Why Starmerism failed

Or, why only a masochist would want to enter British politics

Numerous civil servants have recalled their first encounter with Labour ministers following their election victory last year. After the new rulers of Britain first walked into their departments, and following pleasantries with their officials, ministers asked them for their ideas about how to run the country, to which the confused officials responded: ‘that’s your job, minister’.

It’s a tale repeated by various people in SW1, and might help to explain the surprising implosion of the Labour Government so soon after their landslide victory. Eighteen months on, Labour are now polling in the teens, and Keir Starmer is the least popular prime minister in history, while Rachel Reeves has the lowest satisfaction rating of any Chancellor of the Exchequer since records began in 1976. Things are so bad that the bookies strongly favour Starmer resigning by the end of next year.

In a sense this is just part of modern politics, since all governments are unpopular now, but the present British regime has proven a standout failure nonetheless. They have some way to go before equalling Peruvian President Dina Boluarte’s approval rating of 2 per cent, but don’t count them out just yet.

There are different types of failure; a government might immiserate a country, and build problems that can last a generation, yet still be politically successful, ensuring that enough voters are rewarded to win elections. This is successful politics – it’s what braying Right-wingers like me expected from Labour, fearing that they would do enough to bribe and flatter the coalition of the ascendent to ensure electoral success. Luckily, I was too pessimistic, and things are even worse than I expected

Much of this failure must be down to the character of the prime minister himself, a man who notably fails to inspire. Starmer’s life story should be interesting, heroic even: he actually had a career before politics, as a celebrated human rights lawyer, to the extent that it was rumoured that Bridget Jones’s love interest Mark Darcy was based on him (which, sadly, was not true). He plays the flute, which is quite interesting – as does the chancellor, in fact – but there doesn’t seem to be much more to him, and he famously has no favourite novel or poem, no phobias or dreams.

People complain about career politicians but we now have a non-career politician at the helm and he has proven inadequate at many of the most basic tasks of running a government. He’s notably bad at managing MPs, many of whom feel that they are taken for granted, hasn’t even met some of them and apparently doesn’t remember their names, something which Tony Blair was famously skilled at. (If you suffer the same problem, and I do, Blair would apparently use someone’s name three or four times early on in a conversation, and it always stuck.)

Starmer in happier times

If Starmer does feel contempt for his MPs, there is indeed a serious problem with getting talented people into politics, which has seen a notable decline in the quality of elected representatives. While government ministers have been found taking all sorts of freebies, the obvious solution – that fewer politicians should be paid more – is totally at odds with the public mood.

This lack of talent was probably aggravated by the Corbyn years, as a result of which more competent Labour activists stayed in private sector jobs rather than becoming MPs. This left them with a parliamentary party dominated by people from trade unions, local government and charities, the latter comprising one-third of all new Members of Parliament.