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Isn’t the Labour Party just a reflection on how the world is generally run today just look at the shambolic parties that run racing. Everything is over thought and discussed at length with no viable conclusion it is just an endless circle of never making any decisions.
The more I know the less I understand.
Streeting has probably decided it is now or never. Labour is highly unlikely to win the next election and there is a good chance he will not be an MP, defending a majority of only 500 in Ilford against an “independent”. Otherwise, by the time he is in a position to challenge again, he may well be yesterday’s man.
His only chance of holding on to Ilford would appear to be persuading enough Conservative supporters to tactically vote for him.
Should he be successful that would be yet another Labour leader in a London constituency. Not a great look.
Streeting is the only decent member of the Labour front bench.
He has some progressive ideas for a future NHS, but, sadly, there’s no way the Labour Left will support him.It’s amazing to think that the Labour government is looking increasingly like the last Tory government, in that ‘the broad church’ is clearly showing signs of its factions gearing up for another ideological scrap.
Meanwhile, the country, as a whole, really needs a working government facing up to its challenges and implementing an economic and welfare strategy for our future.If Streeting launches a leadership bid I wouldn’t be surprised if Rayner swiftly follows suit, either of her own volition or by persuasion.
Meanwhile, the country, as a whole, really needs a working government facing up to its challenges and implementing an economic and welfare strategy for our future.
On that we are very much agree. Sadly nobody is interested in talking about that. Most of the media simply exists to undermine the Government at every opportunity, opposition parties are constantly having a pop a Labour without saying anything constructive and the Government itself is too busy with this will they / won’t they saga which has grown tiresome in the extreme.
No idea who the author is or where his politics lie but I think this piece from the very much not left wing Spectator may actually end up being on the money.
https://spectator.com/article/youll-miss-keir-starmer-when-hes-gone/
I wonder if some of the news media are now backtracking because they realise that the removal of Keir Starmer will be bad for the country and the economy.
Cohen is quite similar to Christopher Hitchens. He started out as a left winger, then backed the American neo-con wars of the early 21st century, fell out with many of his erstwhile colleagues and turned into something of a contrarian. Then he got sacked from “The Observer” after accusations of sexual harassment.
I didn’t know he had turned up at “The Spectator”, which I have not looked at since Gove became editor.
When Starmer is replaced, it will see the seventh Prime Minister in a decade.
The previous seven occupants of 10 Downing Street lasted 46 years.
Thanks Cork, not something I look at much at all but the headline seemed a bit out of step with the source so it got my interest.
When Starmer is replaced, it will see the seventh Prime Minister in a decade.
The previous seven occupants of 10 Downing Street lasted 46 years.
It’s a damning statistic but reflective of the age we live in. The previous seven were largely before social media and 24 hour news. They were able to carefully curate their images and control what went out, aided and abetted by a compliant media Establishment with which I imagine they had a very cosy relationship behind the scenes. I’m sure many still do to some extent. In the past scandals were harder to come by but now every word is pored over and socal media timelines rigourously trawled and even minor transgressions can become headline news because 24 hour news channels, social media and near constant live blogs need something to talk about all day and night.
The changed media environment is certainly important.
I think the other factor to consider is the different political landscape. The Prime Ministers from Wilson to Brown were in an era when the two main parties were dominant. They commanded huge shares of the vote on high turnouts and had no real challengers. The parties were also strong social forces with memberships in the millions.
Now we are in fractured political landscape where the two parties are only polling a fraction of the vote they once achieved. Both face insurgent challengers, as well as a stronger Liberal Party and Nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales (which were almost moribund until devolution gave them a boost).
I don’t believe it is a coincidence that we have had a succession of weak Prime Ministers as the parties they represent have become weaker.
From facebook
With thanks to Andy Fitchet
A long read on my thoughts about the current speculation about Keir’s future.
Keir Starmer is not perfect. No Labour leader ever has been. But if there is one thing British politics does with astonishing consistency, it is this: it builds Labour leaders up just high enough to tear them to pieces the moment they become a genuine threat to the status quo.
We saw it with Gordon Brown. History has already begun rehabilitating Brown, but during his premiership he was caricatured relentlessly — awkward, gloomy, indecisive, “unelected,” somehow both too intellectual and not political enough. Yet Brown led Britain through the global financial crisis with a seriousness and competence that many economists now acknowledge prevented catastrophe. The very people who mocked him later quietly admitted he had been right.
Ed Miliband was ridiculed for eating a bacon sandwich.
Jeremy Corbyn was treated as an existential threat to civilisation itself.
And now Keir Starmer, despite being a cautious centrist by almost any historical Labour standard, is being denounced simultaneously as authoritarian, weak, radical, conservative, elitist and socialist depending on which newspaper one happens to open.
There is something deeply unhealthy about this cycle. Britain has become addicted to permanent outrage politics. We no longer seem capable of allowing governments — particularly Labour governments — to govern without treating every disagreement, every compromise, every awkward interview as evidence of total collapse.
And yet, beneath the noise, there is a government actually doing things.
