How Will Starmer Go Down? Gradually, Then Suddenly

Many of us have used of others and, perchance, some of us have thought somewhat self-pityingly of ourselves, the famous Hemingway quote:“How did you go bankrupt?”“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”Surely it has never seemed more applicable to a contemporary politician than it was to the Prime Minister of Britain, Sir Keir Starmer, earlier this week. Yet somehow, he has pulled up his big-boy pants to perkily pronounce business as usual. Even though few are assured that he will somehow become a smooth operator just because he had a nasty scare; he simply cannot see a banana skin without wandering over to put a foot on it, in the interests of science.Where to start? Even as Sir Keir stood on the steps of No. 10 Downing Street in the July of 2024 after winning what was so memorably called “a loveless landslide” and vowing that he would “restore service and respect to politics” he was wearing a new pair of glasses, costing around £240, which was part of a donation by the wealthy Labour peer, Lord Waheed Alli, of £2,485 “multiple pairs of glasses.”The donation was not declared until it was discovered, by which time Sir Keir’s flim-flam men insisted it was no more than an innocent error. Still, people did wonder why a man so extraordinarily rich as Sir Keir needed a hand-out, especially as he had spent so much time in Opposition banging on about the corruption and cronyism of the Conservatives.If only all those pairs of glasses could have helped him see into the future, maybe the roll-call of buffoonery might have been avoided. Going after pensioners. Going after farmers. Going after people who showed concern that there had never been an enquiry into the Muslim rape gangs accused of assaulting and trafficking thousands of working-class white children.Then last month the scandal blew up disclosing that the prime minister’s ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, had been a clammily close friend of Jeffrey Epstein, who dubbed him “Petey.” This week started with every likelihood that Sir Keir would be brought down. Yet somehow he has survived. Political pundits were using the phrase “dead man walking” with frequency; that appears to have stopped now, even though the top three of the PMs top team of fixers have left the stage and despite the fact that the Scottish leader, Anas Sarwar, called on Mr. Starmer to quit, as “too many mistakes” had been made. Far from this being taken as a sign to attack, Cabinet ministers reacted like teenage girls witnessing their favourite heart-throb being challenged by an upstart on X. The most extreme language was used by them about Monday’s shake-up; we had “looked over the precipice” and faced down “a moment of peril” narrowly avoiding “a chaotic leadership election.”Suddenly, it was like the past year never happened, and we were back in July 2024, when words like “sensible” and phrases like “the grown-ups are back in the room” were being thrown around like frisbees by smug centrists. It went to Sir Keir’s head. On Monday night he strutted his stuff before his parliamentary posse, showing off like a half-time performer at the Super Bowl. “Every fight I’ve been in,” he said, “I have won.”So he staggers on. It’s never been the Labour way to appoint a smiler with a knife to go in and do the business, as the Tories famously do; the People’s Party prefers to let the wounded leader stagger on until there’s a monumental defeat, at which point support will be pulled thick and fast and the challengers jostle for position, their elbows doing the business like they were at the Boxing Day sales.For now there is an air of “Always keep a hold of nurse / For fear of finding something worse,” as Belloc said in a cautionary rhyme. The ides of May, though, and the expected Reform landslide in the local elections, are just around the corner. In light of this, Sir Keir looks less like the revived knight of the realm refreshed and leading his troops out once more, and more like the Medieval Spanish warrior knight El Cid, whose lifeless body was strapped to the saddle of his horse and sent into battle one more time. His troops still rode loyally behind him — but whether our own knights will do so after May is another story.

How Will Starmer Go Down? Gradually, Then Suddenly

How Will Starmer Go Down? Gradually, Then Suddenly

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