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The pathological vanity of Keir Starmer

His refusal to step down is an act of contempt for the public. Spiked 13/05/26 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 ‘unf...
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Andy Burnham is just Starmer in northern drag

Labour’s prince over the water is the embodiment of the very political class that voters are desperate to eject. Spiked 12/05/26 Are there two other words that better capture just how lost the Labour Party is than ‘Andy Burnham’? Yes, that Andy Burnham – the long-lashed, Blair-era frontbencher who crashed and burned in two successive Labour leadership contests (in 2010 and 2015), before decamping from parliament to become mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017. At the time, he described life in Westminster as ‘poisonous’ and a ‘living nightmare’. As incredible as it may seem, a party that once roundly rejected Burnham as its leader is now touting him as Britain’s next prime minister. Inside the Labour Party and among its media sympathisers, this hitherto unremarkable career politician is being presented as the answer to their party’s and the nation’s woes. It doesn’t even matter that he is not actually an MP at the moment. With the Parliamentary Labour Party finally set to evict Kei...
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Delaying Starmer’s departure will fail

The PM risks sliding into irrelevance as potential successors battle for his crown Daily Telegraph 11/05/26 Sometimes in Westminster, politicians latch on to a buzzword that spreads like a particularly nasty virus from every mouth. Today that word is timetable. One after the other, Labour MPs are calling on the Prime Minister to set a timetable for his departure. The reason is obvious: they want him gone, but not until Andy Burnham has returned to Parliament to be crowned as Sir Keir Starmer’s successor. The alternative of having a leadership contest immediately would mean having to choose between Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner, neither of whom they much fancy. So the phrase “resign now” is very much out of fashion. The problem is that if Sir Keir granted their request, announcing what would probably be a summer leadership contest and a change of leader around September, he would be not so much a lame duck as a dead duck. There would quickly be a new buzzword in Westminster, a...
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As Rayner and Burnham plotted, Streeting realised it was now or never

Party’s Left wing fears a Blue Labour stitch-up if leadership contest is rushed through Daily Telegraph 10/05/26 Allies of Wes Streeting say that he is planning, but not plotting, to take on the leadership of the Labour Party. This week could be the moment when he has to decide whether to throw his hat into the ring – or rue the day he missed the chance. On Sunday afternoon, the need for urgency became clearer than ever. In a much-anticipated intervention, Angela Rayner attacked the “toxic culture of cronyism” in Sir Keir’s Downing Street and hinted at a possible pact with Andy Burnham, the other darling of the Labour Left. In a sign that the two potential leadership contenders could now be working together, she urged Sir Keir to allow Mr Burnham to return to Parliament from his current role as mayor of Manchester – a move that could pave the way for the pair to launch a joint ticket to run the country. The stage is now set for a leadership contest that would pitch Mr Streeting...
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Starmer is living on another Planet

Allister Heath Daily Telegraph 09/05/26 Sir Keir Starmer lives on another planet if he thinks he can keep going as PM and leader of the Labour Party. His allies are equally deluded: Operation Save Sir Keir Starmer can only end in tears. His election results were abysmal, Labour has been obliterated in swathes of the country and decimated in the rest, and Starmer must carry the blame. The party has a crucial choice: either ditch him as soon as possible, and hope that it can somehow extricate itself from its death spiral, or face guaranteed oblivion and perhaps even total extinction. Labour is now in an even worse position than the Tories, with Starmer’s party bereft of any purpose, or any unique selling point in a fragmenting society and a multi-party system. Labour has nothing to lose by throwing him out; its problem, of course, is the poor quality of the alternatives on offer. Greater Manchester and the North West were a disaster for Labour yesterday: Andy Burnham, the so-call...
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Why the election results are bad for Starmer’s leadership rivals

Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting among senior Labour figures facing a fight to cling on to their own seats at the next general election Daily Telegraph 08/05/26 In the immediate aftermath of what is promising to be the worst set of local election results in Labour’s history, Sir Keir Starmer has vowed “not to walk away” from No 10. Whether Sir Keir gets to choose the timing or manner of his eventual departure remains to be seen, but the election results also contain portents of doom for his leadership rivals. The swing away from Labour to Reform in areas where Labour front-runners have their constituencies means they may well be facing a fight to cling on in their own seats at the next general election. In the interim, what any successor to Sir Keir is set to inherit is a depleted and demoralised Labour Party that has lost a large swathe of its activist base and will continue to fight on two flanks – Reform to the Right and the Greens to the Left Angela Rayner Tameside In quick...
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Local elections 2026: Labour loses first councils as Reform surges

Daily Telegraph 08/05/26 Labour has lost control of its first five councils following a surge in support for Reform UK. Sir Keir Starmer’s party no longer has a majority on councils in Tameside, Exeter, Redditch, Hartlepool or Tamworth. The Prime Minister is expected to face calls to resign should Labour perform as badly as predicted in the run-up to polling day. Tameside, which covers Angela Rayner’s constituency of Ashton-under-Lyme, had been under Labour control for 47 years. Reform won all 12 of the seats up for election in Hartlepool, a traditionally safe Labour “Red Wall” territory, with Sir Keir’s party losing seven. Both parties now have 15 seats on the council. Reform also gained all nine seats up for election in Tamworth. Out of nine of the 27 seats on Redditch Council up for election, Reform won eight. Six of those were from Labour, which will now have to govern as a coalition or minority administration. A Reform spokesman said: “It’s clear that Labour voters are s...
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