Did Starmer Deserve Better?

 Today, Andy Burnham becomes our seventh Prime Minister in ten years. In case you're struggling to remember them all, here's the list:

1. David Cameron
2. Theresa May
3. Boris Johnson
4. Liz Truss
5. Rishi Sunak
6. Sir Keir Starmer
7. Andy Burnham

Some Stats

This is very unusual for us as a country, we've had 64 PMs since 1721 when Walpole was the first, for an average duration of 4 years 281 days, several of them lasting over 20 years, and 21 lasting less than a year, the Truss 50 days being a disaster. The median duration, probably a better measure since there are some weird tales and a skew to the numbers, is a bit under 2 years (1 year 318 days), so it, whilst this period is unusual for modern times, it is perhaps less unusual than it appears. Cameron, who is fence-posting here, was in office for six years, a bit longer than average, but fours times longer than the median. Across my adult life the PMs have been:

• Margaret Thatcher 11 years 209 days
• John Major 6 years 156 days
• Tony Blair 10 years 57 days
• Gordon Brown 2 years 319 days
• David Cameron 6 years 64 days
• Theresa May 3 years 12 days
• Boris Johnson 3 years 45 days
• Liz Truss 50 days
• Rishi Sunak 1 year 255 days
• Kier Starmer 2 years 16 days

Up to Cameron, all but one of these served for longer than the average, after him, none of them reached the average period. But it's worth noting that only Truss and Sunak failed to reach the median period.

Starmer as a PM

Starmer as a PM felt like a senior manager. His premiership, if it's remembered, will be remembered for lists. 

Setting the Stage

Now, the idea of Starmer as man with a long to do list is probably fair. He came to power with a country that, whether or not you agree with his position, he believed had been brought to the point of disaster by 14 years of Tory Austerity. In every government department, even those that were supposedly ring-fenced, chronic underinvestment meant that the services that they were supposed to provide were, at best struggling, at worst failing - delivering a piecemeal approximation to the service they were supposed to provide rather than something approaching full coverage. He came in with a list of all of these things that needed to be addressed and started plans to start to address them.

Unlike Blair, who inherited a shorter list and a healthy economy, one of the things Starmer inherited was a basically stagnant economy. This isn't the place to argue about all the whys and wherefores. I believe history will show Brexit was a big part of that, but wider world events such as Putin's invasion of Ukraine didn't help. There are finer detailed things in there too; the UK has a complicated energy pricing structure which makes sense from one perspective - it keeps things relatively simple and easy to plan for - but it also keeps the prices high and sensitive to a external shocks. To look, briefly, like Starmer, there is a long list of reasons, and it's hard to get to grips with them.

Starmer, and Reeves, had to try and get the economy growing faster, and struggled. We can debate how much that's their fault but a thin, orange-skinned tantrum-prone, wannabe dictator with no understanding of economics throwing around tariffs for everything certainly made that part of their job harder. If you're in a stable, healthy global economy, being a relatively small economic power - and compared to the US, EU, India and China the UK is a relatively small economic power, whatever we'd like to believe - negotiating trade treaties is still a slow process. When one of those big economies is being very erratic then the others are scrambling to make deals that suit them, and deals with the UK are not high on the to do list. Growing your own economy in those circumstances is tricky. Equally, when everyone in the EU, who might normally be willing to look at a closer trading relationship with the UK - geography, pre-existing shared standards and the like are on our side - is also looking at the rise of Reform UK and the risk of Farage being PM in under five years, that makes the negotiations harder. That's not, at least not directly, Starmer's fault. (We can argue about how much the rise of Reform UK is Starmer's fault, how much more it lies at the feet of the Tories.) So they've definitely had headwinds, and not all of them are under their own control.

So Where Did it go Wrong?

I believe there are three places where it went wrong, and they interacted to bring about his downfall. 

First, and perhaps most nebulous, is the strategy. I think Starmer's lists were fine, and largely right. Many of the things that were targets were great and have started to improve things, at least behind the scenes. Others were working through. For example:

• The Hillsborough Law came into effect last week - the police and security forces have a duty of candour and can have the book thrown at them more effectively if they're shown to have lied. Good. 
• Renters have more rights. Good. 
• People in part-time work and in the first few months of work have better protections. Good. 
• Hospital waiting lists are getting shorter. Good. 
• It is getting easier to get a GP appointment. Good. 
• There are supposedly protections for children online. I applaud the idea, if not the implementation.

The list goes on, and there are some genuine gains for us in there. But, if I look back at the list of PMs in my adult life, until we get to Liz Truss, I can give you a sentence about each of them and what they were trying to achieve. It might not be the same sentence as a historian, or they, would want to hear, but they had something that they communicated as a vision to the public, including me, that's stuck. I'm essentially still in the Starmer premiership and I don't have that sentence. I really should.

Second is communication. I follow politics pretty closely. Digging out that list of achievements of the Starmer government was pretty hard. It really shouldn't be! Yes, there's a hostile print media, but I barely pay them any attention, I get the vast majority of my news from the BBC, and they'd happily take a government spokesperson the chance to tell them what is going to be announced every day. And I'd hear that. But I'm just not.

Third are the mistakes. Now, every government makes mistakes, some of those mistakes costs you political capital with your backbenchers, cost you goodwill and support. But the Starmer premiership opened with that - scrapping winter fuel allowance, fucking up disability benefits - went on with the Mandleson scandal and so on. None of those blows was fatal, but each chipped away at his support, some with the public, some with his own MPs, many with both. 

