The pathological vanity of Keir Starmer

So this is how technocracy ends – not with a bang but with the whimpering of one of its chief proponents as he hunkers down, hiding from the judgement of the people. This is the vision we now have of Keir Starmer: alone, reviled, skulking in his bunker at Downing Street. He’s a dead man blathering, talking about staying the course even though the people and much of his party would rather he didn’t. He’s ‘resolute’, say his dwindling band of apologists, but to the rest of us it just looks like pathological vanity.

These are extraordinary events. Following last week’s local and devolved elections – in which Labour lost vast swathes of territory to Reform UK and others – the heat has been on Sir Keir. As if it wasn’t humiliating enough to lose council seats across England, and control of the Senedd in Wales, and four seats in the Scottish parliament, polls now suggest 70 per cent of Brits view Starmer ‘unfavourably’. Things feel so parlous for Labour that you find yourself wondering who the hell the 30 per cent are – what have they smoked?

Knives are being sharpened. Scores of Labour MPs have called on Starmer to set out a timetable for his vacation of Downing Street. Party aides have resigned. In a highly rare act with at least a faint whiff of political principle, Jess Phillips, Labour’s safeguarding minister, has resigned. Even the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, thinks Sir Keir needs to set out a plan for slinging his hook. Yet in his echo chamber of one, cloth-eared to criticism, he clings on.

The reason being given by his half-hearted backers is that the last thing Britain needs is the ‘chaos’ of a Labour leadership election and the ‘disorder’ of a potential General Election. So he’s only being stubborn to save us from yet more mayhem. There’s a deep streak of anti-democracy in this cosplaying as a modern-day Louis XV, staying put to stave off the ‘deluge’ that would inevitably follow his departure. Picking a new party leader is not chaos. An early General Election is not bedlam. It’s democracy. If Starmer’s only justification for staying is that the devil you know is better than a democratic process you can’t predict, then he really does need to bugger off.

He is now the physical embodiment of the technocratic philosophy, which is to insulate politics from the grubby reach of the masses. His bunker mentality is managerialism repeated as farce. The only thing that might save his skin is the moral cowardice of the knackered party he leads. Limp as it is, the pro-Starmer wing of Labour is an inglorious exercise in arse-covering – these MPs know working-class voters are biting at the bit to replace them with someone from Reform. They rally around a deeply unpopular PM to avoid facing the demos. They prefer the safety of stasis to the horror of public decision-making.

One doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry reading about the apparent showdown at the Cabinet meeting this morning. Henry Zeffman at the BBC says Starmer’s message to his ministers was essentially ‘Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’. But it was ‘directed at one person’ in particular, says Zeffman – Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who’s said to be behind much of the anti-Starmer plotting. Can you think of anything lamer than a clash for the throne between the tweedle dee and tweedle dum of technocracy?

What an ignominious end to the historic English taste for intrigue. The country that gave the world regicides and revolutions and factional spats of real depth now gives it Starmer vs Streeting. A contest between the two wettest men in British politics, almost as if Starmer had gone back in time to scrap with his younger, plumper self. It’s Shakespearean skullduggery but completely bereft of character, poetry or substance. It’s proof that Labour’s problems extend far beyond Sir Keir. This is a party without vision, without shame, and without serious contenders. Putting a ‘fresh’ face in Downing Street would be the political equivalent of buffing a turd.

Some are now saying they feel sorry for Starmer. He’s getting too much flak, back off, say media saps. Nah, you’re all right. I think I’ll save my concern for the pensioners he forced to choose between heating and eating, and the victims of the rape gangs whose gruelling ordeal he called a ‘far-right bandwagon’, and the young women abused by illegal arrivals that he did nothing to stop, and the Jewish communities who’ve been beleagured by hate on his watch. Just go, Sir Keir – feel sorry for yourself on your own dime.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His latest book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy.