In recent times, the UK political landscape has encountered significant shifts, especially following the resignation of Keir Starmer. While I don’t claim to be an expert on UK politics, I believe that some observations regarding this transition merit attention and discussion. An article shared by Micael T provides a nuanced perspective that contrasts the circumstances surrounding Starmer and his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. It’s important to consider the broader context of their leaderships, including media portrayals and ideological shifts within the Labour Party.
For reference, the article can be found here: Anti-politician Starmer leaves after reviving the 90s. Key excerpts include:
Less than two years after his record election victory, Keir Starmer’s ideology-free project has run aground. His political legacy is the defeat of Corbynism, the incarceration of pensioners, and a lack of vision that makes Tony Blair appear idealistic.
When Keir Starmer announced his resignation on Monday morning, few expressed sorrow. Even his most ardent supporters seemed unable to muster enthusiasm for what many viewed as a collection of empty platitudes from the beginning.
To comprehend how someone with no prior experience as an elected official ascended to the position of prime minister, it is essential to recall the context of his early career. Starmer gained notoriety as an associate of Labour’s left-wing leader Jeremy Corbyn after a long career as a prosecutor, during which he held left-wing activists accountable.
Initially, his affiliation with Corbyn lent Starmer’s administration a left-leaning appearance, despite his attempts to distance himself from that association. Upon his election as party leader after Labour’s defeat in 2019, it quickly became evident where Starmer stood ideologically. Corbyn was expelled from the party, and many of the hundreds of thousands who had joined Labour under his leadership were silenced or pushed out. In hindsight, it is difficult to see Starmer’s primary legacy as anything other than restoring Labour to a centrist position.
Labour’s landslide election victory in 2024 was more a consequence of the Conservative Party’s implosion after nearly 15 years in power than genuine enthusiasm for Labour’s platform. Although it leaned leftward due to Corbyn’s lasting influence, expectations for a Starmer government grew faint even before it took office.
Less than a year after the disastrous unfunded tax cuts promoted by Liz Truss during a period of high inflation in autumn 2023, Starmer’s advisors had concluded that all expansionary policies should be shelved. They communicated that voters shouldn’t anticipate much, as this was a “responsible” government. In many ways, the Starmer era resembled a reenactment of the 1990s, with terms like accountability and austerity resurfacing, emphasizing surface over substance, and turning politics into a communication exercise rather than a call to action. However, unlike the third-way socialists of the 1990s, Starmer’s tenure lacked any vision.
By Nicholas Dickinson, Lecturer in Politics, University of Exeter. Originally published at The Conversation
Keir Starmer has stepped down as leader of the Labour Party, marking his impending departure as the UK’s prime minister. Despite his repeated claims to continue, the weight of pressure following Andy Burnham’s decisive victory in the Makerfield by-election proved too much to bear for Starmer, making him the sixth British PM to resign in a decade.
The immediate reason for his resignation stemmed from a critical drop in support within the party and the cabinet, as revealed in private discussions over the weekend. In contrast to the wave of resignations that obliterated Conservative PMs Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, Starmer managed to safeguard his position for a more orderly exit. His approach aimed for a transition “with good grace” rather than chaos, yet his emotional farewell underscored a leader acutely aware of his shortcomings.
Having taken office, Starmer struggled with popularity. The day before entering 10 Downing Street, his net satisfaction rating with Ipsos stood at minus 21—a historic low for any incoming PM. While 31% were satisfied with his performance, a worrying 52% expressed dissatisfaction, marking a unique moment in which a leader secured parliamentary majority amidst a significantly negative approval rating.
However, in the post-Brexit political environment, such figures were not entirely unexpected. Rishi Sunak, Starmer’s predecessor, entered the 2024 campaign with a net satisfaction score of minus 56, according to YouGov.
Initially, I posited that Starmer would experience a surge in popularity after achieving a Labour victory following a 14-year hiatus. Historically, Tony Blair enjoyed a record-breaking honeymoon period post-1997 victory, with satisfaction soaring to plus 60. Even David Cameron saw a jump to plus 21 shortly after forming his coalition in 2010. Typically, the office of prime minister confers a sense of competence on a new occupant.
Starmer did see some improvement in popularity, albeit to a rather lukewarm neutrality. Immediately after the election, his net favorability rose to plus 3 in Opinium’s first post-election poll, while YouGov reflected a similar rapid recovery to near break-even levels. Unlike the sustained enthusiasm seen during Blair’s tenure, Starmer’s “bounce” was a shallow recovery, barely keeping him afloat before tides shifted once more.
Despite being bolstered by his majority, the same could be said of Boris Johnson, who following the 2019 election, faced predictions of a “decade of dominance” for the Conservatives. In reality, just over three years later, Johnson was ousted, and the narrative has now shifted toward potential Conservative extinction.
A Dangerous Pattern
So, where did Starmer’s leadership falter? Paradoxically, his trajectory mirrors that of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. Between 2017 and 2019, Corbyn’s personal ratings fell from a competitive minus 11 during the 2017 campaign to a staggering minus 44 by the time of his 2019 defeat, as the strategic ambiguity that initially held his coalition together crumbled under Brexit pressures.
Starmer’s rise and fall also followed an eerily similar timeline. His fragile polling lead was less about enthusiasm for Labour and more in response to government incompetence. Data from the 2024 “loveless landslide” clarified that Labour achieved around 64% of seats with a mere 34% of the vote—the lowest share for any majority government in history.
Just as Corbyn faced pressure from both the populist-right Brexit Party and pro-EU centrists like the Liberal Democrats, Starmer encountered a similar dynamic in the mid-2020s. On one front, Reform UK gnawed away at the Labour vote in post-industrial areas, while on the other, the Green Party and pro-Gaza independents targeted urban progressives. Notably, the Greens quadrupled their MPs by 2024, and independent candidates made historic gains in Labour strongholds.
Labour’s electoral results reflected these challenges, featuring by-election losses to both Reform UK and the Greens, as well as disappointing results in the local elections across England, and the inability to dislodge a scandal-stricken Scottish National Party north of the border.
It is particularly striking that this resignation occurred almost precisely ten years after the 2016 Brexit referendum, underscoring the persistent divides that arose from that moment—a reality still central to British politics today.
As Professor Tim Bale has recently asserted, British politics is best framed as an example of two-bloc polarization, where voters gravitate towards broad identity-based groups, with Brexit positioning as a key underlying factor. Yet this dynamic is obscured by the internal fragmentation of these blocs, which seldom address the issue directly.
While voters may temporarily unite against a common adversary, they remain profoundly divided on various policy aspects, leaving leaders like Starmer (and Corbyn, for that matter) attempting to hold together a fractious coalition that collapses when pressure mounts.
