Politics is always about the next elections. So what’s Labour’s game plan here? The last thing they want is general elections now, of course, so are they hoping to replace Starmer with someone a bit more inspiring who can lead them to victory in 2029?
It should be said, there’s a record of faulty judgement on Starmer’s part, resulting in policy U-turns on a number of issues, giving rise to the complaint that he neither has nor can’t convincingly articulate a strategic vision/narrative. He’s trying to ride more than one pair of horses all the time (fiscal responsibility/improving public services, and resetting the EU relationship/keeping Trump off our backs), and it all gives the impression of ad hoc administrative reactiveness.
It might have been thought a wizard wheeze to set a wrong 'un like Mandelson to deal with a wrong 'un like Trump, but it seems the various vetting processes didn’t turn up just how much of a wrong 'un Mandelson’s dealings with Epstein revealed: or worse, maybe they did and that was discounted.
In my humble, and probably ignorant, opinion the only hope Labour had of turning things around was to be firm, decisive and even radical in moving things to the left.
Instead they continued in their Blairite inertia hoping that being less bad than the Tories and Reform would be enough, something they should’ve known by looking at what’s happening in the rest of the world it would not work.
Now they are despised the left and center, hated by the right and completely dead in the water.
Sort of a complete revolution (starting with replacing Starmer with someone (who?) with real convictions and charisma) they are going to lose the next election and be replaced by some incarnation of the neo-fascist wave that’s swamping the world.
Well yes, of course. It’s not a monolith, but the motive power for a change lies with their MPs, an awful lot of whom are only there because of wafer-thin majorities. So yes, no question of an election now, they’ve got until 2029.
But as to what particular disaster will lead to decisive change, let alone who comes forward to offer suitable and effective inspiration - well, watch this space.
Many in the parliamentary Labour Party seem resigned to being another one-term Labour government, followed by another extended period of Conservative rule. The orderly management of decline is the most they aspire to.
It’s like that everywhere, isn’t it?
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(“Best” being relative, of course).
Correct that to Reform proto-fascism and you might be more accurate.
Which, given the track record of Farage and various minions, not to mention the local councils they’ve taken over and the influx from the Tories, will pretty soon descend into a ferrets-in-a-sack shambles.
aka: The natural resting state of British politics for the last decade.
Now that the PM is fatally weakened, the knives are finally coming out
Every single quote in this article is from a Labour source: a minister, member of parliament or party official, and most importantly eight serving and former Starmer aides.
“How do you build a project around someone who doesn’t have any politics and hates the very idea of a larger project?” asks one of those who had tried to define Starmerism. “Advisors advise and prime ministers decide, and this prime minister doesn’t want to decide anything. Keir has never met a policy that he had a natural view on. That’s why he’s capable of thinking that ID cards are terrible and then ID cards are wonderful and must be compulsory and then that they mustn’t be compulsory.”
Another of those who worked for him adds: “He’s completely incurious. He’s not interested in policy or politics. He thinks his job is to sit in a room and be serious, be presented with something and say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ – invariably ‘Yes’ – rather than be persuader-in-chief” Even before he fell out with Starmer, Mandelson told friends and colleagues that the Prime Minister had never once asked him “What really makes Trump tick?” or “How will he react to this?”
A cabinet minister says: “You never get the 7 a.m. call on a Monday because he’s been thinking about something over the weekend.” Even Boris Johnson fired off pre-dawn salvos of thoughts at aides and ministers. A former aide agrees: “Nobody hears from the guy from Friday lunchtime through till about Monday morning.”
Perhaps the most damning observation is this from a senior figure: “It’s the weirdest thing. He was more obsessed about the dress code of the meetings than the content. You’d get a note the night before a meeting telling everyone to make sure they’re wearing smart casual.” This manifested itself in Starmer and the attorney general Richard Hermer being “decked out in a lot of Paul Smith, jackets with a polo shirt.” Little wonder the Starmer government has become the political equivalent of beige chinos.
When one of them asked what the Prime Minister thought they should be, a senior aide replied: “Don’t worry, he’ll go along with whatever I put on his desk.”
The real breach with McSweeney’s team came after Starmer gave his speech in May 2025 warning that mass migration would lead Britain to become an “island of strangers.” Neither the PM nor his aides clocked that it would be seen as an echo of the anti-immigration politician Enoch Powell. “Keir doesn’t read,” a minister notes. “He has no hinterland.”
“Fundamentally, the Prime Minister cannot make a decision, stick to a decision, implement a decision, defend that decision when it gets tough, or explain that decision, ever,” a senior figure close to No. 10 says.
Of course, all this should be viewed from the lens of political maneuvering rather than a true peek behind the curtain but there’s a uniform line of attack here against Starmer that’s reinforced the public’s impression of him since well before the election.
The most galling thing about all of this is the entire cabinet there seem to have hyped themselves up as a team of political geniuses for winning the most eminently winnable election of all time and then totally squandered any mandate given by the election because there’s been zero core beliefs backing the entire project.
Apropos of nothing, my wife informs me that “keir” is a slang word for “penis” in Farsi.
OUCHIE!
Starmer isn’t the only one:
Lowe is another Right Wing Populist like trump and Boris Johnson.
Having announced, and defended, the postponement of certain local elections, Starmer now reverses the announcement, apparently because the Cabinet is advised that the policy won’t withstand legal challenges.
And then we wonder why the stupid fanatics in the right win, the number of unforced errors the center and center left have made in this whole shitfest is truly shameful.
And the splittists continue:
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/ousted-reform-councillors-defect-to-new-rival-party-as-ruper-336598/
This is unlikely to be helpful for Sir Keir’s attempts to put the affair behind him.
I’m just waiting for a good song set to some Barry Manilow for that arrest.
Continue to be puzzled as to what gets ignored in this thread.
Greens just officially won the by-election in Gorton and Denton after an absolutely brutal and despicable campaign by Labour. Labour was tweeting polls that left the Greens out completely and sending out flyers with a made up tactical voting company stating that Labour was best chance to defeat Reform despite every actual tactical voting company saying it was the Greens.
This is yet another significant further death knell for Starmer and the Labour party in general as Gorton and Denton was considered an extremely safe Labour seat. It’s stunning to think that a realistic next election matchup might be between Greens and Reform and that both of the major parties that have had a total lock on UK politics since living memory might become completely dismantled in less than a decade.