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.
Functionally impossible. He is not an ideas man.
McSwine ensured that most of the new intake of LINO MPs @ the last election were ciphers (like Starmer).
Dissent within any political party is core to the orgination of new ideas/policies. There is no dissent in LINO. There are no new ideas.
The party is dead due to two men McSwine & his puppet Starmer.
Agreed
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.
I’m not sure your are right about Starmer not knowing what he is for . His murky past involvement with the Assange case when CPS, his membership of the CIA-front Tri Lateral Commission, his dedication to Zionism , his war crimes in Gaza , and his authoritarianism as leader seems to suggest a quasi -fascist instinct inside what Gordan Brown and the MSM suggest is a ‘decent man’.
There is little sign that Labour has enough MP’s prepared to accept that the public’s view ‘they are all in it for themselves’ has a basis in fact. The fact being that parties and politicians are more and more funded by vested interest money – fossil fuel, big builders, gamblers, global tech corporates , etc, As Clive Lewis says – wealth and the power of wealth is deep-wired into the British state.
So the MP’s – or indeed the commentariat (who have censored any mention of Paul Holden’s book ‘ Fraud’ of Starmer/McSweeney’s possibly illegal take over of Labour) – wont urge Starmer to bring in an emergency ‘clean up politics’ bill which would make all the corruption illegal – no donors, no 2nd jobs, no secret lobbying, no bribes for honours etc.
So the answer to your question ‘will Labour restore democracy?’ – seems to be no.
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
Starmer’s leadership campaign didn’t deceive me. Sadly, going back to those days reminds me that I voted for Rebecca Long-Bailey to be leader, although I’m not sure she would have been any match for the right wing stormtroopers who were poised to take over, after doing everything they possibly could to ensure Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader would be unsuccessful.
Now we have a Labour in name only Government with a huge, but very shallow majority, who have completely lost their way. The corporate takeover of the country is complete.
I should perhaps add, he didn’t deceive me either.
I never trusted him. I went to the Bristol leadership hustings (lie-fest).
The final decider for me was the unprecedented interference of the Board of Deputies in the leadership election. I refused to vote for ANYONE who signed it. That was a very low point in British politics because the MSM never called it out nor did Labour. EVERY SINGLE leadership candidate gave away their independence & integrity, and most of the deputies did too.
“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.
Good stuff, Richard.
I made a similar assessment of Starmer when reviewing Eagleton’s biography three years ago:
https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/article/issue/84/the-starmer-project-a-journey-to-the-right-by-oliver-eagleton/
In this piece following Mandelson’s Washington sacking last year I observed that one of many results of the New Labour regime was to denude Labour of talent:
https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/article/issue/91/the-mandelson-legacy/
Starmer is one of them.
Agreed
Richard, as we look toward the Cambridge event, I want to highlight a key distinction in my IFC framework.
While Westminster is already ‘in hock’ to the bond markets—trapped by decades of neoliberal design—an iScotland has the unique opportunity to build a ‘Clean Slate’ architecture. By establishing the IFC and a tripartite Sovereign Pension Fund before Day 1, we don’t just survive the markets; we bypass their veto entirely.
This isn’t just theory; it’s a blueprint for Institutional Decoupling. If we can show how an iScotland uses this framework to stay out of the ‘bond market trap,’ it provides the ultimate roadmap for how Westminster might finally begin its own de-leveraging process.
I’d love for this ‘Prevention vs. Cure’ perspective to be part of the community discussion on the 28th.” Perhaps I’ll send it to Starmer, he needs it more than you!
Formulate your question.
Hi Richard,
I am a retired solicitor with almost 40 years experience of instructing barristers in numerous court cases both civil and criminal. Whilst Kier Starmer is no doubt personally a decent enough man, his real problem IMO is that he is, and probably will return to being, a barrister – dependent upon the instructions of others – this what we would like you to say in other words. I should add that this is of course a generalisation. I have met a fair number of very good and indeed exceptional Counsel over the years but a lot are not.
Thanks, and agreed.
Do “decent people” support genocide and deceive voters by pretending to have values?
as one former Labour MP stated (Diane Abbott – who was suspended by the Labour Party and now sits as an Independent), when Starmer was a Barrister he was fine to speak at a hearing with a Judge in Chambers (ie maybe 5 or 6 people present) but was not good when addressing a larger ‘audience’ in Court. The Labour MP (Jon Pearce) representing High Peak (where I live) was also a lawyer – he is a ‘yes’ man and fails to consider the people who live in his constituency. Pearce was previously Chair of Labour Friends of Israel. When many people attended his ‘surgery’ he refused to speak with us as a group, or in groups, insisting on speaking with us individually – a typical coward. Both of these individuals (Starmer and Pearce) are cowards.
