DESPITE all protestations from the Labour leadership, it seems that Keir Starmer’s time in Downing Street is coming to an end after all.
While it’s not the line being fed to the public, the Labour leader has reportedly told close friends that he does, in fact, intend to stand down from the role, and will be setting out an orderly route to doing so.
Cabinet sources have alleged that our shining knight of the realm will be seeking a “dignified” exit from Downing Street.
But there is no dignified exit for the Prime Minister; not with his record of failure, U-turns and complicity in the genocide of Palestinians.
Perhaps the writing was on the wall from the moment the cursed election of ‘24 had concluded. Starmer was elected on a wave of anti-Tory sentiment that had built over a decade of mismanagement and political chaos.
Yet the Prime Minister appears to have misread the room entirely, taking his electoral victory as a thumping approval of bland Starmerism – rather than a last hurrah for establishment politics as we know it.
The era of two big parties trading power back and forth ad nauseum is over – something that the press appears to have finally cottoned on to in the wake of a disastrous performance for Labour across Scotland, England and Wales. Whatever “hope” that people held for Labour – that they would finally break the deadlock of Conservative policy and austerity we’ve suffered through for a decade – was shattered. And in its place lay the only conclusion one could reach: this isn’t working.
We needed a politics that challenged the worn-out establishment. Yet elected on a manifesto for change, Starmer immediately committed to moving forward with the same policies as the Conservatives – if not worse versions of them, in many cases.
Even during the bleakest moments of Theresa May’s hostile environment for immigrants and asylum seekers, I don’t recall the Tories ever setting up TikTok accounts for good British patriots to cheer along to images of our neighbours being forcibly deported. Nor do I recall May ever veering as close to Enoch Powell in her rhetoric as the leader of the Labour Party has.
The continuation of this hostile environment – its acceleration, even – under Starmer is a far cry from the dignity and respect for all that Labour claim to hold. Why should Starmer expect to leave Downing Street with the dignity he refused to others?
There was no dignity in how Starmer bent and scraped to Israel as it blew the limbs from children, reduced hospitals to rubble and executed journalists and first responders openly.
Nor was there dignity in pressing pensioners into further fuel poverty with cuts to the winter allowance. Sure, you could point to the fact that he later reversed that decision, under immense pressure ... but how a leader of the Labour Party could have found himself arguing for cutting fuel support for vulnerable people makes me question which “Labour values” our Prime Minister supposedly subscribes to.
And as for the entirety of the Mandelson/Epstein affair, well… “dignified” is not a word I would use.
The contemporary Labour Party has debased politics in this country, failing to take necessary action on big issues, while crushing the left and bolstering the right. His Cabinet consisted of a now-former health secretary who accelerated Tory and far-right attacks on the rights and humanity of the LGBTQ+ community, and a Foreign Secretary who still maintains a brash, personal friendship with JD Vance, the vice-president of the United States, as that country slips further into the grip of fascism.
Though Starmer’s government has had no problem dabbling in a bit of authoritarianism itself, proscribing activist groups as actual terrorists and raiding Quaker meeting houses for the crime of even talking about protesting against the Government.
Of course, Labour’s drubbing at the elections has nought to do with that, according to Labour. Instead, we are told that it is, in fact, our own fault that we could not see the pace of change set under the Labour Party. Whereas I would argue that we saw exactly what Labour have done – and told the party where to go as a result.
Now exiting stage right, Starmer appears set to leave Downing Street as the shortest-serving Labour prime minister in history – a record that I suspect will be broken almost immediately by whoever replaces him.
Whoever takes the throne will be the seventh prime minister in just 10 years; something to remember the next time the Westminster establishment warns of the inevitable chaos we would be plunged into without them.
It feels fitting that Starmer’s time in office will be marked by the sound of a thousand Labour talking heads turning from “the Prime Minister will not be stepping down” to “Starmer will make a dignified exit for the sake of the Labour party”. He’ll end his time in Downing Street with a lie on his lips till the very last moment.
Making the decision to finally leave won’t be Starmer’s first U-turn – but it will hopefully be his last.
