Why can’t Keir Starmer lead?
Later this week, Keir Starmer will celebrate the one year anniversary of his thumping election victory. Although he constantly tells journalists that he “doesn’t do” self reflection, if he does choose to recognise this political milestone he’ll surely be unnerved to consider that it’s less a case of “look how much we’ve achieved” and more a case of “I’m still here.”
The days running up to his electoral birthday have been dominated by grumblings from within his own party that he’s seriously misjudged this governing lark. Commentators’ columns have groaned under the weight of Westminster sources speculating that Starmer – or at least his Chancellor – may have to go.
Outside the over-heated confines of SW1, the rest of the country can see for their own eyes that the Prime Minister is not a leader. On issues of huge moral weight and complexity – from abortion to assisted dying – he lifted not a finger. And then, on issues – no less complex – where he had set a course he crumbles after coming into contact with opposition.
He told us we risked becoming “an island of strangers” until people criticised him for the phrase and he grovelled, saying he hadn’t read the speech before delivering it.
On the issue of grooming gangs he insisted we didn’t need a national inquiry, then he ordered one. On winter fuel payments, he said cutting the benefit wasn’t just the right thing to do, it was absolutely necessary. Until it wasn’t.
On the wider welfare agenda, his reforms (that would have moderately curtailed only the rate at which the benefits bill grew) were described as essential. We were told they were tough but fair, and – once more – they were absolutely necessary. On this he was at least correct; we cannot possibly continue to wave thousands of working-age people on to sickness benefits every week – but again, he misjudged his mandate, or at least his relationship with his own MPs, and was forced into yet another humiliating climbdown with grave consequences not just for the welfare bill (and those parked on out-of-work benefits) but for the tax burden under which this country groans.
Starmer tried to present his chief attributes as pragmatism and competence but, one year into office, it seems he is little more than an empty vessel.