Keir Starmer « Labour Uncut

Posts Tagged ‘Keir Starmer’

Smiling Andy has iron teeth

26/08/2026, 10:24:20 PM

A Blairite, a Brownite and an Corbynite walk into a pub. “Hi Andy, what are you having,” says the barman. Its a joke so lame it staggers in on calipers. The Prime Minister’s party critics have long sought to portray Andy Burnham as inherently insubstantial. A chameleon wearing flip-flops.

But Burnham has now had the last laugh. Being fleet of foot (sans flip-flops), has certainly worked out for him in the end. Essentially, he’s a classic old-right-wing Labour pragmatist. Economically a bit left-wing, socially a bit right-wing is a pretty decent centre-of-gravity for the British public.

Meanwhile the post-Blair Blairites who took the brunt of his Corleonean reshuffle are now a depleted lot. Memorably it is they, not Burnham, who went to the pub. None of them has The Master’s chutzpah or his feel for politics and it seems few of them will reemerge as significant players any time soon.

It’s worth noting Burnham’s sheer ruthlessness when the top job was finally his. He has never before had a reputation for doing the rough stuff. Niceness is Andy Burnham’s superpower. Clearly, he now speaks softly but carries a big stick – with a nail in the end. Andy the sweet-natured assassin. As Andrei Gromyko noted of Gorbachev, he has a nice smile but iron teeth.

Burnham has been consistently underrated. He was content to take criticism for being all things to all people and assume whatever positions were needed to remain relevant in Labour politics, but clearly he has been working on shaping his own agenda.

A combination of devo max, active redistribution and prioritising working-class lives, together with some red lines on issues like rough sleeping, which he regards as a moral test of the state’s capacity to deliver social goods.

Already, we are much closer to the definition of ‘Burnhamism’ than we ever were with Starmer. Similarly there are a phalanx of club-wielding Burnhamites ready to do battle for their man. Being a ‘Starmerite’ was to risk being confused for an item of executive luggage.

All of which means Burnham is the only game in town. He cannot plausibly be replaced, however things pan out over the next three years. And no-one is much interested in noises-off from displaced Starmer-era voices.

Only a Burnhamite walks into the pub these days.

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Burnham hopes his micro-radicalism is enough to win Labour a hearing

24/08/2026, 10:05:47 PM

The Irish have a tradition called the ‘month’s mind’ where relatives attend Mass to remember a loved one four weeks after their demise. Give or take a couple of days, its a month since Keir Starmer resigned as prime minister, although, frankly, it could be two years.

His passing as PM feels total. Gone. Forgotten. Disavowed. There is nothing even close to mourning. The Burnham Premiership is Year One. The past 24 months in office are reduced to junk status. Is that fair? Probably not. Keir Starmer wasn’t that bad, however his central fault – non-existent political antennae – combined with a lumpy, awkward public persona – means he will also be the last introvert to serve as PM.

The King is dead, Long Live the King of the North, so to speak. Yet Labour’s fundamental problem remains: How to govern when there’s no money to change anything? On any metric, Labour is light years from making the transformational change promised back in 2024. Andy Burnham has not learned how to turn lead into gold, merely brought greater flair and guile to proceedings.

Take housing. Despite promising to build 1.5 million new homes by 2029 (a pathetically inadequate figure to begin with) the final figure for 2025 was just 115,350 – 18,261 fewer than the Tories managed in 2023. With higher taxes in the offing and with the spectre of a sovereign debt crisis stalking the public finances, Labour is left treading water; hoping it can market small, incremental improvements as evidence of its worthiness to govern.

Buying people ‘breathing space’ is how Burnham is framing these gestures. Capping bus fares and making subscriptions easier to cancel – helping ease the cost of living crisis – is decent politics, but measly policy. Paradoxically, it is Burnham hoping for breathing space.

He needs to see growth in the economy as desperately as his predecessor did. His ‘micro-radicalism’ is the antithesis of ‘transformational change’ – but its all Labour has in the cupboard, for now. As the long, lazy summer of 2026 begins to drift into autumn and normal political service resumes, the question is whether this is going to be enough.

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Labour is having an emotional spasm

17/05/2026, 11:39:16 AM

by Rob Marchant

“And you call that statesmanship? I call it an emotional spasm.”

Aneurin Bevan to the Labour Party Conference, 1957.

This week has been an extraordinary one, and one for which Nye’s famous line might easily have been written.

A party which still enjoys a majority of 164 in the Commons has, for some reason, collectively decided to lose its mind.

