14.05.2026
How much longer?
Though Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership hangs in the balance, his failure is less due to incompetence than to Britain’s objective situation, argues Paul Demarty
There can be no doubt that the knives are our for Keir Starmer. As I write, close to 100 MPs have publicly demanded his resignation. His latest make-or-break speech - what must be the fifth ‘reset’ of his chaotic, despised government - was a damp squib. He rejected “incremental change”, and then promised to boldly nationalise an already-nationalised steelworks, and create an already-existing apprenticeship scheme. Truly a once-in-a-generation statesman, ladies and gentlemen; how lucky we are to live to see him at work!
The crisis is, of course, occasioned by the May 7 mauling in local elections, and brutal Labour defeats in the Scottish parliament and Welsh Senedd. All widely expected. In that light, it is hardly surprising that many of the protagonists in the ham-fisted drama of the Labour leadership were already on manoeuvres by then.
There is only one kind of manoeuvre known to these people in our day: the leak to the friendly journalist, the peculiar indiscreetness of people known only to us as ‘sources close to …’ and ‘allies of …’ someone or other. According to Ed Miliband’s pet leakers, he had “privately” suggested to Starmer that he ought to set a timetable for his withdrawal (some privacy!). Andy Burnham - sorry, sources close to Andy Burnham - assures us that he has a path to the Commons, that he has some kind of agreement with the national executive not to block him, as well as several noble souls willing to step aside to make room for him in safe seats.
The other ‘soft left’ challenger, Angela Rayner, has so far held back. Not though Wes Streeting (of the New Labour dead-ender right). He has announced his resignation as health secretary. To run he will need the back of at least 81 Labour MPs. One must presume that enough have already given their nod. Of course, that is only the first hurdle. Besides others throwing in their hats, there is Sir Keir himself. The indications are that he would stand. Streeting’s calculation must be that he has to make his bid now … before the party’s real favourite, Andy Burnham, gets back into the Commons (which, given Labour’s appallingly low poll ratings, is itself a big ask).
Predictive punditry is a dangerous game for the humble weekly paper correspondent (as I know only too well, having confidently assured readers that Russia would not invade Ukraine in an article published on the very day Putin’s tank columns made a break for Kyiv). Currently we have a fast-moving situation, and it may be that even a survivable challenge from Streeting would prove damaging enough for Starmer to reconsider Miliband’s initial advice.
However, his position is not as weak as it appears, in several ways. In the first place, it is devilishly difficult to make a coup in the Labour Party. Even Jeremy Corbyn, despised by almost all of his parliamentary colleagues, could brass out the attempt on his leadership in 2016, forcing things in the end to a membership vote he was never in any danger of losing. Challenges must be made openly: there is no equivalent of the Tories’ 1922 Committee to serve as a clearing house for discreet backstabbing. The threat of reprisals, of promotions missed and committee appointments deep-sixed is all too real.
There is also the mere fact that the field is so crowded, and so incoherent. The old ‘hard left’ is thoroughly marginalised, apart for a few fossils like Diane Abbott and John McDonnell. Other than that, the gang’s all here: there is the soft left, the centre and the right - and even these are divided. Soft lefties must choose between Rayner and taking a punt on Miliband. The centre and right are themselves divided into factions: the old bureaucratic machine core still exists, represented by Labour Together, which seems to be willing to ditch Starmer (Josh Simons has called for him to go in an op-ed for The Times); but also the true-believer Blairites, who back Streeting, and Blue Labour, and so on. Starmer is so despised by so many people that they are all somehow tripping over each other trying to give him the Ides of March treatment.
Bad options
None of the options are exactly great either. Burnham is out of parliament, and supposing he has as clear a path to a safe Labour seat - if there is such a thing at the moment - as his close-to sources seem to think, it would be quite a thing to force a mayoral election on Manchester now, Labour having lost every single seat contested in that city last week. By doing so he would, of course, further destabilise the government and therefore make it less likely that Labour would win the mayoralty than if he were simply hit by a bus. It does not exactly have the smell of selflessness to it, and why would it? Burnham is a political chameleon - a somewhat more imaginative one than the average run of Labour apparatchiks, but it could not be more obvious that the pursuit of personal glory is his main aim.
Within the hallowed chamber of British ‘democracy’, meanwhile, we have: Ed Miliband (whose previous spell as leader was not exactly a ringing success); Angela Rayner (with charges of tax irregularities apparently cleared); and Wes Streeting (glistening with Mandelson-slime). Catherine West, meanwhile, was at best a stalking horse (some have unkindly brought to mind the old description of Anthony Meyer, who made a similar challenge to Margaret Thatcher in 1989, as a “stalking donkey”). As a Labour MP told the Guardian’s Jessica Elgot, “We have to face up to the fact that every single one of them is fucking useless.”
