Towards the start of the Labour government’s tenure, this blog made the case that all non-populists should wish Starmer well, regardless of whether they voted Labour. If he was a successful Prime Minister, it would be good for the country generally and, in particular, head off the lure of Reform UK and populists generally.

Hopes were high. The antithesis of a dishonest populist, Starmer had previously held a big government job and would bring competence, process and transparency to his role undiluted by ego.

Solid but just not political enough…

Those hopes seem a long time ago. Taking, albeit minor, gifts, trying to place his former communications head as an ambassador, endless personnel changes handled charmlessly are bad enough, but the Mandelson hire is a real mess. The incompetence, lack of political nous in approaching him and the subsequent fallout is breathtaking. Why the hell was he given the job before being fully vetted? The media continues to feed off revelation after revelation, hysterically pushing Starmer to the brink. However, this blog has always argued the Mandelson saga and all the other missteps are not enough on their own to justify Starmer’s resignation as none of his colleagues would be any better at the job of PM. What a position to be in; the worst of all worlds and a terrible indictment of the quality of today’s politicians.

But…

It is Starmer’s overall inability to do the job of PM which may do for him in the end. Unprepared for government, incredibly he feels any specific political agenda is an unnecessary distraction from his job as, well, the political leader of his country. Need we say more…

Benefits reform has stalled, an anti-growth agenda introduced despite the rhetoric to support business, solutions to the social care crisis kicked into the long grass, house building becalmed, the defence review frozen. The list goes on. U-turns are commonplace as Starmer loses his nerve on policy after policy and the parliamentary majority, now skin deep, remains unused.

Starmer is simply not political enough and has squandered his election victory. The government has no direction, no agenda and has been rudderless since the start. That is his real failure, not Mandelson. He is the Labour equivalent of Rishi Sunak. Decent, basically competent but out of his depth when it comes to the art of politics.

The relatively competent conduct of foreign affairs in an almost impossible environment no longer seems enough. Domestic governance is so poor that Labour’s trajectory is to be wiped out in May’s local elections with the chances of turning things around before the General Election, not due for another three years, looking more difficult by the day.

So, what choice do we have? Labour’s lack of reality that blow hard, lightweight Andy Burnham or Angela ‘tell it as it is’ except on tax Rayner or failed infuriating former leader, Ed Miliband, is its and our saviour is for the birds. Today’s Tories and LibDems also offer very little. No wonder the electorate turns to extremes in frustration as will be shown by next week’s local elections (more on that after the results without the media’s hysteria about the wipeout of Labour…).

Against this backdrop, it still seems we should stick with Nurse Starmer for fear of something worse. But it feels like an increasingly big ask…

The Gorton and Denton by-election result handing a convincing victory to the Greens with Reform UK coming second will be a joy to many on the far-left and far-right. It creates despair amongst moderates.

A bad night for the political centre ground…

Let’s start with Labour’s defeat. The Party got what it deserved. The soap opera over whether Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, should stand and the potential threat to Starmer’s leadership just exasperates voters. Trying to knife the leader of an underperforming government gives the impression of chaos and division. It hardly reassures that the nation’s future is in safe hands.

But Labour‘s real problem is the same one all mainstream parties have. Over promising and under delivering. Add to that, Labour has the additional issue of a huge parliamentary majority on just 34% of the vote. Promising better public services but no core tax rises, delaying tough decisions through policy reviews or U-turns, equivocating on the Middle East which is a sensitive issue in many Labour areas including this one is not a recipe for victory. Nothing seems to change.

The Greens and Reform UK are the beneficiaries of voter disillusionment, certainly not the Tories who with just 600 votes lost their deposit. Tax the rich, legalise drugs, take a firm stance on Israel all played well for the Greens in this constituency. ‘Green’ issues themselves actually played a small role in their campaign. Zack Polanski, the Green’s leader, for all his charisma, is starting to sound and behave like a traditional politician.

As for Reform. An unpleasant candidate, an unpleasant party, did well but not well enough. Immigration is not a catch all issue it seems. Farage whinges about sectarianism and cheating. Who can be more sectarian than his party? It confirms the view that with tactical voting focusing on anybody but Farage, Reform will not form the next government. The belief it has peaked has just gained further validity.

Voters want instant solutions not triangulation and delay. Too many lives are either not touched or disadvantaged by mainstream political parties and patience is running out. Government is more complicated than the solutions offered by political extremes but when Labour and the Tories have such a tin ear to the needs of the electorate, who can blame voters for reaching out for something different.

Starmer will cling on probably beyond May despite the media’s hysteria. But the odds of him surviving are getting longer. The Tory leader Badenoch will stick to her strategy of aping Reform without sufficient focus on the economy. Why? She doesn’t have the patience for the hard slog of slow but steady progress over 10 years. The LibDems are nowhere.