I've put these in the order in which they matter, in my opinion. As PM you have to deliver on what you got elected for, bring the public along with you, and win the next election. Starmer really only did one of those, and hardly anyone knew about it. Farage was winning, although with complete BS, the messaging story and looking like he was going to win the next election, because he was bringing enough of the public along. That made every misstep that much more dangerous for Starmer, because he didn't have backbenchers who were comfortable, believing that, like in a normal government, give it time and the policies that take three or four years to work through would, gradually, have their impact, and we, the public, would see things get better in time to feel good and vote Labour in 2028/9. Even if those policies did come through, we wouldn't be told it was thanks to the government, and we wouldn't vote Labour.

Why Burnham?

Andy Burnham is offering a message. "The Makerfield Test" and devolution so it's not all London-centric. We're gradually getting more, a return to Old Labour values and turning our backs on neo-liberalism has come out of a speech on Friday. It's worth noting that, of these, devolution was in Starmer's manifesto, but always seemed to be lower down the list of priorities. Possibly the difference between a London-based and a Manchester-based PM.

He's also a face who has been outside Westminster for a while, but is seen as successful as the Mayor of Manchester. That's giving him a fresh start with the London media, but also with the great British public. The other possible contenders who were already in parliament have been associated with Starmer and have their own problems. 

He's going to face many of the same external problems as Starmer - the economy isn't likely to magically start growing. Unless Reform UK implode (please), which is possible under the weight of both political and police investigations, forging closer ties to the EU will remain tricky. Unless Trump dies, gets kicked out of office by Amendment 25 or similar, we have over two years of his tantrums to put up with. Apparently four years of the war going badly and Ukraine now striking back is having an effect in Russia, but what that will casue Putin to do next is anyone's guess.

He also needs to face the challenge of getting the news about the successes of his government out there. But it's probably fair to say I know as much about what he achieved as Mayor of Manchester as what Starmer achieved as PM, despite it being a much smaller region and me not living in Manchester. It seems likely he'll be competent at this side of the job. It would be impossible for him to be worse at it.

How will we remember Starmer?

This is a complicated question. John Major was another rather gray man, and he's become quite fondly remembered by many, from across the political spectrum. 

I think there are three main reasons for that. He stewarded the country well, albeit in much easier times than Starmer, he handed it over well and smoothly, and his interventions back into politics came late and infrequently, and pretty apolitically.

A lot of that needs unpacking. He did have an agenda, to me he's remembered as the PM who wanted us to return to victorian values. But he also had a tiny majority and didn't really do much about it. That left him as a PM who couldn't just push his ideas through, so he was looking at things that addressed the issues of the day, and achieved a wider consensus than just his own party. Generally speaking, in my opinion, that made for better government. Likewise, towards the end of his term, it was obvious that Labour would win the next election, so he invited the Blair shadow cabinet in and let them get used to how the systems operated. This let them hit the ground running and, whilst there were some stumbles, they were basically up to speed and the transition of power was pretty smooth. (The same was definitely not the case this time.) Finally, he stepped away from frontline politics, and didn't comment on what the Blair government was up to. Gradually, over time, he would pass comment, but it was incredibly rare for his comment to be about what the British government was doing, it would be about world events. So, for example, he was critical of Russia, for invading Crimea, for invading Ukraine, in stronger ways than the British government was willing or able to state. That might have been a little bit embarrassing for the government of the day, but he wasn't, at least not directly, criticising them. 

Starmer was not simply a steward, he definitely had an agenda, even if it wasn't clearly understood. If Burnham largely continues that, and I imagine he will, then we will probably mix the credit and that will reflect well on Starmer.

The changeover was smooth, particularly because there was no leadership election in the Labour party. 

And Starmer has promised to step back, be a good back-bencher and keep quiet unless asked to speak out by the new ministers. 

So he could well be remembered more positively than he is now.

Did he deserve better?

Some of the slings and arrows he's faced, anyone would have faced. Trump, Gaza, Ukraine, a lousy economy, the effects of Brexit. None of those are his fault. Some of the responses were good, some increasingly out of touch with the public. It might be the job of the government to govern, and sometimes that means making unpopular decisions, but in a democracy you govern by the will of the people - it's possible that they will have forgotten Gaza and Lebanon by the next election, if they haven't, unthinking support for Israel is likely to be a significant issue for all the parties. Starmer governed adequately, but he didn't lead. If we look back, Sunak did neither, Truss was spectacularly bad at both, BoJo led but didn't govern, May governed but didn't lead. Arguably Cameron and before him Blair are the last ones to do both more than adequately.

However, all the missteps, even if they are tasks he delegated, land on his shoulders. It might be a sign that sits on the desk of the president, but it's true for the PM too: The Buck Stops Here. Whilst we vividly remember those, it's going to be hard for him to be remembered well, but time will soften most of those memories, they'll become the sort of mistakes any politicians make, rather than lying to us to make us go to war, or betraying a generation of students, memories that linger long and hard. Particularly because they were reversed. 

If we're seeing the fall of Farage, fingers crossed, and that seems more than possible - unlike the US, where various groups, but definitely White Evangelicals, made a "Devil's Bargain" to advance their specific agendas, Farage delivered on his biggest promise and we're seeing what a disaster that was. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. Those devoted to him might not agree, but the accusations of racism and of fraud are tarnishing him, in the eyes of his supporters. His popularity is tanking and so is that of Reform UK.

Starmer stands a chance of starting the work that Burnham will finish, by and large. Burnham had already, before becoming PM, announced a couple of key changes, that I happen to disagree with, to mark his premiership out as his own. But I imagine a lot of the things Starmer wanted to do Burnham will want to continue - a Labour PM wanting to increase hospital waiting lists, decrease GP appointments and workers' rights? Seems unlikely. And if Burnham wins the next election there is a good chance that Starmer will be remembered as the person who laid the foundation that Burnham built upon. That's not a terrible legacy, even though it's not the one he would have hoped for when he swept into Downing Street just over two years ago. And that seems fair.