Might Starmer Fall, or Are He and His Party Heading for Icebergs Locked Together?

“We are all getting a bit fed up that even on things we want to do, he wants to do, all the stuff you don’t agree with, he somehow fumbles the ball, and makes us look bad. We’re busy turning things round, after you lot, and he still seems to manage to drive into the mud”

I was quite stunned by this comment about our current Prime Minister.

Not the content. I’ve thought that for a long time, even though he’s been PM a relatively short time. It’s the fact a very senior Labour source said it to me. We’ve been frank with each other for a number of years, and I understand the feeling.

I call it Titanic-syndrome.

I had confessed top this person, a similar frustration in 2024, that it was increasingly difficult to work as hard as I was trying to help deliver what we’d promised It was taking so long to move anything forward, not helped by Labour continually voting against (they may have smiled at that) and with a press and politics that had simply stopped listening, and knowing deep down we’d lose when then time came.

It’s like knowing the iceberg is there, but working harder than ever, trying to forget it is. On any side in any party that is a really demoralising place to be.

Over recent months I have spent time looking at numbers, polling, the advance of Reform UK, the recent growth of Polanski’s Greens, the haunting sight of Corbyn/Sultana mangling a resurrection, and Ed Davey’s odd desire for making a splash, without making a news splash. The purpose, not least when it comes to Kemi Badenoch and Keir Starmer, has been to try and objectively assess how much any parties standing is down to the leader or the party in general.

Badenoch, one hopes, having dismissed it once this year, is cheered by her new post-Conference standing neck and neck at the top of our shadow cabinet leadership table. 

To be of any analytical use this exercise of separating leader popularity and party one has to switch off personal views pro or anti to any leader, but it was in fact Kemi Badenoch who made an important point with regards to Labour when I interviewed her pre-Conference, about the current Government:

“In terms of time, I think we need to recognise the difference between Keir Starmer looking like he’s in trouble, versus Labour looking like they’re in trouble. They’ve got 140 something majority. They could take out 120 which is our number, and they’d still be in government. And I think that we mustn’t get carried away by, you know, the terrible headlines that they’re having, and they are terrible; how bad a job they’re doing, or how much people hate him on social media…”

The point, that Labour are far less likely to collapse than Starmer, is a strong one.

Her attack lines on Starmer have now been honed; that he is weak, a lawyer not a leader, has poor judgement, and when Labour negotiates Britain loses. What is surprising is just how often he gives her an opportunity to land them. However this is the bread and butter of political opposition, what is more instructive is some of the buzz around his position from his own side.

My former colleague Laura Kuenssberg, reported on conversations with Labour figures, before Conference, on the central issue for Starmer 

“ ‘His judgement on policy is flawed, hence U-turns, and he can’t communicate, and has been unpopular in the public’s eyes for a long time. Others point to a slow pace of decision making in Downing Street, suggesting the prime minister thinks “too like a chairman, not a chief executive,” says another insider. And “he only gets to the right answer having exhausted all the other options,” rather than moving fast using a gut political instinct. Another senior party figure says: “He doesn’t think like a leader.“‘

Now Labour supporters, and one or two hide in the comments section of this site, would point to the fact that Starmer had a good-ish Conference and saw off the threat from Andy Burnham who was making just the same criticism of him. So why did I reach back to an article written a month ago? Because the criticism that dogs the PM is the same, and it is always at the heart of any problems he runs into. It is also privately the criticism many of his allies have of him.

Right now with the criticism around his government’s handling of China; the collapse of the spy case, the expected sign off of their new London embassy, and the handover of the Chagos Islands which returns to Parliament this week, all are examples of these deep rooted problems in his approach to the job.

Having said that, there is a big dichotomy.

One criticism is that he is too wedded to process. He is an observer not active, safe from accountability and so nothing really is his fault, because he failed to do anything.

The second is the most ironic given his attacks on Boris Johnson – who certainly had his own odd relationship with the truth – is a reputation for deliberate obfuscation and not owning up to things he has done. Commentators started pointing, some time ago, to the frequency with which Starmer and his team resort to repeating things that are either patently the opposite of reality or who qualify even under the hardest criteria as ‘a lie’

Labour would, and have in the Commons, argued you can’t pin a trait of standing back, and avoiding blame on the PM who at the same time you accuse of secretly interfering all the time. It has an immediate logic as a defence, but the flaw is, they are not actually mutually exclusive.

From what we have learned about Starmer’s handling of the China spy case collapsing, it is the condensed essence of these reasons why Starmer isn’t up to the job.

His story kept changing, things he said didn’t happen turn out to have happened, he did not intervene when told in advance that the case might collapse and apparently no Ministers or Spads were involved – though apparently his Home secretary wanted to intervene, so she knew – and now despite his government’s prime aim of getting China onside for a trade deal, he’s the target of Chinese opprobrium for talking up false and ‘malicious’ accusations. The Times who have shone a light in all the fog on this story said:

“Others questioned how Starmer could have been told that a big national security trial was about collapse and “not do anything about it”. One government source said: ‘It’s a problem with the lack of politics in Keir and those around him. There are just countless examples and too many mistakes.’”

There’s plenty of flak directed at the Stephen Parkinson as to why he didn’t simply go to court, but an interesting footnote, is that previously he had criticised Starmer one of his predecessors with much the same critique:

“‘…over-reliant on advice given by others’ and ‘had no in-depth experience of prosecuting...’”

Ask any Tory predecessor and they’ll tell you just being Prime Minister sees you in negative polling eventually, but Starmer is setting new records, not least because if the electorate didn’t want us – and they really didn’t – they didn’t love Labour and they never had warmed to Starmer himself. Ask those ex PMs if you can ever send such numbers upwards again and they’ll laugh at you.

Badenoch is right, whatever her polling, the Labour leader and Prime Minister is far more unpopular than his party.

Her problem, and she knows it, is too many responses from the public say they still don’t know enough about her to have made a decision other than that itself seems negative. (Lord Ashcroft’s latest focus groups will be published on ConservativeHome later today and makes interesting reading)

My problem is that even if we diagnose with Labour that Starmer, far more isolated than he was six months ago, is increasingly seen publicly as ‘not up to the job’, Labour famously has little history, or mechanism, for removing a sitting Prime Minister.

Perhaps party and leader are locked in an icy death grip that carries him on in post to 2029. The question of whether they can go further is now, at best, moot.

There’s one other scenario nobody should want but might well end the ‘Labour are in for a full term whoever leads’ idea.

If Reeves delivers such a toxic Budget next month that the economy flatlines, and bond markets start taking their own decisions, and however unlikely, the ghost of the IMF is summoned, Starmer could go down on the prow of his marginally more buoyant ship before an election is remotely due.

Economic iceberg ahoy!