The morning media coverage suggests that Keir Starmer now has only one way to survive as leader of the Labour Party. He must, apparently, finally explain what he believes in and what he intends to do. Without that clarity, the argument runs, he will be unable to persuade either his cabinet or his MPs that he should remain in office.
There is, however, one fundamental problem with this analysis. Starmer has never known what he stands for. That is why he has always relied on others to tell him what to think and what to do. He is not a strategist. He is not a thinker. He has no political instinct. At best, he is a middle manager: someone who waits to be given instructions and then carries them out with minimal reflection or grumbling. Politics, for him, has been, at best, a career move, and not a calling.
The vacuum this creates is revealing. Starmer's absence of conviction points to three deeper truths.
First, he does not believe in the government's real role. He has never articulated a positive case for what government is for. That is because he has never wanted to govern in any meaningful sense. Politics has been about personal advancement, not public purpose. As such, he typifies the modern political apparatchik. He is not the exception right now: he is the norm.
Second, he does not believe in democracy. His treatment of dissent within Labour is the clearest possible evidence. A democratic politician tolerates difference, argument and pluralism. Starmer has instead enforced conformity and silence. That is not an accident. It reflects a man who does not believe in the democratic system he now nominally leads.
Third, he is the embodiment of the political type I described in The Courageous State in 2011: the cowardly politician who, when confronted with a problem, instinctively retreats from addressing it, clinging to the neoliberal dogma that markets will always solve problems better than governments, and so government must step aside. The result is perpetual abdication.
Starmer, therefore, cannot deliver a positive account of Labour's purpose under his leadership to his parliamentary party because he does not believe the party has a purpose. He cannot lead a movement he does not understand or trust.
And yet, and I cannot stress this enough, this does make him the politician of the moment. Neoliberalism, when properly understood as the politics of destruction (a theme I will develop in greater depth here, very soon), has always aimed to hollow out the state, degrade government, and destroy confidence in democracy itself. Starmer is not resisting that process. He is completing it.
He has served his purpose. He has destroyed value. He has undermined democratic credibility. He has left a void where politics should be. In that sense, the long project of Blair, Mandelson and their successors has succeeded, just as Thatcher intended.
The question now is stark. Will the Labour Party recognise that its historic task is to restore democracy and rebuild the capacity of government? Or will it acquiesce in its managed decline, and the authoritarian future that follows?
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Starmer must change or die.
I hope he pivots – I hope he sees the sense in this.
That’s all I can say about it.
It feels as with the Conservative Party, nearly all the decent people have either been purged or have voted with their feet. Many are also relatively young politically and lack the political experience required to do this. There are a few grandees like John McDonnell left, but I doubt they have the energy or standing to achieve what is required.
Maybe as the party slowly dies, new life will rise? But I think this will occur outside of the Labour party whose structures have been hollowed out. Despite this I remain hopeful that seeing what is happening in America will expose Farage and his ilk and avoid full on authoritarianism here.
This is an excellent summary, thank you.
The final question to be pondered: “The question now is stark. Will the Labour Party recognise that its historic task is to restore democracy and rebuild the capacity of government? Or will it acquiesce in its managed decline, and the authoritarian future that follows?”
The answer is no – Labour is unrecoverable from the awful “Blue Labour” nonsense that was built by McSweeney and Mandelson. They gutted the party of left and soft left so thoroughly and successfully, that there is no way back.
A perfectly correct assessment. Starmer is incapable of genuine thought. He holds opinions one day which are 100% opposite to those of a few weeks before.
Keir Starmer is like a very basic version of Large Language Model fed only on middle management lexicon. Pathetic but dangerous.
Starmer believes in Zionism and the right of Israel to cut off water and food etc., in the Gaza strip. And to continue bombing and terrorising the civilian population of Gaza, and settler expansion in the West Bank. So much so, the RAF has provided intelligence flights over the area, and his government continues to supply arms to Israel, and to shut down any dissenting voices.
He is even prepared to destroy trial by jury, freedom of speech and other rights in his support of Zionism. That, by his actions, is the only thing he seemingly believes in.
Last night I watched my archive copy of the launch video of Starmer’s leadership campaign, not a speech but a “party political” broadcast format.
I found it on YouTube this morning:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F-Yru2Ridk0
It is breathtakingly deceitful.
It deceived more than 50% of the Labour membership.
He went on, with even less excuse, to deceive the voters in 2024.
His dishonesty was far worse than Johnson’s. The Tories deposed both Johnson and Truss, but Labour MPs leave Starmer and his failed cabinet in place because they are so embedded in his treacherous destructive project.
Not just incompetence, but calculated, evil, deliberate, destructive deceit. This WAS the plan. It worked.
Agreed
“Let’s ensure that our children will have cause to rejoice that we did not forsake their freedom.” Thatcher once said that. That is what Thatcher told us 50 years ago how we should think and judge her legacy. On the question whether we as individuals are rejoicing or not, we are free to make this personal judgement. What does Starmer say in response to Thatcher’s question. There is a lot that he isn’t saying. He has put delivery first and explanation second. His silence says, “Wait until I have delivered it first before you can judge.” Total cowardice.