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2 hours ago
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Owen Jones’s article is spot-on and provides an important corrective to the hand-wringing nonsense written by other media commentators (Look at Keir Starmer’s tenure as prime minister. This is no ‘decent man’ who got unlucky, 23 June). However, there is one point on which I disagree. Owen says Starmer believed in little other than his own advancement, but it seems to me that he was bent on making Labour permanently unelectable.
Whatever Jeremy Corbyn’s failings were as a leader (and there were several), his political agenda was extremely popular, at least when a hostile media bothered to report it. He very nearly won the 2017 election, reaping 40% of the vote, compared with Theresa May’s 42.3%, while Starmer got just 33.7% in his “landslide” victory. For the first time since the 70s, Corbyn gave people hope that a mainstream party could provide an electorally viable leftwing alternative to the neoliberal consensus. This could not be allowed.
Much of Starmer’s energy, both in opposition and government, was directed towards eviscerating the left wing of the party. Between this, his flip-flopping on policy and his cack-handed first budget, Starmer succeeded in alienating traditional Labour voters and the centre-right, while reinforcing rightwing tropes of Labour’s fiscal incompetence and lack of trustworthiness. In so doing, Starmer has hammered the final nail in Labour’s coffin. Thanks to him, there is no viable leftwing alternative, no one to stand up to the asset managers, the tech oligarchs and the bankers, and it will be years before there is one.
Paul Cavaciuti
Epsom, Surrey
I agree with much of what Owen Jones has written. Unlike Boris Johnson, whom I regard as fundamentally dishonest, or Liz Truss, whose free-market economic agenda proved disastrous, I have always felt that Keir Starmer is basically a decent human being. But being decent is not enough if your decisions harm the most vulnerable people in society.
His biggest mistakes were removing the winter fuel allowance from many pensioners, targeting disabled people through welfare reforms, and his failure to take a stronger moral stand over the devastation in Gaza. I do not support Hamas, but I can’t ignore the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
What also damaged my trust was Starmer’s abandonment of many of the promises on which he was elected as Labour leader. He campaigned on bringing utilities into common ownership, yet later said that he had never promised nationalisation. Many Labour members felt misled by that. It has been suggested that Andy Burnham will make similar promises, and I hope he proves more faithful to them than Starmer was.
I also think Starmer was ruthless in his treatment of the Labour left. He presented himself as someone who would unite the party, yet his leadership became defined by conflict with those who had supported Jeremy Corbyn. Whether one agreed with Corbyn or not, it is hard to deny that many members voted for one version of Starmer and got another.
That, more than anything else, is why so many people lost faith in him. My concern now is Burnham. If he becomes Labour leader and keeps Josh Simons close to him, it will feel less like a fresh start and more like a continuation of the same Labour machine that helped bring Starmer to power. Burnham will need to show that he offers a genuine change of direction, not just a different face.
Monica Berto
Forres, Moray
Owen Jones’s cogent analysis of the problems of Keir Starmer picks up on a key point: the Starmer landslide was based on just a third of the vote. Starmer actually won the support of merely 20% of registered voters.
If government is theoretically based on consent, then 80% of the electorate was unconvinced and perhaps alienated from the start. Starmer’s huge unpopularity was incubated by the madness of our electoral system, which strands four-fifths of the population with representatives they did not vote for.
Our political system was designed for different times, and appears incapable of the modernisation which would make voting more meaningful to more voters. Until that changes there will inevitably be more Starmers and more voter disillusion.
Dave Hepworth
Rowland, Derbyshire
In his resignation speech, Keir Starmer claimed to have saved the Labour party. When he became leader, membership was around 500,000. It is now 250,000. Saved?
Bob Cannell
Bradford
