The rise and fall of Keir Starmer

Geraint Davies

Like Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer has lost his Prime Ministerial crown a few years after a landslide general election victory.

Whether Andy Burnham can recover Labour from the legacy of Starmer when Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak couldn’t recover from the fall of Johnson is a moot point. Starmer’s repetitive assertion of “my Party” has seriously damaged the Labour brand by associating it with Sir Keir’s failures, U turns, robotic persona and abandonment of core values.

Starmer is credited with delivering an historic Labour landslide in 2024 but in fact Labour won two thirds of all MPs with just one fifth of the electorate. Only sixty per cent of people bothered to vote and a third supported Labour. This made Starmer a superhero.

In contrast, when Jeremy Corbyn as leader got a third of the votes in 2019 it became Labour’s grounds to expel him. In 2019 Boris Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” victory had united Tory and Brexit voters to get an 80 seat majority. But in 2024 Tory and Reform voters divided which handed Starmer a supermajority to change Britain for good.

As the former Labour MP for 22 years I had hoped that the new government would deliver a stronger and fairer Britain with the values I had spent my adult life fighting for. But I was soon disappointed.

In a carrot and stick approach that put loyalty above Labour values, newly elected MPs were made ministers as other experienced MPs were suspended for voting to scrap the Tory two child benefit cap.

Economic confidence was chilled by the endless repetition of the “black hole” left by the Tories and the national insurance “jobs tax”. Fairness was undermined as Labour announced it would abolish the Winter Fuel Allowance and make £5 billion of welfare cuts targeted at the disabled. Cronyism was reinstated with suits and spectacles gifted to Starmer by Lord Ali.

Peace was side-lined as arms supplies continued to Israel. Green ambition was undermined as investment in unproven carbon capture trumped green production helping oil companies to continue climate change. Human rights and environmental provisions were excluded from trade deals. Democracy and justice were cast into question as Labour continued Tory restrictions on peaceful protest and their widening use of terrorism laws to punish protestors against climate change and genocide.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper proscribed the group Palestine Action as terrorists. Those imprisoned for criminal damage against UK-made Israeli drones would be punished for terrorism. As civilians were starving or shot queuing for food aid in Gaza hundreds were arrested in Britain for holding “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action” banners in Britain.

Posed

Starmer had posed as a disciple of Jeremy Corbyn to become Labour Leader, as a trustworthy Tory to become Prime Minister and had called Britain “an island of strangers” to charm Reform voters.

His immigration narrative gave legitimacy to Reform’s prejudice just as David Cameron’s EU referendum offer in 2015 gave legitimacy to voting Leave. It reminded me of Nelson Mandela’s maxim “Any man who can change his principles according to whom he is dealing, that is not a man who can lead a nation”

Sir Keir’s failure to stand up for Labour values meant Labour’s support dwindled and Reform, already swelling with disillusioned Tories, rose to fill the space.

Starmer was forced into U turning on the £5 billion of welfare cuts, the scrapping of the winter fuel allowance and opposing scrapping the two child benefit cap. This revealed Starmer not to be driven by Labour values but by fleeting popularity, then buckled by back-bench rebellion, so unable to be trusted by the public on what he said.

The combined Labour and Conservatives vote shrank to 13% in the 2025 Caerphilly byelection- a former Labour stronghold – and Plaid Cymru decisively saw off Reform to become Wales’ progressive choice for the 2026 Senedd elections.

Starmer knew that Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, backed the far right AfD in Germany and neo fascist Tommy Robinson and Reform in the UK, peddling the lie that immigrants and not growing inequality is the source of poverty.

This would come as no surprise to Wales’ greatest politician Aneurin Bevan who said politics consists of a struggle between property and poverty and to defend its interests, property attacks democracy.

British patriotism

Nevertheless Starmer still pumped British patriotism at the 2025 Labour Party Conference, ignoring George Bernard Shaw’s insight that “patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it”.

To show he was tough on immigration, to the delight of Tommy Robinson, Starmer decided refugees will now wait 20 years before being entitled to stay and asylum seekers will face deportation if their country ever becomes safe. His plan looked cynical as immigration was forecast to plummet in any case.

It reminds us of John F. Kennedy’s insight that “Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside”.

Let down by Starmer, disillusioned Labour voters switched to the Greens to stop Reform in the Gorton and Denton by-election. With Labour humiliated the Green Party now threatened to become the progressive alternative to Labour in England as Plaid had in Wales.

Peter Mandelson

Starmer’s judgement was cast further into doubt by his fierce support for Peter Mandelson as the British US Ambassador.

Mandelson, whose “Best Pal” was pedophile financier Jeffry Epstein, had reportedly influenced government contracts and Labour’s parliamentary candidate selections and de-selections. He introduced Starmer to Palantir who facilitate Israeli air strikes in Gaza and President Trump’s ICE mass arrests and deportations. Palantir has £600m of UK government contracts mainly in the NHS and defence.

Trump’s attack on Iran, the day after Bill Clinton was questioned about Jeffry Epstein, served as a distraction for Trump from the Epstein files and a respite for Starmer from his Mandelson link.

In May as Labour reeled from massive election losses across Britain, including Plaid Cymru taking control of the Senedd in Wales, Starmer insisted he wouldn’t quit.

The electorate had voted for a new future and Labour MPs were looking for a new leader. But the only prospective leader not complicit in Starmer’s Labour was Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham. Burnham had had his candidacy blocked in Gorton and Denton but was handed the Makerfield candidacy by the resignation of Josh Simons MP who had previously resigned as a minister after falsely linking Paul Holden, author of The Fraud Keir Starmer, to a “pro-Kremlin” network.

But if Burnham was elected Starmer wouldn’t stand down. That was enabled by John Healey’s perfectly timed resignation as Defence Secretary saying Starmer was unable and the Treasury unwilling to provide sufficient defence funding to keep Britain safe. So when Burnham polled more votes than all other parties combined in Makerfield his premiership was assured. Labour MPs now had a leader who could save their seats, as Reform had decisively won in Makerfield in the May elections, plus new prospects for promotion.

Competence

Whether Burnham will bring a re-invigoration of fairness, justice and competence to Government, a recovery people can feel and a resuscitation of the Labour brand is yet to be seen.

What is clear is that Starmer had lost the trust of the British people and would have led Labour to certain defeat. Now, for the King of the North the buck not the bus stops here.

Geraint Davies, was the Welsh Labour MP for Swansea West 2010-2024. Previously he was the MP for Croydon Central 1997-2005.