The preference among the PLP malcontents, therefore, is increasingly for an orderly transition: the ‘set the timetable’ option. Such is the attitude, also, of Simons, who writes that Starmer
… should take control of the situation by overseeing an orderly transition to a new prime minister. What happens next is not a horse race: it’s about the future of our party and our country. Over the coming months, how the Labour Party conducts itself matters. To avoid leadership chaos, senior figures across factions should come together to decide the best way forward. The public expects nothing less.1
Even that has hardly got a great track record - the handover of power from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown was buttery-smooth, but the Brown premiership was anything but. The trouble is that this scenario concedes all the initiative to Starmer. Only he can set out this hallowed timetable. If he does not want to book himself an Uber to the glue factory, Streeting, Burnham, Simons and whoever else can go hang.
He may want to, however - or may come to want to before long. So let us assume that some sort of ‘orderly’ departure is arranged, and a leadership contest is arranged (or Simons’ back-room deal takes place to ensure a coronation). What should these successors do? What can they promise, really?
Simons is not uninteresting here, given his background as a backroom fixer for probably the most apolitical faction of the Labour right. His prescription for Labour is at least rhetorically bold:
We need radicalism, energy, and immense courage … We must ditch sharp-elbowed positioning and the ridiculous debate about whether to move left or right, because the old political spectrum no longer exists …
What most people want is not complicated. An economy that rewards hard work, lower bills and higher living standards, roads free from potholes, rivers without shit, and streets without litter. A state that punishes profiteers, rewards innovation, and harnesses technology for public good. Strong borders and a migration system run in the national interest, a willingness to celebrate our history and strengthen our communities … All this requires radical reform … We must embrace risk.2
His model for all this is none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose long presidency really did reshape the American body politic, establishing for a time the legitimacy of open and large-scale state intervention in the US economy. He quotes what he claims is FDR’s motto: “above all, try something”.
Yet it cannot seriously be argued that Britain today is in an analogous position to the US in 1932. The immediate economic situation in the US was far more dire than ours, of course, but the fundamentals could not have been more different. The US was a rising great power - indeed on the cusp of assuming global hegemony. It had a vast industrial base and agricultural sector. Britain today, on the other hand, is at the absolute fag-end of its long decline. Its economy is largely based on the financial sector, which generates enough tax revenue to just about keep most of the rest of us out of penury. We build almost nothing, and are net importers of food.
This situation is not merely a matter of will. It is possible to imagine, we suppose, a truly radical reorientation to some kind of ‘war communism’ and a push for self-sufficiency in the essentials, likely at huge short-term human cost (though, even then, where do we propose to get rare earths and the various inputs to semiconductor manufacture? The tooth fairy?). Perhaps the fiscal straitjacket could be loosened enough to make some modest repairs to Britain’s social fabric, although bond-market vigilantes are already nibbling away at gilt yields, to warn the victor of this little bunfight away from any shift to the left. What is not possible is for some new broom in Number 10 - Labour, Tory, or for that matter Green or Reform - to embark on some impressive national development project, fuelled purely by audacity and verve.
Long list
Starmer looks a pretty diminished figure today. In some respects, this is probably his fault as an individual. Nobody forced him to make Mandelson ambassador, or to remove the whip from rebels against attacks on pensioners. His robotic, fake public image is partly a creation of a hostile media, of course, but it is not an obviously unfair creation. He seems to have no political opinions other than the notion that sensible people like Sir Keir Starmer should be in charge, and left to ‘deliver change’, and it is difficult to see his limpet-like grip on Number 10 as anything other than monstrous and baffling arrogance.
If his premiership is to be written off as a failure already, however - and surely it must - it merely joins an ever-longer list. Brown was knifed by the yellow press and had no answer; Cameron won re-election, only to inflict the disaster of Brexit on the British state; Theresa May somehow squandered her position in a snap election and limped from humiliation to humiliation; Boris Johnson barely had his feet under the table before repeated scandals undermined him; Liz Truss had a shorter tenure than the average Tottenham Hotspur manager these days; at that point, Rishi Sunak could do no more than steer his leaky boat into the scuttling yard.
These men and women were probably not as stupid as they seemed, with the exception, perhaps, of the sui generis moron, Truss. They were made to look stupid because there is a basic problem with British politics. We fight our elections as if Britain were still a great world power, but nothing could be further from the truth. The UK is a coupon-clipping backwater, even more radically dependent on American patronage than the rest of the so-called west. Europe as a whole could buck these adverse circumstances; not our drizzly little island with its even drizzlier statelet over the Irish Sea.
It is not, therefore, that we have had a series of ‘fucking useless’ prime ministers. We have had a series of more or less average prime ministers (and Liz Truss), who have been made to look useless, because they cannot - to use Starmer’s favourite word - ‘deliver’. The same limitations will apply to whoever succeeds him.
The only mystery is that so many are queueing up to do exactly that.