There have been many moments throughout the past two years when one might have expected Sir Keir Starmer to do the decent thing and fall on his sword. The disgraceful 19-second wreath-laying in Southport, after the slaughter of Bebe, Elsie and Alice, should have ended his premiership on the spot as far as I was concerned. Worse still, was his subsequent branding of working-class fury as “far-right thuggery”. The Mandelson debacle, the local election massacre, the entrenchment of two-tier policing, and the spectacle of nearly 100 Labour MPs signing on the dotted line for his head, should have been the last straw. And yet the man clings on, with the shamelessness of a Ukrainian rent-boy on an expired visa.
Today though is D-Day, or perhaps W-Day, as Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has finally discovered his bottle and resigned, in what many interpret as a leadership bid in all but name. That it has taken this long, and that Streeting has still not formally announced his challenge, is an extraordinary indictment on the state of the Labour Party and its utter vacuum of talent. For never in living memory has a Prime Minister been so comprehensively loathed across so much of the country, and rarely with such abundant justification.
Make no mistake, Starmer is hated across the board, and it is no mystery. It stems from the cascade of broken promises, the rank hypocrisy (‘Beergate’, the attacks on Tory sleaze, the risible claims of ‘taking responsibility’ while throwing the rest of the squad under the bus), the really shit lies, the smug self-satisfaction (with no discernible justification), and above all, the unmistakable sense that the man views large swathes of the country with thinly-veiled contempt. The white working class, in particular, appear to be the enemy within: jailed for tweets while their daughters are gang-raped. Indeed, even facial recognition cameras are now two-tier – mugshots this weekend for Tommy and Unite The Kingdom, a blind eye for Abdul and ‘Free Palestine’.
For me, the absolute bottom of the barrel was Monday’s “reset” speech; a desperate, stage-managed attempt to sound human, that made primary school debating look polished. It was so bad in fact, I only got through it thanks to a triple scotch and the merciful respite of relentless YouTube adverts. The Yorkshire pitch, the jacket-off “one of the lads” schtick, the lectern as shield, the excruciating anecdotes about his own multimillionaire backstory, dressed up as working-class authenticity.
The lecturing condescension as if he were unquestionably the most intelligent man in the room – a feat I’d be uncertain he could pull off alone in the bog, with nothing but a turd for company (although, at least he’d finally understand how the public feels). The arrogance of blathering on to those suffering real deprivation about his values, his working-class roots, his family hardships. The level of sanctimony that would be unforgivable even if he were competent. Instead he is both sanctimonious and useless, which is quite the combination.
And above all, the whining, droning, boring cunt of a voice. A voice that has trained itself to be slow, monotone and flat, so that absolutely no fucking truth can escape his lips. No one talks like that. No one. Only those, desperate to process and filter the bullshit past an internal censor, communicate this way.
And how was Sir Keir going to win back the party, the Red Wall, the country as a whole? Predictably, he chose to lecture us on his values; how a multimillionaire once considered himself ‘working-class’, and (just for fun), how about closer alignment with the EU? Yeah, that ought to do it.
Since the PM doesn’t understand how to read his autocue, let alone the room, I’ll spell it out for him. Here’s the bottom line Sir Keir: no one gives a toss. Not about you, your stories, your family, your rebrand, your anything. Just like you, they only care about their own lives – and those lives right now are suffering, to a lesser or greater extent, because of your lack of vision, political nous, and in particular your utter disdain for the people of this country.
It didn’t have to be this way. All Starmer had to do to become perhaps the most consequential Prime Minister in modern times, would have been to simply deliver what the country has been crying out for for two decades: stop the boats; cut taxes; prioritise Brits over foreigners; protect rape victims rather than rapists; get fracking in the North Sea, and tell ‘mad Ed’ to do one – we’re paying Norway to do it, so why not do it ourselves?
But above all, tell the truth – even if it’s a truth no one wants to hear: “I find you distasteful, but someone has to govern you.” At least then we could respect the honesty.
Far from fearing the “chaos” of his departure, many voters will sleep easier tonight. Whatever dross follows the current occupant of Number 10, might at least hasten the public verdict this government so richly deserves: an early general election, and the chance to consign Sir Keir Starmer to the footnotes of history. The country will not mourn the prick, and nor should it.
Frank Haviland is the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West and The Frank Report Substack.
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(Photograph: Number 10, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
I have never HATED a politician as much as I HATE the arsehole that is Kier Starmer you will notice that I refuse to use his title which I would spell as CUR I think he needs to be Hung Drawn and quartered so that he will die in screaming agony.