Keir Starmer’s time as Prime Minister is finally drawing to a close. You can feel it in Westminster, hear it in the Labour tearooms, and see it in the manoeuvres of Andy Burnham, who has begun setting out his stall, waiting in the wings to challenge a leader whose authority has evaporated. Starmer is out of allies, out of credibility, and running out of time. The only question left is whether he can limp through the year. The events of the past fortnight have been catastrophic.
First came the humiliating resignation of Angela Rayner, undone by her own hypocrisy. Then came the disgrace of Peter Mandelson, sacked as Britain’s ambassador to Washington after the publication of sickening emails showing his continued support for Jeffrey Epstein long after his conviction. These were not minor figures. Rayner was his deputy. Mandelson was his highest-profile diplomatic appointment. Both collapsed within days, after Starmer had gone out on a limb to defend them.
And calamity has become Starmer’s hallmark. His premiership has been an unbroken sequence of incompetent misjudgements, U-turns, and disasters. In just over a year, he has racked up more political catastrophes than the Conservatives managed in more than a decade of turmoil, which really says a lot!
A flatlining economy. An asylum system in chaos. Energy bills inflated by the dogmatic pursuit of Net Zero. All the while, Britain’s standing in the world is diminished.
These failures do not merely expose incompetence; they reveal a man who stands for nothing. A leader with no convictions, no vision, and no ability to inspire.
His MPs know it. They smell blood. Labour backbenchers, many of whom stayed quiet while Starmer was in the ascendancy, are now openly questioning whether he can survive until the local elections in May. Some doubt he will even make it to Christmas.
The chatter in Westminster is no longer whether he will go, but who will replace him. That alone tells you everything you need to know. Once a leader is spoken of in the past tense, his authority has gone.
Andy Burnham is circling. His new campaign group, blandly called Mainstream, is nothing less than a leadership vehicle. Burnham has allies in place, a base of support outside Westminster, and a strategy to return to the Commons at the first opportunity.
He has chosen his moment with precision: Starmer is wounded, isolated, and incapable of defending himself. Burnham has only to wait for the inevitable collapse.
The truth is, Starmer has no cards left to play. He cannot sack another scapegoat. He has already thrown colleagues under the bus. He has no reservoir of goodwill left to draw upon. His closest allies are either disgraced, departed, or sharpening their knives.
Even his chief of staff is under fire for the disastrous Mandelson gamble. When the inner circle begins to fracture, the game is up. What makes this moment particularly dangerous for Starmer is that the country is in no mood to forgive.
Voters see through his hollow promises. They recognise the vacuum where conviction should be. They know that Britain faces real crises — economic stagnation, uncontrolled immigration, broken public services — and that Starmer is not equal to them.
You cannot bluff your way through national leadership. Eventually, reality asserts itself. For the Labour Party, this is an inflection point. Carry on under Starmer, and they risk squandering their grip on power almost as quickly as they gained it.
Move to Burnham, and they gamble on a man who has long been waiting for his chance to remake Labour in his own image. Either way, the period of Starmer’s control is ending. The knives are out, and they are not going back in.
Starmer once sold himself as the safe pair of hands after years of Conservative chaos. His time is over. He is, as one of his own MPs put it, a dead man walking.
The Labour benches know it. The British people know it. And, deep down, Starmer himself must know it. Keir Starmer is finished — the only debate in Westminster now is whether he limps out by Christmas or staggers on to May.