Project Save Starmer is launched with a very small bang. The Easter break and Iran crisis mark the moment a small band of outright supporters and much larger group of MPs and ministers who fear that a leadership scrap would annihilate their chances of remaining in power, roll out a new marketing campaign for the battered Keir Starmer prototype.
“We shall not be moved” is the new battle anthem. Its aim is to see off a challenge after the 7 May slew of local elections are set to deliver devastating verdict on nearly two years of Labour Government. The first verse is a roll-out of the oldest defence in the book – that local “midterms” are rarely predictive of general election outcomes over two years down the line.
On these grounds, one can maintain that even if Starmer lost pretty much every Labour council seat (which in some places might well happen), magically, things will be OK in the end. That defies common sense and anyway, the range of these elections across the country – in Scotland, Wales and London – means the message of the electorate should be taken more seriously than blaming vague midterm blues.
The second string to this argument is that anything else would be far worse. This may well be true, but it is the last line of defence for a leader, so rolling it out now looks a tad desperate.
The third element is that a stabilisation of the PM’s favourability ratings, which have edged back over the 20 per cent low watermark, meaning that his “lean back” position on involvement in the Gulf crisis has bought public favour. Up to a point – but not so much as to show that there is traction beyond the Gulf crisis. The impacts on cost of living may well offset any small gains in this regard, and my guess is this is temporary relief. Eventually, the consequences of the conflict will kick in terms of price rises and there will be a more sober assessment of the state of our defences, and the price of fixing them.
However, a careful roll-out of dates and events in the aftermath of the May results is intended to make it all but impossible to challenge Starmer. The King’s Speech has been expedited to be held on 13 May, because is harder to challenge a leader with a legislative programme in hand.
As I revealed this week, the speech will also pledge to deliver the great reset: with the EU via a summit in late June or July, which Starmer can sell to pro-European voters as a sign that he delivered the nearest they could get to rejoining the EU, without the Sisyphean task actually rejoining would involve.
Factor in King Charles’s visit to the US at the end of April, which will put the UK in the transatlantic spotlight, and there is a recipe for gluing Starmer into Downing Street through the summer, allowing him another go at the premiership with a conference-season relaunch.
Interviewing Nick Thomas-Symonds this week, the Europe minister and a close personal ally of the Prime Minister, was a chance to hear the new “Starmerspeak” in action. When asked how he felt about critical commentary, overtly from the former deputy PM Angela Rayner, Thomas-Symonds roundly praised the “serious and calm leadership” of the Iran crisis, adding, “Iran in particular shows how absolutely we have the right Prime Minister for our time”.
It does not take a court interpreter to read the implication that Ange, unquiet queen of Labour drama, would herald instability and make matters worse.
So Starmer is effectively saying that he is the least bad option and that hanging on after the May rout will show that he has grit. To invert that proposition however, if the best you can say of a leader is that they might make it to the end of 2026, it’s not good. And if you believe in a Lazarus-style revival of a leader who still looks uneasy in his role, you would have to believe he is leading Britain out of a growth crisis as well as a number of self-inflicted disasters.
The inability to drive through legislative priorities, from immigration control to welfare reform and the failure to operate a majority in the Commons when the chips are down are the result of a core lack of faith in his leadership.
Anyway, this is not just “any” set of local elections, given the squeeze emerging from Reform UK in the “Red Wall” seats and coastal areas, and advances into more middle-class redoubts. Nigel Farage’s jubilant appearance at the Norfolk showground this week was a reminder that even if his insurgency has had a downward trend from its high last year, he is capable of taking votes from the old Labour fiefdoms of the North East to the rural and coastal belts of Norfolk and Kent.
Starmerism lacks broad-spectrum appeal – for which reason it chases slices of the electorate, like younger voters by promising to lower the voting ages – and then can’t convincingly hang on to them in the face of a “Zack-attack” from the Greens.
The fight-back against Zack Polanski also feels cowed and mimsy. If Starmer really feels the Greens are as crazy as Reform on national security, (and more so in light of the Green leader’s bizarre airiness, undermining Nato at a time of burgeoning Russian and wider threats), then he should be sending out that message con brio. Instead, his fightback resonates with a tone of petulance and defensiveness which alas, are the hallmarks of too much Starmerspeak.
Behind all this, the notion that the country should be “grateful” for the status quo flounders on the stark fact that neither his own unsettled ranks, nor the country at large, truly feel like this…
If the best that can be said is that the PM will “still be in post” after May but there is still deep uncertainty about Starmer fighting the next election, then the issue of whether to hang on or let go just keeps being moved on for another half year or so, to return unanswered. It does not remedy the test that matters most: What is Starmer trying to do or indeed be in the role of “Prime” Minister that means he should keep the job?
So long as that elicits no real answer, all the plans to save him end up back there, with new lines of defence but the man himself still oddly missing in action.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor at POLITICO and co-host of Politics at Sam and Anne’s podcast
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