“That’s my view, certainly, he’s just not up to the job”
That was said to me by a very long standing member and supporter of the Labour party and a good friend, to both them and my family at a very recent lunch. It was prompted by a question from another Labour supporter:
“Why do people seem to hate Starmer so much?” to which I replied, honestly, “I don’t hate him, I just disagree with him and think he’s not got what it takes to be PM”
It prompted me as have other comments to try and give a totally honest, and fair appraisal as to why both my centrist Labour friend and myself have the same view, and one publicly shared by the leader of Reform in an obvious election pitch.
Let’s tackle bias first.
I’m a Conservative, and I edit Conservative home. I’m not a member of the Labour party and I spent two years being barraged by them – but a lot of other people too, no denying it – working inside a Conservative government that was not going to win the next election. I knew that bit deep down when I took that job on. So it’s possible I’d be biased against any Labour Prime Minister I get that. But I have not found myself in George Osborne’s position listening to a Blair conference speech who turned to Lord Finkelstein and sighed with an acceptance that Blair was hard to beat “why won’t he just retire?“.
Let’s tackle hypocrisy.
It is the number one item of ‘evidence for the prosecution’ when it comes to criticism of the Conservatives that they failed to deliver on their promises. ‘Talked right and governed left’ as Kemi Badenoch. Whilst it is simply a tired inaccurate trope of opponents to say ‘you did nothing in 14 years’ it is true that too much promised was not delivered and the Conservatives, in my view, lost sight of who they were and what they were supposed to be for.
We don’t know for certain if any of the alternative leaders of other parties than Labour – and some within Labour – are ‘up to the job’ although supporters of each will claim they believe they are. That’s the nature of being a modern Prime Minister, you are never sure if they’ve got what it takes until they do the job.
Facing facts Johnson, Truss and Sunak, and for many Cameron, and May have all attracted the same criticisms of not being equal to the challenge and that there were so many of them in a short space of time, speaks to a wider issue with the entire system.
Which brings us to the nature of the role.
I’ve read repeated defence of Starmer that boils down to ‘you can’t just blame him for everything!’ To which there is an obvious reply. You can’t credibly pin everything on the Prime Minister no, but the people who defend him loudest were quite happy to blame everything on his predecessors. Which one could also firmly file under hypocrisy.
Then there is the objective truth that being Prime Minister of the UK in the 21st century, whilst sticking to the Blair settlement for far too long, and with a simultaneous centralisation of power and responsibility in Number 10, everything has ended up being seen as a PM’s fault. Repeatedly, ex-Prime Ministers have expressed the same dichotomy of the job that in reality you aren’t nearly as powerful as people think, but everything lands on your door and is ultimately blamed on you. It’s why it is so often described as ‘the worst job in politics’, which arguably is also being leader of the official Opposition. Of which, note, there is only one and she’s not called Nigel.
Now, I’m in favour of reforming or ‘re-wiring’ that system, as it seems to hamstring every occupant of the office regardless of party, but until we do, whoever ‘we’ might be, the blame is going to land at the door of the Prime Minister’s office.
So why do I, and a very large number of voters looking at all the available data, and within a fragmented and I think permanently changed political landscape think Sir Keir Starmer, as an individual is one of, if not the, worst Prime Ministers of recent times?
You could go back to all of the above if you want a cheap and easy answer, but with all of that said, let’s look at the problem.
Starmer did not, whatever you thought of Rishi Sunak who said so repeatedly, have a plan. There is no central idea, vision or clear policy platform. Now Badenoch, and Farage and all the others get the same criticism from some, but Starmer is in the hot seat and has had nigh on two years to show he did. There is scant evidence for that.
Where we knew some of the plans ‘for change’ the change has been worse. On stopping illegal migration, worse. On the economy, whilst you’ll find people who think things may improve – largely unaided by government action – things are certainly no better and in some areas like inflation, public borrowing and taxes it’s worse. There are still doctors strikes, despite an eyewatering pay rise at the start, education is being stripped of the elements that both Tory and Labour had agreed made it improve, and welfare spending keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Now even then, Starmer personally might not be to blame for all of this, but part of the problem has been that in an astonishing lack of self-awareness Labour continue to talk to the public as if everything has been a transparent roaring success.
The utter shallowness of maintaining the mantra that it’s all done for the benefit of Britain when so often it’s done for the benefit of Labour, or so Starmer can keep the job. Or that it’s all on behalf of ‘working people’ when within months of the first budget it was clear that it did not – and frankly never had – meant all people who work.
People aren’t working. Young people increasingly so. That has happened because of policies put in place by this government, and they seemingly don’t get why you aren’t all grateful.
Part of that is having spent so much effort to raise themselves to a point of moral purity, only to have spectacularly failed in that regard, is quite the political example of hubris meets nemesis in a really short space of time. It’s a warning to all opposition parties, to be careful what you promise.
To bring us up to date, I still maintain the attempts to paint Badenoch and Farage as warmongers was cheap politicking, and in the end largely irrelevant to what happened in reality. Iran still attack our personnel and bases, and our allies. Going after the archers not just the arrows is not a Badenoch slogan it’s a military doctrine! It also did not mean at the time, or since, full throated inclusion in bombing Iran ourselves. The ‘archers’ who attacked our bases, were not in Iran, if fully controlled and backed by Iran.
But, still being fair, Starmer has garnered some praise – and you can see it in polling such as Lord Ashcroft’s latest published on ConservativeHome – that Starmer’s position this is not ‘our war’ has raised his standing, a bit, not least with Labour MP’s who despite that haven’t stopped wondering if he can carefully be got rid of. His position of calm restraint also masked some serious indecision, and failure to see ahead. Nobody is Nostradamus but some of the arning signs could have been seen from Artemis II.
Appearing on the world stage helps his image, but any view that Starmer has been doing more this week than trying to reassure very unhappy gulf allies, and just claiming to lead efforts to open the Strait of Hormuz is for the birds. He, and we, have become a bystander, sidelined in the rooms that matter.
That Donald Trump is as Andrew Gimson described yesterday, should be a given and no surprise. He’s a hard man to ‘like’, and he clearly though this war would go far better than it has. But some people in the UK really hate him. So much that they’ll back anything but Trump, without too much care what that ‘anything’ is.
I don’t hate Starmer, I just think he’s an empty box, a miasma of nothing very much. Not up to the job. I feel sorry for him.
We’d all better hope, or pray, that those who want his job, whoever they are, are.