policing of fiscal policy by the bond markets. The relentless campaign of misinformation fomented by Russia and the US, amplified through social media, and the dogged campaign by most of the newspapers to undermine Kier Starmer were also headwinds. I think Kier Starmer will be remembered for his decency, his staunch support of Ukraine, his careful resetting of the UK’s relationship with Europe and his opposition to Trump’s ridiculous Iran war. In time, I believe people may be nostalgic for the time of his premiership.