Keir Starmer’s not a great prime minister. He’s not even a good prime minister. The mess Labour’s in right now is, undeniably and in no small part, thanks to him.
The list is a long one: his allowing himself to be persuaded to adopt a counterproductively small (even tiny) target strategy in the run up to the 2024 election; his tin-eared acceptance of freebies from donors; his spectacularly ill-judged LBC interview on Gaza at Labour’s first post-election annual conference; his allowing Rachel Reeves to try to means test the winter fuel allowance only to backtrack on it when the going got tough, making him and his government look both mean and weak; and his “island of strangers” speech and appointment of a Home Secretary apparently hell-bent on alienating the government’s socially liberal supporters so as to keep on board the “hero voters” who contributed far less to its victory in 2024 that Blue Labour fans still insist on pretending.
And yet, and yet. Is replacing him right now really going to achieve the turn-around in Labour’s fortunes that many of his MPs, understandably bruised by the party’s catastrophic performance in last week’s election, are desperately looking for? Probably not.
If we look back through political history at the three replacements of a sitting prime minister that actually helped turn the electoral tide, they have one thing in common – namely that they simultaneously rid the party concerned (and yes, it was, in each and every case, the Conservative Party, which has always been more ruthless about these things) of a profoundly unpopular cause or policy inextricably associated with the incumbent.
Harold Macmillan replacing Anthony Eden allowed the Tories to put Suez behind them. John Major replacing Margaret Thatcher allowed them to kill the poll tax. And Boris Johnson replacing Theresa May allowed them to “get Brexit done” after three years of a painfully, polarising and fruitless search for a deal that simultaneously satisfied all its advocates as well as the EU.
Obviously, those policies weren’t the only reason Conservative MPs dumped the prime ministers in question. They were primarily motivated by the very same fear of being led to imminent election defeat that characterised some of the swap-outs that didn’t do the trick (like Home for Macmillan or Brown for Blair). But the fact that dumping them also meant dumping those policies provided both a catharsis and a rationale that could be sold to a sceptical public.
Before they act, then, Labour MPs need to ask themselves whether they have an equivalent. What is it about what their government has done or intends to do that can only be gotten rid of by getting rid of Keir Starmer? Unless they can answer that question, they should take a beat.
In reality, there is only one thing springs to mind – the government’s continued adherence to a Brexit that virtually every Labour MP and every Labour member, as well as a growing plurality of the public (and certainly those members of the public who might think of returning to Labour), thinks is deeply damaging, indeed borderline insane. But is there a contender out there who might replace Starmer with the courage to commit to reversing it?
Absent that, replacing Starmer – especially when the candidate for the succession seemingly most favoured by Labour’s MPs, its grassroots and its potential voters isn’t available to stand in any contest – brings to mind the words of one of the party’s all-time icons, Nye Bevan when he took on its unilateralist nuclear disarmers: “You call that statesmanship? I call it an emotional spasm.”
[Further reading: Labour’s myopic plotters need to grow up]
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