Keir Starmer’s tanking popularity with the voting public is nothing new. But now he has lost all his remaining street cred with his own MPs. Leaving them unsupervised for regular stretches has clearly given them all separation anxiety, the kind that leads to unfriendly briefings to friendly journalists.
It was looking (relatively) good for the Prime Minister after the Labour Conference at the end of September. Rousing speeches rallied the troops, but as what increasingly looks to be a manifesto-breaking budget looms the country’s leader has been going AWOL with five more trips to add to his annual tally of 17 (and counting).
The banners had barely come down in Liverpool before Starmer was on a flight to Copenhagen for the Seventh European Political Community Summit, although he had to come home almost immediately to chair a COBRA meeting in light of the Manchester Synagogue attack.
Then it was over to Mumbai to meet with Modi, with only a brief three-day stop in the UK before he was back out in Sharm El Sheikh to flatter US President Donald Trump by backing his Gaza peace plan. By now we’re on October 13 and still Starmer was racking up the air miles.
At the end of October it was off to Ankara to ink a deal on Eurofighter Typhoon jets and have a quick photo op in front of some military gear. Just one week later Starmer was making the long-haul trip to Rio de Janeiro for the COP30 pre-conference, where he demurred on chipping in to the Brazilian tropical forest fund. A lot of fossil fuels burnt up for a big fat nothing.
As one MP said, sotto voce, to the New Statesman’s political editor “the least we could do is plant some f***ing trees” given how Zack Polanski’s Green Party is coming up fast in their rear view mirror.
Budget day is November 26, but the PM still has flights to catch. Just days before his ally Rachel Reeves has to stand up there with a red briefcase and tell us all she’s going to raise income tax and unleash political turmoil, Starmer will be hot-footing it back from the G20 summit in Johannesburg.
I suppose it’s nice to have a leader so committed to international diplomacy, but one rather suspects Starmer prefers to be received with pomp and circumstance abroad than face the mutinous party at home.
MPs are waking up to the fact that, 16 months in, they have very little to show for trouncing the Conservatives and gaining power.
Local elections set for May across England, along with Scottish Parliament elections and those for the Senedd in Wales, are shaping up to be a bloodbath for Labour. Reform could take more councils (unless voters wake up to the terrible job they’re doing in the ones they nabbed this year) countrywide, while the Greens are coming for their lunch in London.
Labour lost the left before they even won the general election. Remember his blustering speech in February 2023, where he told us “if you don't like the changes that we've made, I say the door is open, and you can leave". Charming.
Well, leave we did, and have been proved endlessly right that he’s an immoral husk as he throws LGBTQ+ rights into the mincer and degenerates migrants to try to appeal to the right.
The begging emails to re-join the party look extra pathetic now that Zack Polanski has drawn in 130,000 new members for the Greens. Even the chaotic mess that is Your Party has secured 50,000 new members before selecting a name. Zohran Mamdani’s uplifting mayoral campaign in New York has shown us change is possible, and it’s coming from younger, more switched on politicians.
At the other extreme, anyone who sees an appeal in Farage and his xenophobic rhetoric draped in St George’s crosses won’t be tempted by Starmer’s half-hearted attempts to woo them.
He can allude to Enoch Powell in his speeches and sit in front of as many Union Jacks as he likes, but the thousands of far right supporters led by Tommy Robinson into London over the summer were still baying for his resignation. Starmer simply doesn’t have the juice to go full fash, even as Farage shoves him ever right-wards.
As for the shrinking squeezed political middle classes, the flip-flopping on everything to winter fuel allowance to grooming gangs has proved exhausting. Labour has failed to deliver on anything or come up with a new vision. The cost-of-living crisis, the sluggish economy, and crumbling public services are all here and making the country tetchy and febrile.
Now would be the opportune moment to get his house in order. Instead someone from No 10 (McSweeney? Starmer himself, playing Uno Reverse?) has been briefing about a ‘coup’ against the Prime Minister. Wes Streeting has had to start blathering about Celebrity Traitors analogies on morning telly to try and cover his arse.
It doesn’t matter if Starmer is vowing to man his own political barricades, it makes him look even weaker to suggest his own MPs are circling like sharks when they should be circling the wagons. Polanski was on the nose when he said Starmer won’t be in charge by the 2029 general election — he’ll be lucky to make it to Christmas at this rate.
Starmer is a man who claim he doesn’t dream and now he’s stuck in a nightmare of his own making. But changing the person at the top is unlikely to solve Labour’s woes. They had 14 years to plot a comeback for themselves and the country. Instead, they won only because the Tories combusted and have spent almost a year and a half acting like the dog that’s caught the car.
Frankly, they’re all Traitors. Labour betrayed its core principles to stand for the rights of the working people to obtain and maintain power. Starmer wants to prescribe jobs to depressed Brits rather than, oh I don’t know, invest in mental healthcare and improve living conditions? Well, he might have a taste of his own medicine soon enough.
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Wes Streeting talks a good game - but could he deliver as PM if Starmer is toppled in coup?
