Victory wasted: The cautionary tale of Keir Starmer
Keir Starmer sold himself as a non-politician, and proved again and again why political skills matter, writes Eliot Wilson
Today Sir Keir Starmer will finally resign as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury. He has been PM for two years and 15 days, only the 43rd-longest serving out of a total of 58; if he had held on just another 18 days, he would have moved past the Earl of Aberdeen (1852-55).
After Starmer’s audience with the King, Andy Burnham will enter and be invited to form a government: Britain’s 59th Prime Minister, the fourth in the four years of Charles III’s reign.
Starmer tries to define his own legacy
Last week, Starmer appeared at Prime Minister’s Questions for the last time. It was a strange affair, with an air of theatre as Labour MPs cheered and applauded the leader whose continued tenure in Downing Street they had collectively made impossible. Some, anxiously searching behind Burnham’s long-lashed eyes for a sense of ideology or even guiding principles, seem like they already fear buyer’s remorse.
Wading through the mostly-softball questions, Starmer tried to construct a narrative of his legacy, reminding his own MPs, the House and the wider world of what he had achieved. Even Kemi Badenoch, believed not to own a pair of kid gloves, was relatively gentle. Responding to her final question, the Prime Minister tried to sum up his own political obituary.
“After two years, we have stabilised the economy. We have invested heavily in our public services. We have put better protections in for children, particularly on child poverty. We have strengthened our defence and we have enhanced our international reputation. I am proud to leave this country in a better shape than I found it.”
Did ye, aye? my Glaswegian grandmother might have responded sceptically.
On the economy: over the past decade, excepting the pandemic-affected years of 2021-23, inflation has been in the region of 2-3 per cent. In 2024 – for half of which, remember, Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister – it returned to a recognisable pre-Covid-19 rate of 2.5 per cent. Since then it has climbed to 3.4 per cent in 2025, and is predicted to be 3.2 per cent this year. Stable?
Taxation as a percentage of GDP has risen from 39 per cent under the Tories to 40.3 per cent in 2025/26, and is expected to be close to 43 per cent by the early 2030s. The last time it was that high was under Clement Attlee, as we were still paying off the costs of the Second World War, maintaining a global empire and fighting a war in Korea. Stable?
Labour has stabilised the economy in one sense, that we have virtually no growth. It ticked up slightly from 1.1 per cent in 2024 to 1.4 per cent in 2025, but is predicted to slip back to 0.7 per cent this year. True, the UK is outperforming many EU countries, but further afield Britain’s performance is anaemic. China is growing at 4.4 per cent, India at 6.5 per cent, Nigeria is at 4.1 per cent and Singapore at 3.5 per cent. Even Israel, much more closely embroiled in the conflict with Iran, is seeing growth of 3.5 per cent. We have the “stability” of the prison yard.
Defence remains overlooked
Has Starmer strengthened Britain’s defence? Ministers talk a great deal about “delivering the biggest boost to defence spending since the Cold War”, but we are not fighting the Cold War so the metric is meaningless. Starmer has managed to issue a Defence Investment Plan nine months late, the first draft of which was so parsimonious it forced the defence secretary and the Armed Forces minister to resign; even after revision its additional expenditure is not much more than half what the armed forces claimed to need.
The UK will spend 2.7 per cent of GDP on defence by 2029, but has no credible pathway to the 3.5 per cent required from all NATO members by 2035. Poland is already spending 4.5 per cent, Latvia 3.6 per cent, Estonia 3.4 per cent, Norway 3.3 per cent. We are starting to lag badly, and it has been noticed by our allies, especially the hyper-critical President Trump.
In meeting NATO-agreed military capability requirements, the UK is 31st, ahead of only Iceland – and Iceland has no armed forces. The Royal Navy has just 13 major surface ships, of which maybe 10 are currently deployable. Most of its attack submarines are unavailable. The RAF’s F-35B Lightning fleet has an availability of about 30 per cent, which means on any given day, the air force can field 10 or 11 aircraft.
The government has indeed increased spending on public services, but increased expenditure has been traded against additional taxation. It would take an eagle eye to see substantial improvements in health, education, welfare or social care to match the spending. NHS waiting lists and times have fallen, but not by much; teacher numbers have gone up, but nowhere near Labour’s original targets; and after a threatened backbench rebellion last year, the government largely abandoned serious welfare reform.
Is the UK “in a better shape” than it was on 4 July 2024? It is hard to feel a revolution. Starmer’s boast recalled Margaret Thatcher’s tearful remarks as she departed office in 1990.
“We’re leaving Downing Street for the last time after 11 and a half wonderful years, and we’re very happy that we leave the United Kingdom in a very, very much better state than when we came here 11 and a half years ago.”
Keir Starmer, you’re no Margaret Thatcher.
A cautionary tale, not a legacy
Starmer’s career has been cut off in midstream (though he will turn 64 soon), and his greatest legacy will be a cautionary tale: how to mismanage and squander an historic parliamentary majority of 174; give away any initiative; seem, in an astonishingly short space of time, lost, directionless, hesitant and psychologically broken. The outgoing Prime Minister sold himself as a non-politician, a skilled and sober technocrat, and proved again and again why political skills matter.
Professionally, Starmer dies by his own hand. Unable to demonstrate vision, competence or exemplary morality, with poll ratings in freefall, he caused his MPs to look around for an alternative. So sure were enough of them his position was irretrievable that they were willing to look beyond Westminster, to an unremarkable Gordon Brown-era Cabinet minister who had retired north a decade before to stop wearing suits and run Greater Manchester.
Starmer’s legacy will be the quirks. That he came from nowhere to the Commons front bench, the shadow cabinet, the Labour leadership and the premiership in less than a decade; that he could express no vision or driving purpose; that his authority collapsed so far, so completely, that he was evicted from Downing Street, Labour’s first regicide. When The Curious Case of Keir Starmer is written, it will be long on soap opera, and very short on policy.
Eliot Wilson is a writer and historian. He is a senior fellow for national security at the Coalition for Global Prosperity and a contributing editor at Defence on the Brink