It is, in retrospect, quite funny to remember that, once upon a time, Keir Starmer was seen as the perfect antidote to Boris Johnson. The leadership contest of 2020 didn’t make the Labour party feel like it was ready to get into power again anytime soon, but the QC did offer something specific.
Britain had just decided to hand the Conservatives the majority of a generation and back then, it really felt like they would remain in power for a very, very long time. Still, some people quietly dared to hope. Surely voters would get bored of Johnson’s shtick eventually, right? Surely, surely, the shine would wear off, and after that, an exhausted, irritated electorate would turn to someone who felt like the polar opposite of the buffoon they’d once been charmed by?
Really, this was Starmer’s main strength. He was quite grey and a bit dull and even his supporters couldn’t deny that. If anything, that’s what they liked about him. Politics in 2020 had felt too exuberant for too long, and maybe the guy in the unremarkable suit and the unremarkable glasses could be just the right amount of boring.
Obviously, we had no idea what was still coming for us back then. The coronavirus happened and then Liz Truss hit the country, and it’s fair to say that the former was worse than the latter, but only marginally. Rishi Sunak acted as an interlude but it was already too late by then; people had stared into the slightly blank eyes of Keir Starmer and they’d decided that they liked what they’d seen.
It did help that, at the time, we were told that the Labour party had a plan and it would be able to hit the ground running. There wouldn’t be any drama anymore; no flouncing and no tawdry scandals, and overly flowery speeches with little policy legwork to back them up. Westminster was about to become profoundly uninteresting again, and that was a promise.
Well, it was a lie. That’s what it was. There was no plan at all and the election wasn’t even two years ago yet and already we’ve had so much drama, so much flouncing, so many tawdry scandals. Starmer may or may not go today and he may or may not go this week but whatever happens now, it’s clear that his project has failed entirely.
Perhaps worst of all is that he ended up recreating the mistakes of his true blue predecessors. He promoted people whom everyone knew would be a problem then acted like he was shocked when they turned out to be a problem. He and his government announced seemingly random and often unpopular policies with little to no pitch rolling.
Mostly, it all felt like he didn’t do much at all as the country sank further into despair, though Rishi Sunak, who came just before him, had the excuse of knowing he was about to be the last of his kind. What’s Starmer’s?
An answer to that question probably can’t be found right now, and so it’s worth asking a different one, namely: what should his successor do differently? The answer is both simple and huge. Any prime minister hoping to actually lead and remain in power for longer than a few split seconds will need to be honest with the country.
For too long, successive leaders have lied, either to themselves, to the electorate or to both – about Britain’s place in the world, the scale of its problems, how vulnerable it was to other countries’ whims, and what would need to be done in order for it to feel like a solid, optimistic, successful, forward-thinking place again.
It’s been the topic of around a million books over the past few years – from Steve Richard’s Turning Points to Michael Peel’s What Everyone Knows About Britain and A. G. Hopkins’s The Land Where Nothing Works – and yet their conclusions are yet to make it to No 10.
Somehow everyone agrees that the country needs to change but no-one is ready to stand by those famous stairs, in front of Downing Street, and treat Britons like adults. Yes, taxes will probably have to go up. Yes, we need to spend money on infrastructure and it will cost a lot and it will take a long time to fix everything. Yes, reforming social care will also cost money, but it is worth doing.
No, Britain cannot pretend it lives in a world that is unaffected by the war in Iran, or the madman gloating over the pond. Yes, the easiest way to get some economic growth would be to get closer to the EU again. No, the economy cannot thrive without immigration.
All of those are basic facts and yet they are not being made in the political mainstream. Should it really be a surprise, then, that people keep falling for the brazenly easy solutions offered by cynical populists? Voters aren’t stupid and they can tell when politicians aren’t being entirely straight with them, and they can and will go elsewhere out of spite.
Starmer’s sole strength was that he seemed rigorous, but in the end he proved to be as flimsy as the rest of them. There is no telling when he will go, and whether he will be replaced by Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband, Wes Streeting, or someone else entirely.
But what must happen next is clear. After years of leaders hiding their heads either up in the clouds or down in the sand, Britain needs a prime minister ready to govern the country as it is, today, in the real world. Is that really so much to ask?