Keir Starmer: his fatal character flaws

Why would any sensible person want to be prime minister of the UK? The hours are punishing; the task thankless; the salary would not satisfy a middle-ranking chief executive and the tenure almost always ends in tears.

Any hope of success depends on possession of one of two driving forces, and ideally a combination of both: first, a real sense of mission; second, a deep-seated relish for politics. Without these attributes, a PM is doomed – and Keir Starmer lacks both. He may have been an adequate director of public prosecutions, but he was never cut out for the role of PM. He is a man hopelessly out of place.

His discomfort is paraded regularly before an ever-more despairing Labour Party and an electorate that was never overly enamoured of the seemingly colourless lawyer. He now has the accolade of the most unpopular prime minister since polls began. His lack of a clear objective, other than survival, and his apparent lack of any political antennae make his task almost impossible.

Labour won the 2024 general election with a massive majority of seats, but it’s now fairly clear that this was not a resounding vote of confidence in Starmer. It was really an overwhelming call for change. Britain needed to move on from the chaos of the previous Conservative regime which, had foisted Boris Johnson and Liz Truss upon the country.

Less than two years later, that desire for change again dominates voting intentions and the dissatisfaction with Labour will be brutally underlined in the May local elections. The level of disappointment in Starmer’s premiership could hardly be greater, and it comes not just from committed Labour voters but from disillusioned Tories who saw Starmer as a dull, but safe and honourable leader, who could provide a period of relative calm.

Harold Macmillan’s greatest political fear was, “events, dear boy, events”, and Starmer has faced plenty of those. The antics of a rampaging US president, for one. He also inherited an economy in dire condition, along with the extraordinary scandal created by Jeffrey Epstein.

But far from bringing a steady hand and wise counsel to dealing with these problems, at almost every stage Starmer seems to have turned a difficulty into a crisis. The important exception so far is his refusal to be drawn into Trump’s Iran War, although it’s uncertain how much of that is down to high principle and how much is due to Britain’s pitiful defence capability.

To get through senior civil servants at the rate that Starmer has done looks completely incompetent. “We are determined to empower you,” he wrote to civil servants a year ago and yet. But in disposing of three cabinet secretaries and two principal private secretaries, he alienated much of Whitehall and now, with the cursory dismissal of the head of the Foreign Office, he has unleashed an angry and eloquent enemy.

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Any competent lawyer would surely have advised strongly against such action, yet the harsh treatment of Olly Robbins, the top civil servant at the Foreign Office, appears to have been driven by the PM himself. The way he resorts to trying to load the blame for failure onto others might not be completely unusual in a cowardly schoolboy, but is unedifying in a country’s leader.

Television has multiplied the difficulties of what was never an easy job. What it highlights is that, despite a common belief that lawyers should all be crafty wordsmiths able to think on their feet and deflect criticisms, Starmer is much more comfortable with a script.

Two of the country’s highest-rated leaders might not have flourished in a televisual age. Winston Churchill powerfully steered the country through the horrors of the Second World War and Clement Attlee had the clear vision of how he wanted to rebuild Britain in its aftermath, presiding over the creation of the welfare state.

It was 1989 before live televising of the House of Commons became accepted and by then Margaret Thatcher was near the end of her tenure. But her clear vision of what she was determined to achieve might have overpowered her stilted presentation – and more importantly she lived for politics.

Tony Blair, perfectly relaxed in front of the cameras, wanted to create New Labour and a new, modern, Britain. He also appeared to glide through political tussles, although constant feuding with Gordon Brown became a wearing distraction.

Boris Johnson’s desperation for the prime minister’s job was never in doubt: winning and hanging onto it was his driving mission in life. The country paid the price as he forced it into the ruinously expensive Brexit straight-jacket and, eventually, his party lost its appetite for his irresponsible, buffoonish behaviour. But, as this magazine detailed last week, he continues to profit hugely from his time as PM, raking in massive sums for overseas speaking engagements.

That unseemly option is unlikely to be available to Starmer when he exits the political maelstrom that he has personally helped to exacerbate. The only things keeping him in office seem to be the convoluted process that Labour insists upon for pushing out one leader and installing another, and the lack of serious and capable contenders to be his successor.