Andrew MacDougall: In the future, everyone will be PM for 15 minutes

By: Andrew MacDougall

By the time you read this, there is a good chance Keir Starmer will no longer be prime minister of the United Kingdom.

Starmer’s looming defenestration is insane. Not because Starmer was a giant in office; he wasn’t. He’s fucking useless at politics and government. And that’s not just me saying it; read this 𝕏resignation letter from Jess Phillips, one of his ministers. Britain was in trouble when Starmer took office and it’s in worse shape now.

No, Starmer’s departure is nuts because 20 months ago this was the general election result that was returned by the British people:

That’s right. In less than two years, Starmer has gone from an absolute majority of 174 seats in the House of Commons to being knifed in the back, not by one, but by several wings of his Labour caucus. Starmer loyalists might still exist, but right now they’re harder to find than an atheist in a foxhole.

And why are the natives restless?

Well, it probably (read: definitely) has something to do with another set of election returns, this one from last week’s local elections in England (and the devolved Parliaments in Scotland and Wales). Here are the council (i.e. municipal) results:

That’s rough. And here is Scotland:

Oof. And then Wales:

Taken together, that’s a giant shit sandwich. Labour has been reduced to a rump in Wales, where it had held power for over 100 years. It is going nowhere in Scotland, where the party’s own leader had already tried to knife Starmer earlier this year. And it is increasingly a rump in England, with vast swathes of its former industrial working-class base now casting their votes for Nigel Farage and his Reform Party. There are no more safe havens: Labour got creamed in Newcastle; it got whipped in Manchester; and it got shelled in Sheffield.

How bad was it? Well, here is some data from the * Guardian*:

Labour is even losing London, the last bastion of its core vote (i.e. the university-educated urban service professional and/or public servant), with the Green Party — now led by a fraud named Zack Polanski who once claimed he could enhance a reporter’s bust size through hypnosis — gobbling up the progressive vote.

Again, from the Guardian:

Not that things are any better for the Conservatives, i.e. the other traditional big beast of British politics. Just scroll back up to the charts to have a look at their ass-whipping. And with the centre hollowing out, the extremists/insurgents are rushing to fill the void, whether that’s Nigel Farage and his Reform Party to the right, or Polanski and his Greens to the left.

What’s most incredible about the current state of affairs is that the Labour Party is now about to repeat the late-stage sins of their Conservatives predecessors, a period that saw the Tories swapping leaders (and hence, prime ministers) like most of us cycle through a Netflix carousel, with none of their choices having a mandate from the British people. While each switch might have made sense as it was executed, the cumulative effect was incredibly corrosive.

Indeed, the 2024 and 2026 results tell us the Tories have yet to shed the shame of the prime ministerial merry-go-round which saw Liz Truss replace Boris Johnson only to herself be replaced by Rishi Sunak two months later, after Truss blew up the British economy with an ill-advised economic update that sent bond yields and mortgage rates soaring. This, of course, came after Boris Johnson had forced Theresa May out over Brexit, after May had stepped in for David Cameron, after the latter had botched the referendum which saw Britain eject itself from the European Union.

While external events might have fed into the instability under the Tories — particularly the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine — the answer to said instability shouldn’t be to add domestic political instability into the mix. But that’s what the Tories did. And they got punished for it.

It is said that those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. Well, it was just two short years ago that Starmer promised an end to the Tory “psychodrama.” But on current evidence, most of the people currently wearing Labour colours in Westminster have the memory of your average goldfish. Labour to the Tories: “hold my beer.”

And so, will it be Health Secretary Wes Streeting, a protégé of the scandal-soaked Peter Mandelson, representing the “right wing” of the Labour Party, who succeeds Starmer? Or will it be Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, the preferred option of the Labour “soft-left,” albeit a man who doesn’t have a seat in Westminster and so can’t be considered for the leadership of the party? Or will it be Angela Rayner, the former deputy leader who is still awaiting the results of an investigation into her tax affairs? Yes, these really are the options, none of whom can credibly claim to be able to carry both the Parliamentary Labour Party and the broader party membership.

Even worse, allies of Burnham and Rayner are already saying they will force Streeting out if the Health Secretary forces and wins a leadership contest before Burnham is able to secure a seat at Westminster. Forget fame. In the future, everyone will be prime minister for 15 minutes!

It’s no wonder the bond markets are watching events with a jumpy and jaundiced eye; Britain’s borrowing costs are now shooting up by the hour. And that doesn’t end well for the British people, which is why said people are now screaming at the top of their lungs. Not that anyone in Westminster is listening. The deafness is why most of the political energy is now outside of Westminster in the form of Farage and Polanski, two vibe politicians.

But here’s the thing: Farage and Polanski won’t have the answers either. What they do have, however, are ears. And right now that is good enough.

Farage hears the distress of the white working class who have been fucked over for generations by globalization, deindustrialisation, and the subsequent importation of millions of low-skill, low-wage workers who now compete with them for sandwich-making jobs and access to government services, all because successive governments have not been willing to have a realistic discussion on those services and the tax and spend required to deliver them. Farage sees how these concerns have been written off as “racism” for a generation, as public services continue to crumble and economic growth outside of London remains flat as a pancake. What the 𝕏majority of these people want is respect, dignity, investment in services, and for work to pay more than welfarism. And while there are surely some racists among them, they are the minority of cases.

Meanwhile, to the left, Polanski is grabbing an increased share of the urban youth vote, as a generation of fragile graduates softened by the pandemic and excessive screen time flood a labour market that has less need for them, a market where their toil isn’t remunerated to the degree necessary to afford their lives. Armed with sharp opinions, an almost militant need for respect, saddled with school debt, and unable to afford that first step up the housing ladder, this generation is already beginning to give up, with Britain now home to nearly a million 16-24 year olds who are neither in education, work, or training. Few mighty oaks are likely to grow from such poor seeds.

And in the middle of this shitshow sits Keir Starmer, whose promise of boring managerialism has gone up in smoke. A country in need of bold action handed the Labour government a big mandate and all it’s gotten in return is a bin fire brighter than the last one. Making it burn even brighter through a nasty war of succession is not what the country needs.

Three decades on from Tony Blair and New Labour campaigning with the slogan “▶Things Can Only Get Better”, the country now feels snookered. A lurch to the left under Burnham or Rayner will tank the markets. A coup by Streeting followed by a coup against Streeting will consign both major parties to basket-case status (and tank the markets). More drift and decline under Starmer digs a hole Farage and Polanski can then use to bury the mainstream parties.

As impossible as it seems, the best thing Labour could do is keep Starmer in power and have all of its factions help him to be less shit. Starmer doesn’t have to lead the party into the next election, but he can be useful to Labour if he can get it through the next phase of Iranian-fuelled instability. An orderly (but unconfirmed) succession in a year’s time would give a new Labour leader ample time to change the narrative ahead of the next general election in 2029. What’s more, time will let Reform and the Greens succeed or fail in local government, potentially changing the narrative of the next campaign.

But who am I kidding? More than 80 Labour MPs have asked for Starmer to go (actually, in the time it took to prepare this piece for publication, it went up to almost 100). Burnham has taken the train from Manchester to London. Streeting’s allies in Cabinet are starting to resign. Regicide will soon follow.

Andrew MacDougall is a director at Trafalgar Strategy and former head of communications to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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