After some dire local election results, it began with a short meeting between the PM and the Health Secretary, followed by the latter’s resignation, and ended with the calling of a by-election, so that a more-popular colleague can return to parliament and challenge for the leadership. A more convoluted script you could not find in The Thick Of It.

Now, if Labour wins that by-election, it may have a route to a new leader. But that route is fraught with unpredictability. There are, as they say, a great number of moving parts.

First, Burnham needs to win in a seat where every one of its eight wards has just been won by Reform, and by a good margin in each case. As Mayor and former MP for nearby Leigh, he has previously enjoyed a good personal vote, yes, but he is betting the entire farm on that fact (for comparison, individual MPs are usually felt to make a difference of plus or minus 3% to the vote garnered by the colour of the rosette). It is as if the turquoise wave of the 7^th of May had never happened.

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Labour has lost the plot

14/05/2026, 01:20:00 PM

In a parallel universe, a Labour government is basking in the publication of a well-balanced legislative programme and getting on with the business of government after a decade-and-a-half in the political wilderness.

Alas, we dwell in the political equivalent of a skip fire. Is Labour still a serious party?

We will doubtless find out over coming days, but it’s worth scanning over yesterday’s King’s Speech to see what might have been.

‘Strengthening our economic security,’ with the nationalisation of the steel industry, a major new rail line connecting our key cities in northern England and a Bill to get closer to the European Union.

Then there’s ‘Ending the opportunity crisis,’ – long overdue reform to the leasehold system and a crackdown on chiselling ticket touts.

And three themes prefixed by the word ‘strengthening’ (a favourite Starmer term) ‘reforming the state,’ ‘energy security,’ and ‘national security.’

This is all decent Labour fayre – practical measures about the people’s priorities – and in less crazy times would be getting a positive write up.

The obvious point is that we are not in normal times, with Labour openly flirting with political obsolescence.

The other point is that which of the potential Starmer replacements would demur from the agenda set out yesterday?

A leadership contest where there are no policy differences of substance is the very definition of the ‘narcissism of small difference.

What a self-indulgent, conceited monster we have become! Barely two years into government Labour’s ages-old pathology towards regicide shows no sign of abating.

Given we may be weeks away from food shortages and fuel rationing, Labour’s timing in plunging itself into a nihilistic fug merely hardens the voters’ impression that we have lost the plot and are incapable of addressing their problems.

In seeking to save their hides, panicking Labour MPs should consider the possibility that they are actually offering them up.

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Anas Sarwar must go

10/02/2026, 09:33:39 PM

by Kevin Meagher

What was he thinking? Anas Sarwar’s ‘Captain Oates/taking one for the team’ moment yesterday must surely come with consequences. The Scottish Labour Leader’s decision to shank Keir Starmer, only for the PM to look remarkably unscathed by the close of day, should now lead to Sarwar’s resignation.

As he damned the Prime Minister with faint praise (he was a ‘decent man’), Sarwar complained that the ‘situation in Downing Street’ was ‘not good enough’ with ‘too many mistakes’ under Starmer’s leadership. (A change in tune from his conference speech last year, when Sarwar lavished praise on him as a PM ‘that understands Scotland’).

How on earth can Sarwar continue in his role? He seemed to think, or was led to believe, that other resignations would follow his pre-emptive strike, with chatter that Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan would do likewise, presumably triggering a slew of cabinet resignations, thus precipitating Starmer’s own.

Only it didn’t work out like that. At all. Feverish television news coverage up until Sarwar’s speech – given solemnly in front of an unfeasibly gigantic Scottish Saltaire backdrop – deflated over the course of the afternoon, as minister after minister tweeted their abiding allegiance to the current occupant of Number Ten.

The coup, such as it was, was over in half a news cycle – with embarrassed political journalists hurriedly reducing their hyperbole from DEFCON 1 when it became clear the Prime Minister would survive. All of which left Sarwar looking like the overexuberant uncle at a family wedding leading a solo conga.

The only realistic course is for him to immediately quit as Scottish leader. Its moot whether or not he can do any more harm to Labour’s position north of the border. The party is languishing in a poor third place already, just weeks away from all-out Scottish parliamentary elections – behind the rejuvenated SNP and Reform. Sarwar doesn’t add anything to the ticket. Not after yesterday.

His relationship with Scottish Secretary, Douglas Alexander – a Starmer loyalist and co-leader of the Scottish campaign – is now hopelessly compromised. The media will love stoking divisions between the two men until election day.

