Dominic Cummings has always had a nose for the national mood, and his fingers on its pulse. Whatever one thinks of him, the man has an uncanny trick for being able to spot when the wind is about to change direction. His stark warning that Both Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch could be gone within a year is not just a provocation, it reflects a broader growing restlessness with promises not kept, costs out of control, and a politics that feels completely detached from real life.
Starmer stormed into power on the back of a slew of pledges promising stability and change. But, as time has begun to show us, he has delivered neither. The economy has ground to a halt again, and the day-to-day costs of nearly everything – most noticeably energy bills – is crawling up. Net Zero targets, championed by the previous Government, of which Kemi Badenoch was leader, are being continued by Keir Starmer, and have made energy dearer and scarcer.
Families across this country now feel the squeeze at every turn, with job creation slowing down, services seizing up, all under the watch of a Prime Minister who seems more comfortable behind the lectern than out in the country that he governs.
The near-endless scandals have not helped either. From Angela Rayner’s grubby tax scandal, and now to the effective collapse of the grooming gangs inquiry, Starmer’s self-styled movement of integrity is now mired in the same evasions and errors it once condemned. It seems that each week brings new embarrassment, and another round of the Prime Minister focusing ‘on delivery’, or announcing a new “phase” of his spluttering government.
His challenge is clearly that nobody outside of Westminster can actually see what he claims is being delivered.
Cummings’ latest warning that Starmer faces a nightmare of political upheaval will strike a chord with Brits because that upheaval is the logical endpoint of what we feel: that nothing seems to be working, that politics has shrunk into management, and that both parties seem to be running out of road.
And the great irony of it all is that Starmer’s vast majority, supposed to be his shield, could in fact turn out to be his downfall. A parliamentary party so titanic will soon start whispering about succession if the polls fail to promise them a good fortune.
If the Prime Minister cannot show progress soon, the knives are sure to come out long before 2029. For all his talk of change, Keir Starmer may well risk becoming what every Briton loathes the most, another leader who promised to fix the country, and ended up breaking faith with it.