Frozen by the challenges of power: how Starmer turned triumph into tragedy

Few would describe him as a dramatic man, but Keir Starmer’s political career has been almost Shakespearean in its trajectory: a mere 11 years to enter parliament, lead Labour to an election win many assumed was impossible and then, inside the final two years, throw it all away. His demise is, of course, a reflection of an unprecedented era, one in which voter loyalties were atomised, a two-party hegemony fractured into five, and for the first time ever Labour faced a coherent threat on its left as well as its right. Perhaps no one could have steered the party through all this. But even Starmer’s closest allies and supporters will accept that he was very much at fault. No modern prime minister has looked so well-suited to the job on paper and been so fundamentally inept in practice. “Starmer didn’t know what he was doing in three ways,” said Anthony Seldon, the historian who has written biographies of every PM from John Major to Rishi Sunak. “Firstly, he never worked out what the job was – what does the prime minister do? Secondly, he never knew what he wanted to do, above all not on economic policy. And thirdly, he didn’t know who to appoint. “Once you’ve got those three things happening it’s never going to work. It’s just a question of how quickly the wheels come off.” As a precis this might sound harsh. …