Populism, it seems, is in safe hands even if by default…

You just despair. All we wanted from Starmer was solid technocratic competence with a bit of integrity thrown in. We have tried charisma. It doesn’t work.

And crucially, if Starmer’s government was delivering it would have put a lid on the populism of Farage and Reform UK. The mistaken appointment of Mandelson would have been a sideshow.

So here we are with Starmer in crisis. Endless U-turns as Reeves gets the economy wrong, reforms to planning regulations, benefits, social care stalled. The government is going to miss many of its policy targets. The Epstein/Mandelson fiasco, which hardly fills you with confidence in vetting procedures, just adds to the narrative. But then hindsight is a great thing…

There is no alternative. Labour MPs should let Starmer get on with the job…

However, it is the response of fellow Labour MPs which is most depressing. Rayner, Streeting and Burnham on manoeuvres, none of which would improve the fortunes of this government. Spineless backbenchers running away from necessary reforms now plunging the knife into Starmer often as an act of leftwing revenge.

McSweeney, Starmer’s now former Chief of Staff, who advised on Mandelson’s appointment, is the scapegoat but that may not be enough. Labour currently has a death wish and seems unfit to govern as MPs put personal ambition and score settling ahead of stable government.

They should rally round Starmer and stop feeding the excitable agenda of the media. Yes, he has made many mistakes but can learn from them. He is good on overseas stuff. His main fault is that like Rishi Sunak, he is just not political enough. There are worse crimes.

The public wants steady government, not psycho dramas. They reach for Reform UK only in desperation.

If Labour MPs keeping feeding the narrative that Starmer is on his last legs, the Party should not be in office and deserves everything electorally that will come its way. But do the public deserve the ensuing chaos?

Kemi Badenoch just isn’t good enough. She will keep her job as there is currently no one else to take her place with the demise of Jenrick but that is hardly a ringing endorsement.

To be fair, Badenoch’s performance at PM’s Question Time has improved but you could hardly have an easier target than Starmer’s government. As the fallout from the Mandelson/Epstein saga gains momentum, life will only get easier, temporarily, for the Leader of the Opposition.

But ‘temporarily’ is the key word. Badenoch is arrogant and doesn’t listen. She believes keeping the Tories close to the hard right is the way forward, fighting culture wars to fend off Reform UK whilst making what should be a relentless focus on economic competence a sideshow. One feels for the impressive Shadow Chancellor, Mel Stride.

So over to the launch of Prosper UK last week. Led by Sir Andy Street, a former Birmingham Tory Mayor and successful business leader of John Lewis, and Baroness Davidson, the former Scottish Tory leader, the best national leader the Tories never had, it offers a home to moderate Tories with a relentless focus on the economy. It aims to help Badenoch, not replace her.

I was at its launch. There were at least 250 supporters there. Whilst many familiar faces dated from pre-Brexit times, I was struck by new and younger faces. Street and Davidson outlined their appeal to seven million homeless Tory moderates. Economic competence, a focus on aspiration generally and business in particular, closer alignment with Europe, if nothing else to protect our security and defence, all made blindingly common sense.

Badenoch’s response? She dismissed the initiative, believing she is on a roll as the Tories hit a dizzying 20 per cent in the polls. There is no room for moderate centrists in her view while she obsesses about Reform’s agenda.

Former Tories will continue to drift to Reform UK or the underperforming Libdems as Badenoch flunks an easy lesson in how to land a ball in the back of the net.

A Trump free blog this week. No point dignifying his grotesque comments on NATO soldiers by repeating them or indeed reflecting on his half apology. If only the media would drop their minute by minute obsession with him too. Constantly repeating, analysing and damning Trump’s lies, exaggerations and U-turns is playing to his agenda. Just ignore him whenever possible although more difficult if you live in Minneapolis… We are all sick of the sight and sound of him.

So over to the hapless Labour government in the UK instead… It is in a hole but just keeps digging.

Labour politicians should park their personal ambitions until they have achieved something…

Starmer is a pretty useless PM. I thought he would be better than this. An uncharismatic technocrat who would get things done combined with a bit of integrity. Is that too much to ask? To his credit, he has had some success in overseas relations but it makes very little difference to his opinion poll ratings at home. He seems to have no domestic strategy. U-turn after U-turn just confirms the problem. It doesn’t help that he has few heavyweight colleagues. Lammy, Cooper, Reeves are either blowhards, out of their depth or both. The jury is out on Wes Streeting. The Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, and John Healey at Defence seem good but they can hardly carry the government on their own. Collectively, ministers show no bravery in getting things done.

