Enda Brady: Where did it all go wrong for Keir Starmer as Britain's prime minister?

Keir Starmer, the man with no message, will now leave No 10 Downing Street and presumably be replaced quickly by Andy Burnham, writes Enda Brady

Keir Starmer announces his resignation at Downing Street. Picture: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

Britain is now looking for its seventh prime minister in the space of 10 years and the only person who seems in any way surprised about this is Keir Starmer.

Just weeks ago, he was telling reporters that he’d be in power for a decade. I’m actually shocked that he lasted as long as he did.

People will look back and ask how and where it went so badly wrong for him. Labour supporters will tell you that he inherited a shambles and will do their best to blame anyone but themselves.

The truth is it started going wrong on day one for Starmer. Having cruised to victory over a despised Conservative government, he torched all that goodwill in a matter of days by telling the country that things would get worse before they would get better.

Families were crying out for some hope and positivity. What they got was a leader who couldn’t lead, a man who not only didn’t have a plan — he didn’t even have a message.

Sometimes in politics, as in life, honesty is not always the best option.

Starmer should have stood up on day one and told people that a brighter future is coming, soon. That he would move mountains for everyone, and not just those who voted for Labour. That he would reduce illegal immigration, get Britain working, get Britain moving for YOU and yours.

Never mind fixing the NHS. Maybe start with fixing the potholes. That would have been an easy win, and a highly visible way of showing the country that a new sheriff was in town and life was about to get better.

But the more he spoke, the more obvious it became that there was no message. There was nothing.

It didn’t help too that the British coffers are empty. There’s no money for anything anymore. The UK’s best days are behind it, in the rearview mirror, but you just can’t drive along as prime minister and tell your passengers this.

Imagine waiting 14 years to get into Downing Street and not even having an idea about what you want to do when you get there. That was a shameful mistake and Starmer can take full ownership of it. It has cost him his job and his time in No 10.

Modern politics is all about good communication. Smart comms, snappy soundbites and messages that land with the public. Like him or loathe him, Nigel Farage is a master of this compared to Starmer.

Stop someone on the street and they won’t be able to tell you a single thing Starmer has achieved in his almost two years in office. And there has actually been plenty to trumpet, the reduction of NHS waiting times chief among them.

But what they will tell you is that immigration is “out of control”, “Starmer needs to go” and “another election is needed”. Whose messaging is this? Why, Farage’s, of course.

There was a comms problem at the heart of Starmer’s government from the outset. Sacking people and blaming others didn’t help solve it. A mostly right-wing and conservative media also didn’t help his cause. They wanted him to fail. (Note how he was always ‘Starmer’ whereas for every Tory leader it was ‘Boris’ or ‘Rishi’ or ‘Liz’).

Starmer is a lawyer by profession, so there you have the second issue with this prime minister — he was not a politician and truly not a political beast at heart. He just didn’t get it, a lot of the time. People were crying out for someone with the political nous to make the right decision and to do so quickly. Often he’d take far too long, make a decision and end up changing his mind a few days later.

To reach the highest office in the land — and stay there — you need to be decisive. How many U-turns did Starmer make in less than two years? I lost count after the first dozen.

Commentators will always bring up the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to Donald Trump’s America as one damaging example of his poor judgement. And it was. But that didn’t cost him popularity with the public, it was a ‘Westminster bubble’ story of more interest to the media than the man and woman on the street.

A composite of the last six British prime ministers delivering their resignation speeches outside No 10 Downing Street. Top row, left to right: David Cameron, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson. Bottom row, left to right: Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer. Picture: PA

Starmer will probably feel angry that the mood inside his own government turned on him so quickly. Politicians are selfish creatures when it comes down to it and the polling for Labour currently is disastrous. Clearly his own MPs were doing the sums and realised that he was leading them to nowhere other than a defeat.

Right now, Labour stands at 19% nationwide and that is not going to get them a second term in power. Andy Burnham won that by-election last week with a whopping 55% of the vote and barely mentioned the word ‘Labour’ once in his campaign messaging.

If Burnham is to be the next prime minister he will need to quickly deliver some wins for the British public, because they are now desperate for hope, progress and a better standard of living.

People want to feel that they are working hard and seeing rewards for it. Migration needs to come down, illegal immigration needs to be tackled and youth unemployment must be addressed before it becomes a full blown crisis. (There are currently one million young people doing absolutely nothing). 

Londoners need to feel safer. Britain has so many problems it’s hard to know where to start.

These are all issues that Starmer should have had on his ‘to-do’ list on day one. The more I think about it, his list must have just been a blank sheet of paper. The lack of a message is such a basic mistake it’s actually shocking. Remember they had 14 years to plan for being in government and wasted them.

So the man with no message will now leave No 10 Downing Street and presumably be replaced quickly by Burnham. Britain will then have its seventh prime minister in just 10 years. It looks like the days of leaders like Blair and Thatcher serving a decade are history — nowadays if you survive two years it’s an achievement.

Burnham has no time to lose. He needs to get in and get on with it and make the public feel that the Starmer years were a blip for Labour, and that the feeling of hopeless drifting is gone.

If he can’t do that the belief that the UK has now become an ungovernable country - living beyond its means, dining out on past glories and bloated on benefits - will really start to take root.

• Enda Brady is a journalist and broadcaster based in London.