He was an appallingly bad public speaker, he’s obviously had some coaching since becoming leader and has improved noticbly, he’s now a mediocre public speaker
As middle manager he made numerous disasterous management decisions so is a failure even at that level,
Politically he’s a vessel for who’s advising him, if he wants to carry on then he would need to realise he needs someone who can give him some values to project/fake rather than the McSweeny approach of chasing Reform and its voters but whoever was advsing him he would never move out of the neoliberal envelope.
With Anas Sarwar calling for him to resign today it looks even less likely that he can cling on
” Will the Labour Party recognise that its historic task is to restore democracy and rebuild the capacity of government?”
I very much doubt it. Over at the Guardian politics blog today the right-ish commentators almost unanimously remind those calling for Starmer to go of the the fate of Labour under the Bennites, Foot, Kinnock and Corbyn. Only a bland, unthreatening centrist can win for Labour they argue, and, much as I despise Starmer, there probably is some truth in it. God knows where that leaves politics in England.
Thanks for your continuing good sense in the National, Richard.
Thanks
Just posting this YouTube shorts that highlights perfectly how captured Labour is. Starmer leaving won’t change a thing, not unless Labour get rid of a hell of a lot more members
https://youtube.com/shorts/Vo5aoBL3-LQ?si=ZI6r5BK5WFJ-eEB7
Agreed
At Labour conference, Oct 2025, Starmer said “National renewal is not moving money about, it’s the complete rewiring of the state and the economy”. Why would he say this if he has no intention of doing so? Is he teasing?
Crisis is opportunity. Forget Change, we need Transformation. I doubt he has it in him.
Richard, your blog and YouTube of 16 Nov 2025: – we were a currency-issuing government at the time Keynes wrote: what we can do, we can afford. But today (actually a BoE bulletin Q1 2014) ,97% of the money in the economy is created by the commercial banks, as debt, bearing interest. QE is exceptional. And what about the international shadow banking sector which holds about 50% of global wealth?
Among other things, is Starmer referring to the need to wrest the power of money creation from bankers and vest it in the state – see also Anne Pettifor? Am I right to recall that Gordon Brown made the BoE independent of government, though i don’t know why. Wasn’t it widely welcomed, presumably by neoliberals as part of shrinking the power of the state?
I am struggling to answer your comment as it is disjointed.
The Keynes quote is right.
97% of all money made by commerical banks is true of commercial bank money (the rest is cash) but not of total money supply – where the central bank reserve accounts dramatically change the ratio.
I would strongly recommend avoiding Ann Pettifor – wh is a deeply unreliable source on most issues.
But you are right about shadow banking – but it controls wealth and does not create money.
Is Starmer doing anything about this? No. Why a) he clearly does not understand this b) nor is Reeves – she is reducing regulation.
And just search or AI search me on BoE independence – which is a total charade and sham.
Like many managers today, Starmer has no understanding of the concept of leadership. In particular, he seems oblivious to the idea that leadership is something one does ‘with’ and not ‘to’ others. Above all, it is about creating shared meaning and fostering collective commitment and effort. In politics just as in any other line of work, this is increasingly forgotten.
Starmer’s peculiar fixation with procedures may correlate somewhat with his former career – lawyers generally do not care about the moral rights and wrongs of a situation; their work is often essentially a very aggressive form of compliance audit.
This comes across very plainly when Starmer’s response to the entirely foreseeable Mandelson debacle is basically, ‘I followed all the correct procedures.’ As if that is any kind of defence when you are meant to be providing leadership. The prime minister is not the Chief Compliance Officer, but that is clearly how he sees it.
Much to agree with.
Richard, thanks for wrestling with my disjointed prose.
My comment is: we are no longer a currency-issuing government, with the possible exception of QE. Today, money creation is controlled by the BoE, the commercial banks and the market.
My questions are:
1) In that case, does Keynes’ dictum still stand?
2) Should ‘rewiring’ as Starmer calls it, include government taking back control of money creation?
The Bank of England is a wholly owned government subsidiary. Please do not pretend otherwiswe. It just delivers government policy exactly in accordance with instructions on money creation issued to it every day by government departments. You are wholly missing that point. I have addressed this issue countless times here. The government has 100% control of all money creation – including via regulation by commercial banks.