This Labour government inherited a country battered by fourteen years of instability: collapsing public trust, crumbling infrastructure, stagnant wages, NHS waiting lists, local councils on the edge of bankruptcy, rivers full of sewage, schools literally unsafe because of concrete decay, and an economy that seemed permanently stuck between drift and decline.
And all this after a Conservative period that gave us not stability but chaos.
From 1979 to 2007 Britain had just three Prime Ministers: Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and Tony Blair. Agree or disagree with them politically, that was an era of relative governmental continuity.
Now look at the present madness. Since 2016 Britain has lurched from David Cameron to Theresa May to Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak — and if the rumours and plotting continue, we may genuinely end up talking about five Prime Ministers in five years across this political era. That is not healthy democracy. That is systemic instability.
The Conservatives lectured Britain for years about competence and seriousness while cycling through leaders like a reality television programme. One Prime Minister crashed the economy with a mini-budget. Another became synonymous with scandal and dishonesty. Another resigned after gambling on a referendum they barely understood.
Against that backdrop, Starmer’s greatest crime often seems to be that he is… normal.
Calmness now looks suspicious to a political culture addicted to spectacle.
And despite governing in brutally difficult economic conditions, Labour has already begun to shift the tone and direction of the country. Workers’ rights reforms. Greater investment into green energy and infrastructure. Attempts to rebuild relationships with Europe after years of performative hostility. Movement on NHS waiting lists. Action on housing and planning. An industrial strategy that at least recognises Britain needs to produce and build again rather than simply speculate and outsource.
None of this is revolutionary. But perhaps that is precisely the point.
After years of ideological drama and governmental collapse, competence is beginning to look radical.
There is also something profoundly unfair in the expectation placed upon Labour governments. Conservatives are often judged by intentions; Labour is judged by perfection. Tory failure becomes unfortunate reality. Labour failure becomes moral collapse. Conservative U-turns are pragmatism; Labour compromise is betrayal.
Starmer is trying to govern a fractured country in an age where social media rewards fury over patience, purity over progress, and outrage over realism. Every decision alienates somebody because politics now demands impossible ideological totality.
But government is not protest. It is not performance. It is the difficult, compromised, frustrating work of actually running a country.
And perhaps that is what unsettles some commentators most about Starmer. He does not fit the easy caricature. He is not a revolutionary firebrand nor a Thatcherite ideologue. He is a lawyerly, methodical social democrat trying to stabilise a country that has spent nearly a decade politically disintegrating.
And this is precisely why the current political moment matters so much.
Look at the rhetoric emerging from Reform during local election campaigns. Again and again, the message is not simply “vote for us locally” but “get rid of Keir Starmer.” The entire movement feeds off permanent instability, permanent grievance, permanent anger. It thrives when people stop believing democratic institutions can ever work.
But we cannot simply hand them what they want.
Because if every government is torn down within months, if every Prime Minister becomes politically disposable before policies have time to work, then politics itself becomes impossible. Democracy turns into an endless carousel of rage and reaction where no long-term thinking survives.
There is a profound irony here. The same political forces that helped create years of chaos now present themselves as the answer to chaos. The same voices that cheered on division, culture wars and anti-political fury now ask to be trusted as the guardians of stability.
Britain cannot keep governing like this.
A serious country cannot replace leaders every time opinion polls wobble or headlines become difficult. It cannot endlessly confuse turbulence with transformation. It cannot keep rewarding those who profit from public cynicism while punishing those attempting the slow, imperfect work of rebuilding institutions.
That does not mean Labour should avoid scrutiny. Far from it. Democracy requires scrutiny. But scrutiny is different from sabotage.
The truth is that much of the hostility towards Starmer says less about Starmer himself and more about a political culture that is understandably impatient for change but one that can’t seem to get its head around the fact that it takes longer than 22 months to turn around a failing charity, council or football club, let alone turn around a country where every single public service was on its knees.If Raynor stands it will be until they can get Burnham in , Streeting has to move now as he wont win against Burnham , Milliband is the one to watch , if Starmer doesn’t contest this then he’s the replacement , from a Labour movement point of view he’s the popular one , 4s in the betting maybe worth a punt , it has the be said Streeting is not that popular in the party
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
I must admit to seeing a video of him in parliament on Facebook, having rather forgotten about him since he stopped being leader, and, now he’s much older thought he had the ministerial look about him that Michael Heseltine had when I saw him at a people’s vote meeting. Maybe it’s because, like Heseltine, he looked quite tall and imposing. He’s also ( I think) one of the few MP’s that Starmer listens to.
Right on cue and rather conveniently Angela Rayner’s tax affairs have been okayed by HMRC, so into the starting blocks she goes?
I have a fair bit of time for Ed Miliband: he was the wrong Miliband back then, perhaps the right one now.
Those bland, if commendable, words on that infamous ‘ed stone’ are as applicable now as when they were carved 10+ years ago.
“Rather conveniently Angela Rayner’s tax affairs have been okayed by HMRC”.
Very convenient indeed.
To the predictable complaints about the source, note that Mr Fawkes is quoting someone who is very much on the Left:
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