Sir Keir Starmer's announcement that he would be jacking it in as an MP on the same day as Andy Burnham made his maiden speech as prime minister in parliament was, presumably, just a coincidence. The sort of coincidence that happens when your most loyal adviser, a calendar and a klaxon marked “Look At Me!” all accidentally fall down the same flight of stairs at the same time. Speaking of advisers, there was something distinctly Morgan McSweeney-esque about Starmer’s timing: it was strategic and vengeful. Yet if the desired effect was to flip the proverbial bird at Burnham, said bird flew straight into a closed window.
The aim, one imagines, was to ensure that as Burnham rose to introduce himself to the Commons, political hacks would be distracted by the prospect of a byelection, candidate selection and lots of gossipy speculation about why Starmer had gone now. The problem is, it didn’t work. Worse still, it provided a stark reminder of why Keir Starmer’s premiership ended in tatters: he could not read a room, his party or the country. And his timing was almost always completely off. The “King of the North’s” maiden speech was a ceremonial moment: good-humoured and hopeful. And his troops rallied behind him. By contrast, the timing of Starmer’s news appeared petulant, jealous and tone-deaf.
It had begun so differently. In 2024, the former director of public prosecutions’ premiership was marketed as calm competence. I remember, regrettably, publicly musing about how “the grown-ups were back in charge”. Like others, I craved a technocratic leadership that would simply get on with the job following 14 years of rotten, chaotic, self-serving Tory rule that had left the country divided, depressed and broke. Starmer appeared to understand that the Labour landslide wasn’t just a renewed enthusiasm for his party but a massive and outright rejection of the Conservatives with the promise of “country before party”.
Nerve political commentator Sangita Myska
Unfortunately, Sir Keir and a small group of advisers that I was reliably informed were nicknamed “the Boys” had failed to notice that alongside competence (a low bar, let’s face it) we yearned for a massive dollop of hope. And that hope needed to come wrapped in a plan, based on a clear set of values, that would lead to effective, coherent policy.
The public, ravaged by the 2008 financial crash, austerity, Brexit and Covid, wanted change rooted in integrity. Instead, with all the charm of the grim reaper, Starmer warned us things would get worse before they got better. Now, while that message was admirably candid, it was not the national pep talk one hopes to hear from a newly elected government. We all knew things were awful; we needed to know how he intended to make it better.
For a former human rights lawyer to need such a clarification [on Israel withholding power and water from Gaza] was itself a devastating failure of moral and legal precision
The own-goals came thick and fast: a slew of stories about how Labour donor Lord Alli had paid for some of the prime minister’s (and his wife’s) clothes, in return, allegedly, for a Downing Street pass, led to accusations of cronyism. While “glasses-gate” was nowhere near on the same scale as the PPE-type scandals of the Boris Johnson era, the public’s tolerance for the merest whiff of wrongdoing was at an all-time low. The rightwing columns began to write themselves – yet cabinet ministers continued to accept freebies to pop concerts at the same time as some families couldn’t afford to pay their gas bills.
Next up: the dreadful misjudgments in the order of policy announcements. The manifesto commitment to the fiscal rules, the UK’s ballooning national debt and sluggish growth meant that welfare reform was – and is – inevitable and necessary. However, the perception that Starmer and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, were ready to make cuts to support for older and disabled people before confronting tax-avoiding multinational companies made many wonder whether the prime minister – who is from a working class background – still understood what life was like for ordinary people. In the face of rebellious backbenchers, Starmer eventually U-turned; I’m all for changing your mind, but it’s not exactly a choice if you’ve got a gun held to your head.
Then there was Gaza. On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched its attack on southern Israel and perpetrated an atrocity. In return, Israel committed a genocide. Starmer's radio interview, in which his answer to one question was widely interpreted as endorsing Israel's right to cut off Gaza's power and water to an occupied territory home to over 2 million people, remains a defining wound for his premiership. Collective punishment breaches the laws of war. His team later said he meant Israel had the right to self-defence, not to deprive civilians of essentials. But for a former human rights lawyer to need such a clarification was itself a devastating failure of moral and legal precision.
Starmer then failed to read the country and its disgust at Israel’s disproportionate response to 7/10. As the bodies of Palestinian babies piled up, hundreds of thousands marched in protest. Petitions calling for arms embargos and sanctions circulated and – even when three Britons were killed by an Israeli drone attack – Starmer had no meaningful response. The government today announced sanctions against ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, with foreign secretary Ed Miliband condemning Israel’s occupation in the strongest terms. While making clear that these sanctions build on the last government's recognition of the Palestinian state, his comments suggest that inaction under Starmer was coming from the top: “I'll say very bluntly we should have acted earlier. And it has taken the new prime minister to come in and recognise the gravity of the situation."
The proscription of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation was unnecessary and wrong. It placed a direct-action organisation in the same category as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Taliban. While I’m not a fan of PA’s methods, the last time I checked the group wasn’t attempting to blow people up or ban women from education. The alarm among civil liberties campaigners, who regard the ban as an extraordinary escalation, was entirely appropriate. The footage of pensioners being arrested under sweeping counter-terror legislation – however firmly the government insists it is applying the law – has made the statute book look less like a shield and more like a sledgehammer searching for a walnut.
There’s been much discussion on the airwaves about why Starmer has chosen to walk away from domestic politics when he promised he wouldn’t. The answer is: ambition. Last summer, I bumped into a KC who’d once worked alongside Sir Keir. I asked him why a man who kept telling us his unique selling point was that he didn’t do politics was … er … now in the biggest job in politics. His former colleague replied: “Well, what else could he do after being the director of public prosecutions? He couldn’t just go back to his chambers and practice law as a barrister; he was in need of a job.”
Admittedly, this is just one anecdote but it confirmed my suspicion, based on growing evidence, that while Starmer had proved to be a brilliant DPP, he was not equipped with a core set of political values and the integrity to practise them. The clearest foreshadowing of that was the so-called Corbyn antisemitism row. While I did not think Jeremy Corbyn was cut out to lead the Labour party, it was absurd to brand a man who had fought racism his whole life as antisemitic, or any worse at dealing with antisemitism within Labour than previous leaders. Yet Starmer didn’t wince when it came to weaponising that row to get to the top. That level of rapacious ambition will always militate against an ethically centred approach to leadership.
The perception Starmer was ready to make cuts to support for older and disabled people before confronting tax-avoiding multinationals made many wonder whether he still understood what life was like for ordinary people
Starmer’s government did have some major successes. Taking British Steel back into public ownership this year and doing similarly with rail franchises will save jobs and prevent profiteering. His response to the summer race riots of 2024 was decisive. His leadership over Ukraine has been widely lauded and in his resignation letter he indicated it was that last achievement – strutting the international stage – that he’d set his sights on replicating in the future. If, say, he’s heading off to be the next secretary general of Nato, Starmer ensured he’s left a landmine behind for Andy Burnham.
The byelection in Starmer’s vacated seat of Holborn and St Pancras will be the first Labour will fight under Andy Burnham’s premiership. It’s a big test: can Burnham win back disaffected Labour voters who turned to the Greens in droves at the local council elections in May? The Greens’ leader, Zack Polanski, has said he intends to stand; Polanski is a London Assembly member with national name recognition. Starmer held the seat with an 11,500 majority on a 54% turnout, meaning this could be a close-run race. If Burnham wants to show the country his leadership has what Starmer lacked, he must choose his candidate wisely, empathise with the electorate and let cynicism follow his predecessor out of the door.
Sangita Myska is an award-winning journalist and presenter best known for her political and social commentary. She writes a twice-monthly column for the Nerve.