Fergus Finlay: Starmer has to survive the week, then throw caution to the wind
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (right) and US President Donald Trump (left). One leader is toast, the other leader will go on for three more years at least and do immense damage in the process.
One leader is toast. If he’s not gone by the time you read this, it won’t be too much longer, barring a political miracle. There’s no easy way back. There’s something really sad about it.
The other leader will go on for three more years at least and do immense damage in the process. There’s no way of stopping it. There’s something deeply tragic about that.
Obviously, we’re talking about two different people here, both men.
One is an honourable and principled public figure, with a distinguished record of public service behind him. Part of that public service has involved bringing criminals and other bad people to account.
He has built part of his reputation around a deep commitment to human rights. Tackling violence against women and girls is one of the missions of his government.
The other is a racist, sordid public figure, with a number of criminal convictions to his name. Part of his public record has involved pardoning dozens of people convicted of violent crime.
He has built a reputation for open financial corruption and bribe-taking. His complete and total lack of any commitment to human rights has resulted in cruelty on the streets and the transparent murder of two of his citizens. His attitude to women ranges from verbal violence to a civil conviction for sex abuse.
One is Keir Starmer. The other is Donald Trump.
For my sins, I wrote a book years ago, a political thriller called . I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the practice of politics often involves a certain kind of cruelty and certainly a high degree of ruthlessness.
But there is a spectacularly cruel irony in the current contrast between Starmer and Trump. A vicious abuser of women and girls could indirectly force the destruction of Keir Starmer while Trump could escape scot-free.
Why is the good man teetering on the brink of political destruction? It’s not just one issue — it never is. In Starmer’s case it’s more because of a lack of political nous and skill.
He was persuaded by people who regarded themselves as much better at politics that the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US (ambassador to Trump) was a fantastic cunning plan. It seems clear that he outsourced that decision — an enormously consequential decision — to his adviser and chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.
I never understood that appointment. Some time ago I wrote here in the Examiner that one brief meeting with Mandelson, years ago, was enough for me. “Smug, smarmy, self-absorbed,” was how I described him.
“I just cannot understand how anyone with decent judgement would appoint that guy to a highly sensitive post in the public eye. It was always a terrible mistake, always going to end in tears, always going to reflect terribly on Starmer’s judgment.“
Of course, in that encounter Mandelson couldn’t be bothered to turn his alleged charm on me. I wasn’t important. But I heard the senior Labour politician Harriet Harmon, who knew him well, expressing the same mystification the other day. She described him, very simply, as a very bad man.
In fact it seems clear now that the real calculation was that Mandelson was exactly the sort that would appeal to Trump. That in itself reveals just how puerile the whole thing was.
Setting out deliberately to find someone who can suck up to Trump might seem clever, but it’s actually utterly demeaning.
And now, because of Mandelson’s disgusting behaviour and personality, Starmer is in the deepest political trouble. His closest adviser McSweeney has resigned, I’m guessing to try and take the heat off his boss (it won’t work).
But in the last year and a bit, Starmer has entirely exhausted his political capital. And for anyone involved in the practice of politics, political capital is a priceless commodity.
It’s the same as having a strong brand in the corporate or commercial world.
In the world of commerce, all the great brands have three things in common. If you don’t believe me, think of a couple of corporate brands we’d all be familiar with. Brands that have stood the test of time.
Kellogg’s Cornflakes. Colgate toothpaste. Kerrygold butter. What have they in common with each other?
First of all we all recognise them. We don’t need to read the ingredients on the packet to know what’s inside. Secondly, we tend to trust them. We know they’re not going to let us down.
Those two qualities produce a third — we instinctively have an emotional relationship with the brands we know and trust. That’s what political capital is — an emotional relationship of trust. When political capital is gone, trust is gone. And vice versa.
Our own Taoiseach Micheál Martin went through a torrid time recently. Everyone knows, and he knows himself, that he made a complete bags of the recent Presidential election. But he took his lumps and he is still standing.
Some political capital exhausted — enough to make him anxious and unwilling to take a risk for a while — but he still has some. We’re not expecting him to resign or be ousted anytime soon.
Instead we’re all be expecting him to go to Washington in March and to emerge from his Trump encounter with self-respect. There’ll be politeness, but no sucking up.
By the time you read this he’ll have come through what I expect to be a bloody and bruising encounter with his own MPs. If he survives that there’s a full week ahead of him of attacks from all sides. By the end of it he may not want to survive.
But if he does he has to do what seems to be the hardest thing for him to do. He has to throw caution to the wind. As a first step, and to dig a line in the sand between him and Mandelson and Trump, he has to elevate his mission about violence against women and girls to a much higher priority.
He has a junior minister in charge of that right now. She’s Jess Phillips and she has the potential to be a great advocate (she already is, but without the power.) He should elevate her to the Cabinet.
There’s a whole lot more he needs to do in terms of political reform, but he has to follow the basic rule — you‘ve got to survive the week if you want to plan the month, envisage the year, and dream about the rest of the term. Right now, the week looks very long.
In the meantime, the orange monstrosity is so far untouched.
He has no political capital left either, but when you own and control not just the executive but also the parliamentary and legal branches of government, and when most of the media are supine in front of you, you don’t need much.
If the Democrats make a hames of the mid-term elections later this year — entirely possible — the man who is mentioned most in the Epstein files will basically be untouched by them.
That’s not just ironic. When you consider the lives destroyed, the hurt and damage inflicted by Epstein and his legion of dupes and enablers, it’s cruel and unjust.
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