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Merry Christmas, Sir Keir, and a happy new year. Or as they say in Downing Street these days, make merry for tomorrow you may die. At your drinks for lobby correspondents last week there was reportedly one topic alone. How long had you to go: months, weeks, hours?
We all know bad news sells. Political reporters cannot handle prime ministers sleeping soundly at night. But the terminal gloom around Keir Starmer’s position is absurd. Not a morning passes without rivals being declared, and not an evening without the BBC’s Chris Mason dragged from his supper to stand in the cold. He just frowns and forecasts Armageddon.
Starmer is variously described as the least popular, most rebelled against, most loathed prime minister of all time. Asked for a prediction, the Westminster lobby grasps the most stinging nettle it can find. It currently rates Starmer as finished. It did the same to Margaret Thatcher after two years in 1981.
First the polls. A recent in-depth study of them in the Economist was gripping. It showed that when a party’s share falls below 30%, predicting the outcome of first-past-the-post in any constituency is near worthless. In lobby terms, you can use it to back any story you want to write. At last year’s general election, the surging Reform party got 14% of the total vote but won just five MPs; the Liberal Democrats got 12% and 72 MPs.
The Economist’s own poll had Reform winning “between 112 and 373 seats” and Labour winning “between 36 and 295 seats”. This is no use to anyone. Put another way, Starmer needs only to recover seven points to make Labour the largest party in parliament again. Meanwhile, an MRP poll leaked last month had Kemi Badenoch winning just 14 seats.
The fact is that when five parties all have between 15 and 30% of the poll, as is roughly the case at present, first-past-the-post makes any election a lottery. As for the leaders, when party affinities are no longer tied to ideology or class loyalty, “popularity” can swing wildly. It goes with charisma or the last appearance on television.
I find it hard to “loathe” or “hate” Starmer. Not knowing him personally, I find his decisions inept – but he seems likable and harmless. He sounded most plausible on Michael Berkeley’s Private Passions on Radio 3 in October. He admitted he became prime minister having not made the grade in music college on the flute. I keep seeing him as a failed flautist.
Labour is in Downing Street by the wildest of flukes. In 2024, Starmer actually won half a million fewer votes than his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, did in 2019. It also won a smaller share of the poll, 34%, than the Tories and Reform combined at 38%. Last year the British electorate turned right, not left.
In other words, Labour’s record majority had nothing to do with democracy. It was first-past-the-post at its wildest. With five parties looking like contenders next time, and a hung parliament most likely, you might as well roll a dice as to who gets to Downing Street.
Starmer’s performance as prime minister has not been outstanding, but it’s hardly been disastrous. His devotion to his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has alienated employers, farmers, publicans, landlords, planners and the countryside. He has got little thanks for his outrageous generosity to HS2, housebuilders and the green energy lobby. But these are hardly hanging offences.
In fact, in two important policy areas, Starmer has been in the right. He has restrained public borrowing, which should give him room for manoeuvre down the line. According to the IMF, next year the UK will be the second strongest growing economy in the G7 after the US, and that is worth a real boast. The prime minister has also started down the vital route to reversing the Brexit disaster, most recently in reopening the Erasmus student exchange. That is also good news. Otherwise his foreign policy may be measured only in air miles – but overseas nowadays is mostly about show. He has deftly handled the warmongering of the defence spending lobby.
This has simply not been a Liz Truss/Boris Johnson disaster binge. Starmer has made bad appointments and has a ropey Downing Street machine; but if backbenchers are restive, Starmer has enough of them to get by. He performs confidently with Badenoch in the weekly pantomime at the dispatch box.
The idea that Angela Rayner or Wes Streeting or even Andy Burnham is massing armies of eager supporters at Starmer’s door is ridiculous. There is no obvious leader of the party yet identified as superior to Starmer. I cannot believe Labour really wants to fall on its sword.
The next election is utterly impossible to call. The polls are useless predictors, as will be next May’s local elections. They will be a sign of passing whim, not of who the voter most wants as prime minister. Starmer may not be exciting, but that is hardly new in Downing Street. He has time – and in politics, time is power. He should take a leaf out of Thatcher’s book. Just stay there. Just survive. I predict he will.
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Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
