Pissed-off though I was by the Labour Party coup that removed Keir Starmer from office, I know that the time has come to bury my anger and disappointment and get behind the new prime minister. Here’s why.
I do not understand why Starmer was such an unpopular politician, even more so than the Fagash Fuhrer Nigel Farage. Starmer is a working class boy done great, coming from a working class background and getting to the top of his respective professions twice, as a lawyer and as a politician. He came across as boring and uncharismatic, something I definitely didn’t feel when I met him a couple of years ago, but he got things done, albeit with a few slip-ups along the way and left Britain in a far better place than he found it.
What Starmer isn’t is a great politician. In a country where people say they hate politicians, it is strange that when we got a non-political PM whose main aims were to make our lives better, we didn’t like it. Now we’re back to having party leaders, including the new prime minister Andy Burnham who is a politician down to his fingertips.
I will never forgive the likes of John Healey or Wes Streeting for undermining Starmer by way of their cynical resignations from important jobs (defence and health) which now appear to have been motivated solely to displace the PM. I regard loyalty is a vital trait in a human being, not just a politician, so I can’t pretend I have any respect for them. Maybe in time they will re-earn it? Either way, I’ve donated Wes Streeting’s memoir to the local charity shop without reading it.
Burnham has made a good start, immediately recognising the problems facing working people. Easy wins, all, and there will be more to come. Easy wins which are political wins. He will have tough tests along the way, but I suspect he will be ready for them.
There is a far bigger issue at stake. Many people are concerned about the rise of the far right in Britain. Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives have lurched towards Farage’s far right Reform Party UK Ltd and to the right of them stands Rupert Lowe’s actual fascist party Restore UK, which is for people who see Badenoch and Farage as lily-livered liberals. If the far right gets elected, the terrible Thatcher/Cameron/May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak years will feel like the good old days.
Andy Burnham has got three years to win the arguments, which he can only do by making Britain a better, fairer, more equal, more outward looking, hospitable country. My own feelings about the purging of Starmer are all but irrelevant by comparison. Labour will always be a better option for me than any other party. I even voted twice for a Labour Party led by the wretched Jeremy Corbyn for fuck’s sake.
Those who brought about the fall of Starmer can take on the work I put in first getting Starmer elected Labour leader and then UK prime minister. I’m keeping my membership of the party, even though I was prevented from having any say in the sacking of the old leader and the coming of the new one.
I’m in the process of moving on now. The consequences of not doing so are too awful to contemplate.
