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Posts Tagged ‘Keir Starmer’

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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The Uncuts: 2024 political awards Part I – Politician of the year: Keir Starmer

31/12/2024, 02:21:33 PM

Politician of the year: Keir Starmer

Obviously its Keir Starmer. The man just led Labour back to government with an eye-wateringly large majority. Who else could it be?

But there are layers to Keir Starmer being Uncut’s politician of the year. Yes, the achievements demand recognition. Perhaps more interesting though is how this politician continues to baffle and confound Westminster.

Here is a post by John Rentoul from Sunday 29^th December, quoting Tim Shipman’s intro in his piece in the Sunday Times. It’s extremely well written and smart intro, perfectly encapsulating the current conventional wisdom on Keir Starmer, the extent to which he is serially misread and why his success will continue to surprise.

Intro of the day from @ShippersUnbound https://t.co/v4YCm9xJLB pic.twitter.com/8Tkt2iBAC9

— John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) December 29, 2024

There’s nothing factually wrong or incorrect but two issues show how the gaze of the cognoscenti is in the wrong place.

First, there’s the focus on the immediate with the emphasis on the government’s day to day travails. Labour has a near impregnable majority, no election due for several years and a very recent general election where pollsters were, to put it politely, all over the place. But somehow snapshot polls and the horse-race lens still dominate reporting. There’s lots that’s negative that could be written that is material to understanding Keir Starmer’s position, but it would be about policy travails not who’s up or who’s down. The mirroring of Sunak and Starmer in the intro is neat but their respective positions, Sunak at the end of a difficult parliament with an evaporating majority and Starmer at the start of a parliament with a huge majority, could not be more different.

Second, there’s the appearance of Nigel Farage. With his quips and accompanying online malestrom, Farage is Westminster’s ideal of a politician. Yet while he did present a threat from the right to Sunak, he was quite the reverse for Keir Starmer, making a significant contribution to Labour’s majority by splitting the Tory vote. However, the framing is of Farage chasing down Starmer as he did Sunak. Once again there are plenty of threats to Labour, more relevant than Farage. For example, what about the Greens, they have almost the same number of MPs as Reform and actually took seats that were Labour targets.

Beyond the headline achievements, Keir Starmer is Uncut’s politician of the year because of how he has got to the top of the greasy pole: he is not of Westminster, he doesn’t do what’s expected, he doesn’t play the game, he rarely chases headlines, he isn’t attentive to the lobby and commentariat, but yet…he sits atop the biggest Labour majority in decades and has bent Westminster to his will.

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Nigel Farage is a malign influence on British politics but he’s also Labour’s greatest electoral asset. He splits the Tory vote, drags them too far right and unites the left

28/12/2024, 09:03:00 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Nigel Farage is a grifter and political huckster. He infects politics with prejudice and, as his conduct over summer demonstrated, cares not a jot about the real consequences of his posturing. But he is also the man who could help cement a new voter coalition for Labour that sustains the party in power over multiple general elections.

Three interlinked factors make Nigel Farage a unique electoral gift to Labour: Britain’s First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system, the idiocy he engenders within the Conservative party leadership and his toxic – for the majority of voters – personal brand.

Britain’s FPTP voting system has ensured that the choice at constituency level has usually been one of two parties for as long as Britons have gone to the polls. The identity of the two parties might vary in different parts of the country – for example, in Scotland, the SNP are normally one of the two, in parts of England, the Lib Dems are in the mix – but it is mainly Tory versus Labour.

FPTP’s iron law of two means that if one of the duopoly somehow has its vote divided by a new entrant, then the other party tends to win big. In the 1980s, the SDP detached a section of Labour’s support and helped the Tories register triple digit majorities. In 2024, Reform was the Tories’ version of the SDP.

Currently there is a mania sweeping the Conservative party that Reform could replace them in the top two. To an extent, anything is possible, yet this scenario is extraordinarily improbable. The last time a party was replaced was when Labour supplanted the Liberals 100 years ago, but it took an utterly unprecedented level of self-harm from the Liberals to hand Labour their position.

The Liberal party split into two, each faction led by a former leader who had been prime minister with unbounded personal acrimony poisoning any chance of rapid rapprochement. Both versions of the Liberals wilfully acceded to being junior partners for different governments, first with the Tories in 1918 for Lloyd George’s National Liberals and then with Labour in 1924 for Asquith’s Liberals. It was a near unique set of circumstances where each faction legitimised Tories and Labour as the senior party and very publicly obviated the point of voting Liberal to potential supporters of any hue, whether from the left or the right.

This is the level of upheaval required to be replaced as one of the main two parties under FPTP. Now, ask yourself, is anything vaguely comparable likely in the next few years – are the Tories going to split in two? Are the factions going to support Labour and Reform? Kemi Badenoch might be a dreadful leader but she’s not going to preside over that. Probably.

Rather than the Tories being replaced nationally, much more feasible is that Reform win handfuls of seats at the next election, establishing footholds in groups of constituencies where they are competitive with the Conservatives. This future, where the split on the right is perpetuated is one where versions of the 2024 election are rerun again and again with Labour taking seats that would have previously been lost, because the vote on the right is split.

It is a future made more likely by the madness that engulfs Conservative leaders when dealing with Nigel Farage. The choice for Tory members at the leadership election might have been between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, but in terms of attitude to Reform the options were Farager or Faragerer, with the same underlying basic pitch: ‘Nigel was right, the Conservative government was wrong and as a senior Cabinet Minister in that government I failed to make a difference’ It is baffling that anyone would seriously mount this type argument, entreating right-wing ex-Conservatives to switch back to proven failures, while the impact on more centrist ex-Conservatives who moved to Labour or the Lib Dems (17% of their 2019 voters), voters who recoiled from the bouts of performative right-wing grandstanding of recent Tory governments, seems to have been entirely ignored.

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