One year ago today, Sir Keir Starmer became the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. And how’s that going for him?*
In July 2024, the British electorate — what few of them turned out to vote, anyway — delivered their verdict on 14 years of Conservative party rule delivered on the basis of talk right, govern left. Mass migration had soared and with it taxation too: no matter that Labour supported more of the same, simply anything had to be better than rewarding the Tories’ lies with another term in office.
So Sir Keir Starmer, a human rights lawyer lately turned to politics, was rewarded with a totally historic yet loveless victory, giving him a huge parliamentary majority on a number of votes so low in normal times it’d be the tally for the losing side. The power he wielded in Parliament ought to have been easily enough for a five year term of delivering left wing priorities unopposed, yet the wheels started to come off the project early and just one year later talk is already whirling around his successor.
One year on, remembering his greatest hits:
Smash the gangs
Remember that one? Sir Keir, flaunting his legal past as Director of Public Prosecutions promised the country he was going to smash the human smuggling gangs making mega-money from cramming desperate migrants into unseaworthy boats to England’s southern coast.
One year on, the gangs are still operating, of course. 2025 promises to be the busiest year for illegal migrants crossing the English Channel of the crisis yet, already running thousands of arrivals ahead of the next busiest year. The Starmer era has seen the United Kingdom welcome roughly 45,000 boat migrants so far, almost none of whom will ever leave. As reported:
…as noted by Oxford University’s Migration Observatory, almost everyone who comes to the United Kingdom by smuggler boat subsequently remains in the country, with staggeringly few. Some 68 per cent have asylum applications granted and as of 2024 only three per cent had ever been returned home.
Still, never mind. At least none of the people taking advantage of the UK’s wide-open border under Sir Keir are dangerous extremists.
Mr Flip-Flop
If there’s one thing we can confidently say about our wonderful Prime Minister, it’s that he loves a U-turn. Can’t resist them. Let’s see, we’ve had the winter fuel subsidy for elderly people the government couldn’t afford and then could after freezing grannies turned out not to be a vote winner. Abandoned welfare reforms because he can’t control his own party and they won’t permit spending cuts to balance the books, only tax rises.
The Prime Minister moved the national conversation on mass migration, acknowledging the United Kingdom was becoming an “island of strangers” because of the pace of arrivals which had caused “incalculable damage” in a pretty nakedly cynical attempt to win back voters from Nigel Farage. When it became clear that hadn’t actually worked Starmer walked it all back, claiming he was tired when he made the speech and wasn’t really paying attention to what his aides had written for him.
One aspect of mass migration to the United Kingdom has been the emergence of what are called predominantly Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs. For the longest time this was not something of particular interest to the Labour leadership and Starmer started his time in office insisting there was no need for a unified, statutory national inquiry into the issue. Even asking for one was the work of the “far right“. But when a new report blew the doors off the cover-up, he was forced to act: guess what, another Starmer U-turn.
Starmer is also not above reneging on pre-election promises on tax, and unfortunately for the British people, present indications suggest more of the same is waiting in the wings. Only a lawyer — for he is — could possibly believe Starmer kept his promise not to increase taxes on work, and a vow to treat farmers well has been taken round the back of the barn and shot.
Global stage safe space
Is this a cause or a consequence? Hard to say. Obviously Sir Keir and his human rights lawyer clique absolutely love the primacy of the international over the national, but global summits have long been a favoured haven for presidents and prime ministers suffering hell at home. Lots of private plane and chauffeured limousine time, photo opportunities with your favourite foreign leaders, generally take place at world-class luxury resorts, all of that.
This has come with a serious cost for Starmer, though. Those Parliamentary rebellions he’s had to weather in recent weeks are credited, in part, to his total failure to simply do the legwork in Parliament and network with his own people. There’s no sense of personal loyalty where there’s no familiarity, evidently, and we’re told Starmer has earned the moniker “Never Here Keir“.
Heckled
And for all that how much did it matter, given the die was truly cast so early on. Within weeks of Sir Keir coming to power last year, the Southport attack took place and local anger at the targeted killing of three young girls — and attempted murder of several more — was instantly expressed as total contempt for the new Prime Minister. At the very dawn of his leadership the image that may very well end up defining his political era had already been captured and broadcast: the raw, grieving voice of a local shouting out to Starmer after he spent just seconds performing the act of paying respect with a wreath before turning on his heel and vanishing into a waiting car.
“How many more children are going to die on our streets Prime Minister?… How many more children Prime Minister? Are you going to do something?”, one person shouted. A crying woman called out: “I’ve just found out my friend’s nine-year-old daughter was killed, the person I held as a child, and you can’t do shit.”
As Starmer fled, he was met with outright derision and a sardonic: “Bye-bye, got your photo, off you go. Make a real change, Prime Minister, for our children!”.
It’s hard to escape optics like that, never mind the very distinct impression Sir Keir seemed to be determined to leave in the weeks following, that he was more upset about the anti-child-stabbing riots than the child-stabbings themselves.
What next?
If Starmer can buy off the rebels he may even enjoy months more struggling in a job he’s not cut out for and clearly doesn’t enjoy. But just like the question hanging over the hapless Chancellor of the Exchequer, nobody can take any pleasure — schadenfreude — from the looming end of the Starmer era. He’s the most moderate potential leader Labour has: whatever follows him, and his Chancellor Reeves, will certainly be considerably worse and will have the hard-left wing of the Labour Party in lockstep behind them.
Things will get worse before they get better. Good luck!
*It’s a “total clusterfuck of Godzilla proportions”, by the way. And that’s according to his own political allies. Ouch.
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