Starmer: For the Ash-Heap of History?

Starmer’s premiership is over. As commentators scramble to instruct his replacement, ‘King of the North’ Burnham, on how he ought to govern, we shall withdraw from these largely Armageddonist prophets. I want to answer a different question: how is Starmer set to be remembered? It is so easy, and in a way, natural, to focus on the newcomer entering Downing Street, with the person going out the backdoor waved off without much of a thought. The executive wheels keep turning, after all. But as I’ve argued previously, our political memory is crucial in shaping future governing realities as a mass of inescapable lessons and consequences. The Burnham administration will be no different, moulded by its and the electorate’s reaction to what came before. So it’s pertinent that the Starmer ministry is given a fair crack of the retrospection whip, regardless of how willing many are to proclaim an exasperated “good riddance” now it has all come to a close.

In 1982, in an address to Parliament, President Reagan referred to Marxist-Leninism as destined for the “ash-heap of history”. The wonderfully derogatory metaphor is an apt summation of where several opinion pieces claim Starmer’s legacy will end up, as the Labour leader was unable to wield his mighty majority in a consistently effective manner. It’s safe to say the Starmer ministry blew a few fuses, evidenced by one particularly infuriated writer, who proclaimed that “Starmer will go down in history as one of the most inept, uninspiring, [and] divisive… Prime Ministers this country has ever had”. My initial reaction to this was one of surprise. Politicians who tend to elicit such hostile reactions are typically ideologically revolutionary, see Thatcher’s economic liberalism, Powell’s cultural xenophobia, or Corbyn’s international pacifism. Starmer is not a hefty ideas man; Starmerism isn’t a thing, except as a word intended to convey political vagueness. So if he isn’t a particularly divisive ideologue, then why is he so vehemently hated? 

Britain has not escaped widespread political apathy seen across Europe; as a fairly centrist candidate, Starmer has undoubtedly suffered as a result. The rise of Reform and the Greens highlight the spectrum-spanning desire to shake up the status quo. As a mild, rather flat and bureaucratic politician who pursued a pragmatic centrist agenda, he is therefore the antithesis of what many were clamouring for. He was a straight-shooting diplomat of a politician in a time when many desired a radical figurehead. Further, the Starmer ministry had a terrible habit of irritating vocal political minorities. Farmers, WASPI women, pensioners, the list goes on. While politics isn’t about making everyone happy all the time, so much governing capital was spent putting out fires that the administration was quickly indebted, leading to U-turns out the wazoo. 

Some of this is undoubtedly Starmer’s fault, as his administration’s political execution was consistently subpar. Starmer often spoke as if he was uninterested in governing, likely an attempt to portray himself as serious and professional following the chaos of the early 2020s, reflecting an almost nihilistic commitment to Labour’s “adults back in the room” narrative. Also, it is beyond me why you’d try to make so many enemies so swiftly, and we haven’t even mentioned the well-intentioned welfare reforms, which the government seemed terrified to commit to the instant they were announced. It simply wasn’t serious governing, not in the sense that the government didn’t have a purposeful agenda, but because it was being implemented with neither care nor considered thought. When Starmer could get the Parliamentary policy machine into gear, some great things were achieved: the Workers’ Rights Act and the raising of the minimum wage chief among them. Both budgets were safe, but solid, leaving the UK economy heading in the right(ish) direction, with Burnham set to inherit the largest growth upgrade in the G7. The Assisted Dying Bill too, though harangued by the Lords, was a momentous, once-inconceivable legislative achievement, as was securing trade deals with the US and India. All of this highlights a hardly meritless record, even if the Starmer ministry was unable to move past the era of sleaze. 

What this reeks of then is not a traitorous government headed by a heathen king, but of an unmistakable stench of mediocrity. Whichever paper you read, the list of Starmer’s sins will undoubtedly have been printed in large font over the previous weeks. But to dismiss every accomplishment for the sake of sensationalism is short-sighted, and unfortunately, all too common nowadays. When they faced off in the 2024 General Election, the two frontrunners, Starmer and Sunak, fought from opposite sides of Parliament, and were thus eager to highlight their differences. But now both their premierships are over, we can see they were very much alike. They were caretakers. Slightly feckless, well-intentioned, with policy wits but little governmental know-how (and in many ways, bad hands, too). But what is clear is that neither is destined for history’s ash-heap, and, particularly for those eager to label Starmer the anti-Christ, we ought to question how astute, poignant, or outright useful their contributions to political discourse really are.

Image: Flickr/No 10 Downing Street (Simon Dawson) Licence.

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