It was a sight to behold: Starmer being given a standing ovation by the very same people who forced him out
Daily Telegraph 16/07/26
There’s a well-known (though perhaps apocryphal) quote of Winston Churchill’s about the House of Commons: “The opposition occupies the benches in front of you, but the enemy sits behind you.”
That certainly applies to Keir Starmer, whose time as prime minister has been cut short by his fellow Labour MPs. Understandably so, given that many realised almost as soon as their party was elected in 2024 that they were heading towards electoral oblivion under their useless leader.
Not that you’d have known it from Wednesday’s PMQs – Starmer’s last before Andy Burnham replaces him.
As Labour MP Carolyn Harris rose to ask the final question of the session, she had to fight back the tears. “I can do this!” she steeled herself. The House hushed as Starmer gave his final answer at the despatch box, before departing with “Goodbye”.
As he walked out of the House of Commons chamber, up they stood – every man and woman on the Labour benches – to cheer and applaud him.
Oh, please. Harris, a family friend and one of Starmer’s few loyalists, might have had genuine cause to be upset. But, as for the rest of them, what a bunch of hypocrites.
It’s not even been a month since they forced him out because they didn’t want to be one-term MPs.
Labour MPs repeatedly moaned to anyone who would listen that Starmer had no ideas, no purpose, and no personality.
He was incapable of taking decisions, he didn’t know what to do with his job, he angered voters and he was barely in charge of a government that wasn’t up to the job.
They didn’t just kick him out; they utterly humiliated him by forcing him to resign before he’d even managed two years in the job. They didn’t do that because they respected him.
They did it because they held him in contempt as the man who wasted a landslide.
Now here they were, standing, cheering and applauding as he left with a whimper. Do they take the rest of us for idiots?
Who can forget the sight of David Cameron aggressively gesturing at his own MPs to join the Labour side in standing up to clap Blair out of the chamber?
But Blair had been a towering political figure who dominated British life for a decade. Starmer is a political pygmy who couldn’t even dominate his own Cabinet.
Worse, he was a man who liked to be thought of as somehow morally superior to his opponents but whose inability to be straight over even basic questions further diminished respect for politics itself.
Nothing better illustrates the culture of mediocrity that has taken root in so many parts of our national life than the plastic praise that was showered on a man so utterly lacking in talent or basic competence.
“I’m proud to leave this country in a better shape than I found it,” Starmer told MPs before leaving the Commons. That statement alone is proof that Starmer is delusional and incompetent.
In almost every area for which Starmer was responsible, we are now worse off.
The state of our national security is so dire that Starmer’s own defence secretary resigned. Education policy is overseen by a minister driven by class hatred. The economy is teetering, with businesses crippled by unnecessary taxes.
On and on goes the list of the disasters of Starmer’s Britain.
Cheer him off? Good riddance, more like
Comments
Post a Comment