The Starmer Project Ended Before It Began

The Starmer project was supposed to last a decade, it might not make it to the spring. Despite having one of the largest majorities in parliamentary history, the political project Starmer leads is so brittle it could snap at any moment. How on earth did a man with a majority of 172 seats lead this political project towards near certain disaster in just over a year? 

The answer, or at least one of them, lies at the very heart of the Starmer project and how it was constructed. From the outset, Keir Starmer has made his plans for government abundantly clear. People can argue that he has an incoherent political project, one that can’t be deciphered, but Starmer has largely (if not always) been upfront about his pitch to the country: a Labour Party led by him needs a decade (two parliamentary terms) to fix Britain and its plethora of problems. This pitch, which crystallised as the Conservative Party collapsed, and solidified further during the 2024 summer general election campaign, was one in which Britain would have to give him time - and a lot of it - to slowly fix the foundations and then go further. Starmer believed in this long term planning before he won, and winning the way he did in 2024 only seems to have convinced him further that this project was the right bet. 

However, to give yourself time in parliamentary politics you need to build a majority and a big one. At first glance, it appears Starmer did this. In 2024, Labour won a landslide in the most electorally efficient way, with just 34% of the vote. It was a remarkable achievement, building up a huge tally of Labour MPs to deliver the political project Starmer had envisioned. Yet, if you look closer it becomes apparent this majority is not one you can take your time with. 

While building a vast tally of MPs, this strategy, employed by Starmer, is also a remarkably bad way to build foundations for a project that needs to last a decade. 34% of the vote may be unbelievably efficient, but it is also devoid of widespread legitimacy, and, more critically, a majority built on a mere 34% is incredibly brittle because there is absolutely no forgiving bulwark with which Starmer can take his time. 

With your vote share in the low 30s, if the electorate calls time on the political project you are working on, there is no ground left to stand on and your party soon enters free fall. When voters grow impatient, 34% becomes 30% and then 25% and then electoral annihilation - something which the opinion polls currently bear out for Labour. In short, a project that takes a decade to deliver simply cannot coexist with an electoral strategy that is as ruthlessly efficient as Labour’s 2024 general election campaign.

Fast forward to today and much of Starmer’s project is underway, but there are few signs of it, and if huge changes are underway, they aren’t here yet - that is the singular story of Keir Starmer’s political project. Abstract mission boards, year long reviews into the NHS, planning, and more have delivered few discernible benefits, and an electorate that has patiently waited for politics to deliver, has largely, if not completely, turned its back on Starmer’s project - and even the whole democratic system. After waiting for so long, through a global financial crisis, crippling austerity, a pandemic, and a continually worsening cost of living crisis, the country was only ever going to give Starmer and his party five minutes to fix countless problems that have plagued Britain for years. That five minutes has, by now, long passed in the minds of a fed up electorate.

This is what makes Starmer’s project so perilous, and different from administrations past. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown could take their time, they could take the risk of going slowly, rebuilding Britain brick by brick, and do un-labour things because they had a huge bulwark - 45% of the vote to be precise. When the electorate grew impatient with Blair’s Labour they could afford it, simply because if people tuned out, they had a base of voters left. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves don’t have this luxury. Almost instantly, the voters Labour had in 2024 have peeled off in multiple directions, leaving them with nothing.

For this reason, majorities built on efficiency are not really majorities, because they can shift so quickly - especially at a time when public opinion is thermostatic. After planning for a decade-long project, thanks to his electoral strategy, Kier Starmer might not last even half that time.

Illustrations: Will Allen/Europinion