Political commentator Ash Sarkar has claimed that prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has got “all of [Tony] Blair’s weaknesses and none of his strengths”.
The author and senior editor at Novara Media was speaking at the 2025 Hay Festival of Literature and Arts, which is partnered with The Independent for the second year running.
She appeared on a panel alongside former Paralympian, TV presenter and crossbench peer Tanni Grey-Thompson and psychologist Mary Trump, author of Too Much and Never Enough, as part of the festival’s daily News Review event, chaired by The Independent’s senior features writer Helen Coffey.
Sarkar described Sir Keir as “terrible at politics” and said that his team was “built to win the Labour leadership” only, in a conversation about Reform UK leader Nigel Farage’s recent shift towards left-wing policies.
“The two simple facts are that Nigel Farage is very good at politics – he’s a very astute reader of the public mood and he understands his base very, very well,” Sarkar said.
“And Keir Starmer is terrible at politics. He’s just really bad. I’m no fancy big city political consultant, but I could have told you scrapping the winter fuel allowance, going for pensioners who A – paid into the system for their whole working lives and B – turn out in high numbers to vote, is a bad f***ing idea, right?”
“They’re a machine built for one thing, the team around Keir Starmer,” she added. “They were built to win the Labour leadership, so that’s why they did the thing of pitching left and then turning right. They did it very effectively. But that’s not a trick you can repeat in government.”
“But let’s compare Keir Starmer not to a left wing leader like Jeremy Corbyn; compare him to Tony Blair. Do you think Tony Blair would have wasted his first 100 days like that?
“I think that Keir Starmer, in many ways, he’s got all of Blair’s weaknesses and none of his strengths.”
Elsewhere in the discussion, Baroness Thompson suggested that Farage “absolutely could be the next Prime Minister” and said that she could “absolutely” understand “why people connect to him”.
“He’s very engaging and he walks around the streets ≠ it’s personality politics,” she said. “I can absolutely see why people talk about him being a man of the people. And then you look at how much he earns and where he earned it and you go, ‘OK, not quite’, but he’s really connecting.”
The Independent’s morning News Review panels see our journalists discuss current affairs and headlines with standout figures from the arts, politics, science and comedy.
The 38th spring edition of the annual Hay Festival takes place in Hay-on-Wye, the “town of books” in Powys, Wales, from 22 May to 1 June.
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