The king is dead. Long live the king!

The Guardian today, June 21 2026

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If Mandelson is the Prince of Darkness (one of ’em at any rate) Keir Starmer has to be the Mogul of Mediocrity. God knows, we’ve had no shortage of liars at Number 10 but the plot to oust the most popular Labour Leader since 1945 and install this man in his place, though conceived and implemented by minds a good deal sharper than his, required Starmer to pose as a man of the Left. On this basis, aided by media undermining of Jeremy Corbyn in the vilest possible ways, he took over. And then? As figurehead to a victory by default – by 2024 a one-eyed donkey would have trounced the Tories – in an election whose turnout hit an all time low (such was Britain’s enthusiasm for the politics of Tweedledum and Tweedledee) he proceeded to renege on every last one of his electoral pledges.

I could go on, really I could. For instance by pointing out that on his watch as Director, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service urged Sweden not to “get cold feet” over rape allegations falsely reported as charges against Julian Assange. ¹ Absurdly, Starmer would deny involvement in a case of such international significance that even the marginally less odious Boris – at least we sensed an actual person behind that  smug Bullingdon countenance – would as prime minister to Starmer’s Leader of HM Loyal Opposition deride so far fetched a denial. And rightly so.

I won’t though. It’d be pushing at an open door when so few will lament that the game is up for the useful idiot who came to the premiership with no ideas, likely seeing the job as a stepping stone, pace  the more adept Tony Blair, to better paying gigs. My favourite judgments on this man? One is plausibly attributed to the Morgan McSweeney cabal which, in line with a long tradition on the Labour Right of preferring Conservative victory over that of the Labour Left, ² and untroubled by plummeting party membership as a consequence, oversaw their stooge’s ousting of ‘Jezza’.

There is a strange passivity to Starmer’s leadership – there is a reason why Labour strategists compared him to the driver of the driverless Docklands Light Railway train.

Observer, 22/4/26: Keir Starmer is running out of people to throw under the bus

Here’s another:

And while some might consider a third, Nessun Starmer, a tad juvenile in its parody of Puccini’s famous aria, I enjoyed it immensely.

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But let me turn to the man set to become Britain’s new prime minister, possibly as early as next week. On which subject I’ll keep things brief and bulleted:

• The huge margin with which Burnham threw Nigel Farage’s right wing Reform Party into second place in the Makerfield by-election has sealed Starmer’s fate, yes. ³ But it bucks the national trend. Any other Labour candidate, lacking Burnham’s photogenic appeal and the kudos of a Manchester mayoralty where he’s seen as having Done A Good Job, would likely have lost to Reform. If Makerfield was an anomaly, it matters. Burnham’s ace card, post Makerfield, is the implicit claim that only under his leadership can his party see off Reform nationally.
• Nothing about Andy Burnham’s ministerial record under Gordon Brown, or in the shadow cabinets of Jeremy Corbyn, Ed Miliband and (acting) Harriet Harman, suggests he offers meaningful change. With close historic ties to Labour Friends of Israel, he won’t rock the boat on UK complicity in the colonial settler state’s genocide in Palestine, nor slaughter in Lebanon and creeping occupation of Syria. And on the economic front? We have every reason – see this assessment by Richard Murphy – to conclude that his denunciations of neoliberalism lack depth and substance, even if we’re charitable enough to set aside the distinct possibility of their being performative; of a piece with Sir Keir’s Left posturing in his own leadership bid.
• But the state we’re in goes way beyond the pros and cons of any individual politician. No mainstream party in the UK or Europe at large shows the slightest sign of acknowledging, as prelude to serious conversation, the extent of the plight we’re in thanks to the West’s shift, green lit by Thatcher-Reagan and driven by rentier elites, from industry to finance. The myopic greed driving that shift – offshoring wealth creation to the global south, with supply chains extended across continents as underemployment soars and corporate oligarchies enriched by neo-feudal rents capture government – has been revealed and exacerbated by the war on Russia in Ukraine, but its antecedents go back much further.

And no one, Mr Burnham included, is talking about it. The king is dead. Long live the king!

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1. The purpose of the rape allegations was, as Julian well knew, to hold him – Sweden being even more Washington compliant, if such a thing were possible, than the UK – while the US prepared his extradition, kidnap or assassination. The man’s real offence – shown by the fact few remember a rape fabrication once trumpeted by every wing of corporate media but shot through with holes, anomalies and a now all too familiar flouting of the hallowed principle of separating executive and judiciary powers – being that he exposed, as no journalist before him had, the extent of the war crimes committed by the US and its vassals allies.
2. Not that the Labour Left is blameless. I don’t doubt the subjective sincerity of many of its adherents but, objectively speaking, it’s hard for those who look beneath the bonnet to avoid the conclusion that, objectively speaking, their task has always been to sanitise the brand after each Labour Government betrayal.
3. Here, for the benefit of non Brits, is the situation in a nutshell. Labour MPs knew Starmer was a liability, hence among other things a threat to their jobs, but no challenger within their ranks – the front runner a Wes Streeting tainted by unconcealed neoliberalism and, as Health Secretary, by ties to US firms eager to profit from creeping NHS privatisation – could muster the necessary support. Had Burnham remained a member of parliament he would have had the numbers, but he’d given up his seat to be Mayor of Manchester. The paralysis ended when the Labour Member for Makerfield resigned – his motives subject to much speculation – to force the by-election which three days ago cleared the path to a leadership bid Starmer shows little appetite to contest.