Why is Starmer so uniquely unpopular?
Some are shocked at why he's so less popular than other catastrophic PMs. Here's why
There is a certain type of British ‘centrist’ who is completely baffled about why Keir Starmer is so uniquely unpopular.
And his unique unpopularity is not in doubt. Just look at this graph from pollsters Ipsos comparing prime ministers since 1997.
As you can see, Starmer has managed to surpass the unpopularity of all prime ministers since then. No mean feat, given the competition - or the fact that, in the last 10 years alone, Britain has been ruled by a third of its post-war prime ministers.
My friend Mehdi Hasan - who I must emphasise is absolutely not a centrist, and is a bona fide critic of Starmer - responded to these figures with a perfectly reasonable question:
To which Gideon Rachman, the chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times, responded:
Now, I have to say that “decent, able man who is trying his best” set me off. This is a view that is certainly held by ‘centrist’ pundits - one which, as the polling shows, is not even understood by the vast majority of pundits.
My instant response was a charge sheet. I think that deserves to be shared in response to claims of “decent, able man who is trying his best” - but there’s an overarching explanation I’ll explain, too.
“Starmer:
- conned the Labour membership into voting for him on a false prospectus
- installed the most authoritarian leadership in the party's history
- targeted pensioners and disabled people
- went from extolling the benefits of immigration to raiding the rhetoric of Enoch Powell and introducing one of Europe's harshest asylum systems
- shredded the international aid budget
- backed Israel's right to impose a siege on a civilian population, then claimed he hadn't, a trademark example of his perennial dishonesty
- introduced legislation which arrests grannies for holding placards opposing genocide on the absurd grounds they are terrorist supporters
- allows briefing that continually blames aides who can't defend themselves for his own failings
- appoints aides who believe, according to their own briefing, that he believes he's driving the train "but we’ve sat him at the front of the DLR"
- has presided over an absolutely astonishing number of U-turns
- went from Mr Remainer to Mr Hard Brexit
- won only a third of the vote on the lowest turnout in democratic history, even though the total implosion of the Tories handed him the election on a plate, being handed power thanks to Reform splitting the right-of-centre vote
- self-evidently had no vision or even coherent plan for government when he took over, which is why everything fell apart so quickly
- claimed more freebies than every Labour leader put together since 1997, up to and including Tony Blair!
- appointed Mandelson as Ambassador, claiming he'd been deceived into believing Mandelson barely knew Epstein, even though the public record at the time made clear that was obviously untrue.
I could go on, but what evidence is there for "decent, able man"?
Because my impression is that this is based on vibes, and the British public simply cottoned on to the fact that he is transparently unprincipled, lacks vision, wanted power for its own sake, is surrounded by unpleasant people, and contrary to his claimed USP, is self-evidently not competent and not even really in charge?”
To which Mehdi had another perfectly reasonable challenge:
My response:
On Truss, it’s straightforward: her collapse in popularity was much steeper than that of Starmer - that’s why her premiership was over in a blink of an eye. (Or, rather, the blink of a lettuce).
Given her trajectory, if she had somehow lasted anywhere near as long as Starmer then she’d probably have ended up as the first prime minister to be overthrown by a mass uprising.
As for Johnson, he delivered certain things that make right-wingers happy. Above all, he delivered a Hard Brexit: a disaster for the country, but the burning obsession of his core vote.
(Frankly, there’s even a tiny ideological sliver of the country that loved what Truss was doing, however deeply damaging).
What Boris Johnson did not do is run a pro-Hard Brexit Tory leadership campaign, and then take Britain into the customs union and single market, which is comparable to what Starmer did in his ‘Corbynism without Corbyn’ leadership campaign.
But above all else, the Starmer project deliberately antagonised Labour’s natural supporters - believing they had nowhere else to go - betting the house on a strategy that would secure the support of the right.
That strategy failed. Starmer succeeded in enraging progressive voters, but failed to convince an increasingly radicalised right. Indeed, the efforts to love bomb them were rewarded with burning hatred. A gruesome lesson in where attempting to appease the right gets you.
So it’s really simple: the Starmer project is deceitful, unprincipled, has no vision relevant to a crisis-ridden country, is chaotic and incompetent (despite the claimed USP of the ‘grownups back in the room') - and it infuriates Labour’s natural supporters whilst itd right-wing rhetoric and policies have done nothing to persuade the right.
You could argue that it’s a miracle that there’s anyone in the country who approves of his record at all.
