He never actually appears in Macbeth, but the former Thane of Cawdor was, even by the standards of Shakespearean wrong ‘uns, a nasty piece of work. But even he, somehow managed to quit the metaphorical stage in a way that attracted the admiration of his enemies. “Nothing in his life,” Prince Malcolm explained to his dad King Duncan, against whom Cawdor had committed treason, “became him like the leaving of it”.
The same, alas, cannot be said of Sir Keir Starmer’s departure from political life, announced in an interview with the Camden New Journal and coinciding almost exactly with his successor Andy Burnham’s inaugural speech to the Commons as Prime Minister. Remarkably for a politician who often seemed leaden-footed, the move saw Starmer not only take the whole of Westminster by surprise, but also wrest control of the news agenda away from the more media-savvy Burnham for the very first time.
So why did it all feel so unseemly and at odds with the carefully cultivated image of Starmer as an ineffably honourable man, nobly unconcerned with the manoeuvring and infighting that obsess so many of his peers?
The answer, I suspect, explains not only the events of Tuesday afternoon but also the wider failure of his premiership. It also provides a helpful explanation of how Burnham has so far managed to succeed where Starmer failed and engender precisely the sense of optimism among the electorate that he prioritised in his Prime Ministerial debut.
Consider the two plausible explanations for the content and timing of Starmer’s resignation announcement. Either he cynically sought to stick a spanner in the works of his successor’s special moment, which would constitute a textbook example of a politician putting petty self-interest above both party and country. Alternatively, ever the stickler for rules and regulations, he simply wanted to get the process of quitting Parliament under way as quickly as possible, and either overlooked or underestimated the effect that the timing would have.
Given that it is barely six weeks since he publicly vowed to stay in Parliament until the next general election, the first theory enforces the idea that Starmer was a weathervane politician, deeply committed to no particular position, and either peculiarly susceptible to changes in the political wind or incapable of working out which way it was blowing.
The second, probably less likely but nonetheless still feasible, paints him as a politician so out of touch with the basic tenets of media and political reality that he somehow contrived to step on a rake and fall down a well at the same time.
It doesn’t really matter which explanation you favour, the point here is that Starmer either quickly became or always was a politician with the opposite of a Midas touch. Even in quitting Parliament for perfectly good and probably admirable reasons, he managed to simultaneously expose himself to valid accusations of treachery, undertaking yet another U-turn or being woefully incompetent at “reading the room”.
And it doesn’t matter whether any or all of these accusations are fair. They landed and they stuck. They reminded us that from the cack-handed treatment of the winter fuel allowance, to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington, Starmer was a PM who seemed to have no understanding of how his various actions would be received. He seemed like that, we must surely now concede, because he is like that.
Burnham’s first six weeks in power, by contrast, have seen him display pretty much the opposite skillset. It may not last, of course, but from bus fares to the blocked early release of PC Andrew Harper’s killers, he has heard and heeded voters’ views and concerns. More importantly, he seems to have an acute grasp of how things will land with them. It is too early to say whether he seems like that because he is like that and the true test will come when he is charged with delivering things that we don’t like. We should all hope that he passes that test.
Because it has become fashionable in recent years to speculate that the UK has become somehow “ungovernable”. Certainly, the racism and blatant falsehoods that were so irresponsibly injected into public discourse to get Brexit over the line have proved harder to excise than many of those responsible either intended or expected.
The inevitable results of their temporary triumph over decency and truth are still on daily display in the US. Social media has amplified unpleasantness, wrongness and willful ignorance to such a high volume that it sometimes seems as if they currently attract more attention and support than simple facts or observable evidence ever can.
But the path back to normality need not be too arduous. It simply demands a PM who recognises the fundamental wrongness of a few things. Of Brexit, of race riots, of the cost of living, of Israel’s continuing atrocities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, of climate change denial and of Donald Trump. These will be some of the measures by which Burnham is properly judged and by which Starmer, by dint of trying to appease or accommodate the wrongness, clearly failed.
On the plus side, I suppose, he has at least resisted any urge to emulate another character from the Scottish play. By leaving Parliament altogether, Starmer has surely removed any possibility of following Ted Heath’s petulant lead by playing Banquo’s ghost at Burnham’s Prime Ministerial feast.
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