I’m sure we can expect Kemi Badenoch to recite chunks of his speech tomorrow at Prime Minister’s Questions (if she doesn’t opt to read Wes Streeting’s chummy texts with Peter Mandelson).

Whatever confederates Sarwar thought he was in league with quickly abandoned him. His putsch failed. He is cast as Holyrood’s Lee Harvey Oswald. The price for recklessness and bad timing is generally the same in politics. The exit door. Anas Sarwar should now walk through it.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Labour Uncut

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Starmer should go. But not now

08/02/2026, 11:11:05 PM

by Kevin Meagher

I can only assume the plan was for Morgan McSweeney to stay in his role until the morning after the disastrous May elections, acting as a human flak jacket for the Prime Minister.

Or perhaps until the loss of the Gorton and Denton by-election (which I rather think Labour should hold). But the departure earlier today of Keir Starmer’s most senior and trusted aide over the Peter Mandelson imbroglio serves to underscore the sheer precariousness of the Prime Minister’s position.

Number Ten is on fire and Keir Starmer’s position is terminal. But here’s the thing – so are the fortunes of every PM. There is a beginning, middle and end for every career. And if to govern is to choose it is also to become unpopular for those choices. His critics would say Starmer’s tenure is in the final act, but what if it isn’t?

What if rather than chucking him out, panicking Labour MPs got a grip of themselves and thought strategically, rather than tactically for once – allowing the prime minister to make the necessary reforms to his Downing Street operation and to get on with it. For a while at least.

Labour still has two abiding and substantial advantages. The first is time. We are only a third of the way through this parliament with no need for a general election until summer 2029. Things as the New Labour anthem used to have it, can only get better.

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A boosted Starmer, but he’s still haunted by Burnham and Farage

04/10/2025, 01:26:56 AM

The Labour Party conference fulfilled its time-honoured purpose of providing respite for a beleaguered prime minister, assailed by the vicissitudes of government and the inveterate scheming of colleagues. This is an audience willing its leader on. A useful corrective to the Whitehall slog and the sniping of the Westminster village.

At conference everything is washed clean. At least for a few days. Unity was the vibe, with Keir Starmer greeted by thunderous applause in the hall from delegates as he rattled off a list of the party’s overlooked achievements in government, while he socked it to Nigel Farage. There is no mood in the activist base for a change in leader and the novelty of being in government again after 14 long years in the wilderness has still not worn off.

Not yet.

Will it last, that’s the question. It’s clear that what was true before the conference is still true after it. The country is in turmoil; the product of a general dissatisfaction with Red/Blue politics, but this is overlaid by a stubbornly unresolvable cost-of-living crisis, barely functioning public services, the highest tax-take any of us has known and an all-pervading sense of national decline. Throw in the early manoeuvrings of World War Three and it’s a challenging in-tray for Keir Starmer, to put it mildly.

He might consider the past 12 months have been arduous, but the next year will be worse. A difficult Budget at the end of November and a potentially disastrous set of elections next May could undo this week’s positivity and with it his tenure in Downing Street.

Ministers are plainly rolling the pitch for more tax rises – skating perilously close to their pre-election promises not to raise income tax and VAT – as they seek to plug the hole in the public finances, unable, as they would have preferred, to trim the welfare bill.

And polls point to a devastating set of results in the spring, with Labour in Wales trailing in third place ahead of the all-out assembly elections, while the SNP rides high in Scotland and Reform is set to rampage through Labour’s English local government strongholds.

And then there’s Andy…

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Our paradox PM needs to show us he has the stuff

29/09/2025, 08:50:06 PM

Who is Keir Starmer? I mean, who is he really? A year of more into office, propelled into Downing Street with an enormous 170-seat Commons majority, our chameleon PM remains elusive. Unknowable.

His father was a toolmaker, apparently. But what does he want? Whose side is he on? Are there particular passions that drive him? What is he for?

Our Prime Minister: the walking paradox.

The human rights lawyer who wants to die on a hill over compulsory identity cards. The north London liberal who has gutted the overseas aid budget. The barrister – a King’s Counsel no less – who can only manage faltering performances in the House of Commons.

The man who told us Britian had become a ‘nation of strangers’ because of excessive immigration, only to disown his remarks weeks later. The election winner with personal ratings that are now through the floor (who, in any case, managed to win half a million votes fewer than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2019).

While his army of restless and underworked backbenchers are now plotting against the man responsible for putting them on the green leather benches in the first place.

