Keir Starmer must control the conversation

How can this inoffensive man have become so viscerally loathed?

One of my books of 2025 was Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929, a character-led study of the events leading up to the Great Crash. In its last pages, the book partly attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of one of the crash’s most maligned protagonists, Herbert Hoover. One line from Time about the 32nd president stood out, from 1928, when the magazine was one of the few titles that did not endorse the Republican ahead of the election that year: “In a society of temperate, industrious, unspeculative beavers, such a beaver-man would make an ideal king-beaver. But humans are different.”

Keir Starmer, like Hoover, came to office well qualified for his country’s highest office. Yet both proved or are proving failures within their first 18 months of office. I am left wrestling with the central paradox of our year: how can it be that Starmer’s government at once possesses such a large majority and yet has felt so parlous? How could this man, this inoffensive man, have become so viscerally and so universally loathed?

Part of the answer is that Starmer’s personal authority is almost nil. He presides but does not prevail. The American philosopher Mary Parker Follett’s distinction is useful here: “Authority exists when orders are obeyed voluntarily. Power exists when orders are obeyed by force.” In our system, formal power is diffuse; authority does the work. And Starmer lacks it both in parliament and the country.

Why is his credit so limited in the party? Among his MPs, he is the only landslide prime minister not credited with delivering the landslide himself. Blair, Thatcher and Johnson could plausibly have said to their benches: you are here because of me. Labour MPs are more inclined to think they are there in spite of Starmer than because of him. They do not rally when called; they do not move when asked. His is a majority without mastery. As one Labour MP put it recently, issue by issue “the government is governing on the consent of the Parliamentary Labour Party [PLP]”. Authority drains away; with it, the ability to govern. The public sees it.

It gets worse. Because, while Starmer still just about directs the Commons, 2025 showed us that he barely ever controls the conversation. He is ubiquitous but absent. He has few ideas or diagnoses. A No 10 aide told me earlier this year that the public did not want ideology from their Prime Minister, only strength. I marvelled that they believed the two were unconnected.

Starmer thus faces 2026 with his government on the point of collapse. He must fight both internal enemies (Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner) and external ones (Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski), and quickly. Streeting and Farage’s fates have become curiously entwined, each reliant on Starmer’s failure. A recent poll of Labour members had Ed Miliband as the favoured successor; more striking was Streeting’s strong second place. The received wisdom had long been that the Health Secretary, though the media favourite, would never be trusted by the membership. The poll was the first sign that the Farage threat is seriously reorienting party members’ calculus; that stopping Reform would compel Labour to choose with its head and not its heart. If Starmer can recover even slightly against Reform, he would see off both men. Reform’s year has been good, but not the 35 per cent they once briefed me was attainable; missteps have left them ten points short.

Starmer, therefore, must roll the dice. This window before the 2026 local elections is his last chance to recover authority. That begins with abandoning his contentless communications strategy. Streeting’s response to No 10’s briefing war against him in November – when a single Traitors line (“worst attack on a faithful since Joe Marler”) dominated the content ecosystem for a day – showed how far Starmer trails behind. In 2025, 21st-century content always beats 20th-century briefing.

He should do something he never does: surprise people and play his enemies at their own game. Scrap the creaking lobby system. Resurrect the dormant Cummings-era No 10 briefing room. Hire a charismatic spokesperson and hold daily televised briefings. Make No 10 a content factory. Only by generating his own material can he regain command of the conversation, a precondition for the authority he lacks.

Can command of the message alone re-establish authority? Not without intellectual renewal. But here Labour’s problems are not confined to the Prime Minister. Few of the alternatives to Starmer show genuine intellectual plurality or vitality. For a parliamentary party of its size, the PLP is unruly but remarkably light on ideological faction. There is no equivalent of Bevanites, or Bennites, or Jenkinsites, or Croslandites, or Blairites. Instead, everyone talks of “Wes” or “Ange”. This is the age of vibes not tribes. The truth is that it isn’t just Starmer who lacks authority.

Labour came to office by default, just like Starmer. After endless opposition and little renewal, it governs on instinct and old reflexes – as if expelling the Tories were enough. The party never won or fought any argument beyond the idea that the Tories were bad, and it is paying the price for that.

If Starmer is to be replaced, pretenders must command both content and character. Authority drains faster than majorities collapse. It can be reversed. But there is less time than there appears to be. Labour has a majority for five years, but only months to prove it deserves it.

[Further reading: Pity the Labour staffers]