LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer won his job after leading his party to a massive victory in 2024. Less than two years later, he resigned as his party rebelled in the wake of widespread losses in local elections.
Starmer’s popularity plunged amid a struggling economy, a series of policy missteps, one particularly poor appointment and a perceived lack of vision.
The combination of challenges led to a thrashing for his Labour Party in local elections this spring and calls to step down that cleared a path for a would-be challenger to step forward and ultimately force him aside Monday.
This is a look at how his short-lived premiership unraveled.
I mean he did implement a lot of stuff that wasn’t in their manifest, like scrapping jury trials, digital ID, social media bans and now client side scanning on every phone
Don’t forget sending you to jail for saying it’s wrong to kill Palestinians.
a perceived lack of vision
Hard to have a vision if you are not willing to have an opinion on anything until it’s been confirmed by two separate polls to be the public’s preference by at least 60%.
I jest. But while Starmer-style incrementalism might work under certain steady-state circumstances, it can’t really do much if the problem was caused by a single, monumental mistake.
The British public is sorely confused: two thirds say Brexit was a mistake, but the polls favor Reform UK, the party that single-brain-cell-ly pushed for Brexit in the first place.
Britain needs someone that drags it into a solution. That’s got to be someone other than those that have the wrong solution (Reform) or no solution (Starmer).
The main motivation for Brexit was racism and xenophobia (hidden behind an embarrassingly thin veil of brain dead financial promises). Now that the british people see that Brexit negatively impacts their own financial situation they want to have their cake and eat it too. Back to EU benefits, while continuing the racist policies.
No, the racists & xenophobes still don’t want to even work with the EU. They now want to quit the Treaty of London & the Council of Europe so they can leave the ECHR and torture some foreigners without the courts mentioning human rights and stopping them. Possibly pesky protestors too.
What’s changed is the people who thought the financial arguments could be true, or believed Leave campaigners saying “nobody is talking about leaving the customs union”, now know for sure that was all rubbish and only the hedge funds and similar gamblers won, while ordinary people get to pay more customs duty on things bought from abroad and stand in longer passport queues. And they can see “Five-million Farage” is now trying to stuff them again with cryptocurrencies.
I’d love for you to be right. I just see this whole thing more cynical. To me the economic arguments were always just a fig leaf so that people who weren’t open racists could hide their shameful views on migration behind it. I’m not talking about the people in Belfast trying to light houses of migrants on fire. Those assholes are out in the open racists. I’m talking about your uncle or colleague who openly has “respectable” conservative views and mostly seems alright but when he’s with his buddy’s having a pint is showing his less palatable ideas.
There is another way of looking at this. People really believed those economic arguments and voted for that. If that’s true they are dumber than a sack of rocks. Idk what is better.
Most people don’t understand economics or international trade, so weren’t equipped to spot the lies. They’re not especially dumb. They’d just had about 40 years of trade barriers being removed and things getting ever easier, without much idea how it was elsewhere. Some Leave campaigners realised this and exploited it, aided by some journalists who prefer to have years of juicy bad news than a functioning country. Of course, some Remain campaigners tried to explain it, but Leave just flat denied it, lied and sometimes shot the messenger (“people have had enough of experts”).
But eventually, reality gets more and more difficult to deny.
The British public is sorely confused: two thirds say Brexit was a mistake, but the polls favor Reform UK, the party that single-brain-cell-ly pushed for Brexit in the first place.
The polls only show about a third for RUK, which is roughly consistent with two-thirds believing Brexit was a mistake.
But the big problem is the UK uses an old-fashioned non-proportional voting system where a third can give a party a landslide, like Starmer’s landslide getting 63% of MPs from 33% of votes. That combines with the confrontational face-off style of the Parliament to push UK Prime Ministers to be dividers, not uniters, to keep that crucial 30-40% core power base cheering for them. It feels like it’s been a decade since any even tried much to unite people.
until it’s been confirmed by two separate polls to be the public’s preference by at least 60%.
it’s not even that. are you not aware of the amount of unpopular shit he has pushed? heard of online safety act? and the u-turns?
had he actually done what you suggested he would still be in office.
It’s also hard to have a vision when 99% of your work is damage control.
Starmer changed the course for UK in a direction where there is way more hope of rebuilding what was lost under the Conservatives, and it seems to me he gets zero credit for that.
Not one mention about criminalizing protests against Israel and the genocide in Gaza in that article.
The British are burning their Prime Ministers at an alarming rate. At some point you have to wonder if it’s a character issue or a systemic problem.
Yeah, if I were him I would have quit, too.
His constituents are progressives but his platform is socially conservative, e.g. he doesn’t seem to support bodily autonomy or believe in fluid gender identity.
UK is probably better off without him.
I’d argue the cold war with russia or the furter transformation of the uk into a complete surveillance state are more important issues than fluid gender identity, but then again he only really did good on the russian issue ( and maybe tried a bit to repatch things with the EU ). I very much doubt the next one will be a progressive as I fear the best the uk can hope for these days is a mild conservative.
I personally see the issues of privacy and bodily autonomy as being hand in hand, pretty much everyone I’ve ever met that was strictly pro-privacy in practice also supportive of trans rights and pro choice.
For example, over in the USA tons of conservatives were terrified and mortified at Obama’s NSA spying on them…
But then they voted for the fucking Peter Theil (Palantir - FlockCams and millitant AI) Candidate: Donald Trump.
Yeah, he was an expectable disappointment…so that’s fine.
There is a lettuce joke somewhere in here.