Governing is hard, it turns out.

Yet Starmer could have made things easier on himself. For a start, the government’s communications have been shambolic – not helped by the general absence of political strategy since entering Downing Street and a revolving door of often sup-par backroom staff.

And who would have thought a PM with a 170-majority would struggle to get tricky proposals through parliament? But he’s managed it with the fiasco over the proposed welfare cuts – which are set to cost more!

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The case for hope: Why Keir Starmer’s situation isn’t as bad as reported and Labour victory at the next election is now MORE likely after the past year

04/07/2025, 06:12:01 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Yes, you read those words correctly. Hope. Labour election victory. More likely. The standout moments from the last year might seem like disasters – freebiegate, Winter Fuel Allowance, disability benefits – but away from these high impact political car crashes, the basis of future success is there and currently being largely ignored.

The case for optimism comprises three parts: what actually matters to the public, signs of improvement in these issues and the level of popular expectation of government and politics.

The various political woes that have befallen the government are real. They are largely self-inflicted and they do impact the public’s view of Keir Starmer’s competence. None of this deniable. But in terms of what really matters to voters , there are two preeminent issues: the cost of living and the NHS. The latest release from the Office for National Statistics’ public opinion survey is for May and the cost of living was cited as the most important issue by 86% of respondents, narrowly ahead of the NHS which was selected by 85% of respondents. For comparison, Immigration was at 59%. Wider data suggests that if voters are forced to only pick one issue (multiple issues could be selected in the ONS survey) the cost of living is the highest ranked issue by a wide margin over the NHS.

This is where voters will make a judgement on whether the Labour government has delivered for them. Most of the noise of politics is immaterial to the public. Either there’s good news in these two areas that is felt by voters, in which case, Labour will be well placed (as would any incumbent government) or there is not, and Labour will likely lose.

The evidence is that there has been solid progress on both fronts over the last year. This article by Tom Calver, Data Editor at the Times provides an excellent summary of the reality on the ground: Wages rising ahead of inflation and waiting lists coming down.

Rising wages, falling waiting lists: an unpopular take, but in a few ways, life in Britain has been (slowly) improving over the past year.

But it doesn’t feel that way — and that’s a problem for Labour

Free to read: www.thetimes.com/article/33c0…

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— Tom Calver (@tomcalver.bsky.social) 29 June 2025 at 11:42

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In defence of the Labour government’s first few months: A decent start that is underestimated because of endemic political ADHD

02/01/2025, 08:48:23 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Disappointment. That’s the tenor of much commentary about the Labour government’s first few months. Criticism for a lack of radicalism is to be expected from the left but there’s been a chorus from centrist voices. For example, here’s Duncan Robinson from the Economist

Starmer’s Labour as the apogee of “not a good look” thought

www.economist.com/britain/2025…

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— Duncan Robinson (@duncanrobinson.bsky.social) 2 January 2025 at 09:32

Setting aside gripes from the Socialist Campaign Group that the top 100 companies on the FTSE have not yet been nationalised, there are two elements to the mainstream critique: more could and should have been done on policy, such as tax or planning reform and that there’s a missing vision thing. Underpinning both, on occasion, is a wistful view of how much better things were in 1997 after a few months of Labour government.

Both aspects of criticism have a kernel of truth but are currently being wildly exaggerated while the nostalgia for 1997 is a function of rose-tinted spectacles revealing a grand design that was distinctly absent at the time.

On policy, more can always be done but it is equally important to get it right. The Lansley NHS reforms of the Cameron-Clegg coalition are testament to the dangers of ‘go big or go home’ without having a clear plan. They were an ill thought-out mess which few in the NHS wanted and even fewer defend today.

It was patently obvious that precious little policy had been developed by Labour in opposition and areas like planning and tax are much easier to get wrong than right. If there has been no progress in these areas in the next year then there maybe a better case for complaint. In the interim, since attaining office, there have been plenty of policies that will have long term impact. From employment rights to housing targets to new rules on onshore wind farms, there have been substantive announcements. Combined with action to stop madness such as the Rwanda policy, almost £1bn spent for zero impact, and new funding of the public services in the budget, this is surely a reasonable start.

On the vision thing, more often than not, it is a vibe, retrofitted to government policy based on what has worked. In 1997, there were big immediate achievements like the Minimum Wage, Scottish devolution and independence for the Bank of England but it would be straining credulity to say there was a distinct ideological thread to these moves other than ‘modernisation’ or just ‘making stuff work better’.

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