Despite all this, Starmer should be given more time. He must surely learn from some of his more obvious mistakes and now is not the time to change leader as the UK faces crises on all fronts. And let’s be clear. Andy Burnham is no solution. Vastly overrated, a self-indulgent lightweight, now blocked from standing in a by-election, he should finish his mayoral term and save us all the drama. The media are busy whipping up as much hysteria as possible about Burnham to cause Starmer trouble but shouldn’t be allowed to succeed. As for Wes Streeting. The best thing he could do is put his ego in a box and get on with turning around the NHS. That would be a legacy anybody would be proud of and far more important than being a mere PM.

Internal manoeuvrings in the Labour Party make voters despair. The government needs to focus on turning the country round, a job it has hardly started, not become a playground for self-indulgent personal ambition. No wonder people toy with Reform who, of course, would be no better.

Which takes me to the rare bright spot in British politics. The demise of Robert Jenrick. A vile little opportunist who his former colleagues and quite a few voters saw straight through. Reform are welcome to him, as they become a graveyard for mad, bad and dangerous second rate Tories. It allows Kemi Badenoch to focus on where she should have started, the economy stupid.

It may make the Tories more attractive again. They are climbing very slowly in the opinion polls. And if nothing else, that should focus the minds of Labour politicians on where they are needed, the national interest…

Reasonable, reasonable, reasonable. That is the only way to describe Labour’s conference. My, the government has had a grim start and needs to deliver, but it is the only game in town.

Two speeches stood out for me. Wes Streeting, a gifted orator, seems to be making waves in the NHS. In a good way. His embrace of technology, cutting bureaucracy, and forcing GP surgeries to be more flexible is convincing. The NHS has had a ton of money thrown at it, so Streeting better deliver, but it feels a reasonable start.

Then, Starmer’s speech. He had a spring in his step, possibly because his stalker, Andy Burnham, blew up at the conference. An interview telling voters he would not be dictated to by bond markets just emphasised his trouble making naivety. He is a lightweight, and it showed.

Starmer had a good week… finally…

Starmer was finally passionate about the country he leads, ripped into Farage, and Reform with legitimate force and comprehensively outlined what his government was seeking to achieve. He was moderate but passionate. Above all, reasonable, a rare trait in democratic politics currently.

The reason I have never voted Labour is its management of the economy. The state always gets bigger when a Labour government is in power, public expenditure runs out of control, and aspiration never seems to be a priority. But even this government knows we can not continue in this direction. It needs business, it needs to free up the economy, it needs to get people off benefits and back into work. Delivery is key, the next budget crucial and backbenchers surely now realise they have to fall into line when tough decisions are required.

Farage and Reform are vile. You can understand the frustrations that has put this merry band ahead in the polls, but they would tear the country apart. The LibDems remain irrelevant, and the Tories are only just beginning to understand their route back to power is the economy, stupid.

If your politics are mainstream, Starmer’s government is the only game in town for now. Labour reassured this week.

It’s the media at its worst, and it’s Starmer at his worst.

All the right-wing media and quite a selection of other media too are circling the government with a little help from Starmer’s enemies in the wider Labour Party. Stop it. If not Starmer, then it will be Farage, not Badenoch (the Tories are currently dead in the water until they find a new long-term leader with real ability), Davey, or anybody else. If that’s not what you want, Starmer is pretty much the current best hope of preventing populism from succeeding in this country. For those who think Farage won’t be a problem, be very careful what you wish for. A Reform government in any shape or form would be a disaster and a betrayal of all the moderate values this country is known for and has worked so hard to defend. That is what we should be proud of, not the damn flag and the 110,000 out and proud Tommy Robinson racists who despoiled the streets of London at the weekend.

Give him a break, he has Donald Trump in the UK to contend with…

Starmer has got things wrong and has seemed hopelessly flat-footed, but he is hardly responsible for Rayner’s tax affairs. He certainly got Mandelson’s appointment wrong, but it is not impossible to see why you might want Britain’s best trade negotiator in Washington and that bit of the equation probably paid off.

As far as who might replace Starmer, the much mooted Andy Burnham is a blow hard who’s alleged successes as mayor of Manchester were brought down to earth in the Sunday Times at the weekend. Why on earth would a so-called ‘soft left’ politician solve our current problems? I met a Labour peer relatively recently who was my opponent in Manchester Withington when I stood for parliament many years ago. He damned Burnham with very faint praise, saying he was only as good as the people around him. Umm…

Let alone the Trump visit this week, the budget in November must be relatively error free, and Starmer also needs to acquire some emotional intelligence in dealing with his colleagues. That would go a long way to easing some current resentments. But make no mistake about it. Labour colleagues and even many in opposition parties should wish him well because the current alternative according to opinion polls is not a refreshed Labour government under a new leader but something very unpleasant indeed. It would make divisions over Brexit seem like Halcyon days…