Keir Starmer is the most clueless Prime Minister in living memory — he will probably be out by May
UNDER FIRE: Starmer, Mandelson , left and Morgan Sweeney
Keir Starmer’s apology to the victims of Jeffrey Epstein was so needy, so desperate, that it might be better described as a cry for help.
Or perhaps a condemned man’s plea for mercy.
Either way, it was answered: a fall guy took the bullet meant for his boss and the guilty man was spared. For now.
Keir Starmer is no more fit for high office than Labour’s recurring nemesis Peter Mandelson. Mandy is a smarmy, slippery, venal, mendacious creep. But talented with it.
Starmer likes to portray himself as a man of integrity (don’t mention the free suits Lord Alli gave him). But he has zero political acumen and he is as hollow as a tree trunk colonised by ants.
Listening to Times Radio last week, I heard an anecdote that gave us a razor sharp insight into Starmer. It came from a Times woman columnist (perhaps Alice Thomson) and she had been speaking to Labour MPs who have visited Downing Street.
She said they told her that when they took an idea/grievance/demand to Government’s inner sanctum, they were met by… Morgan McSweeney, until Sunday Starmer’s chief of staff – and the sacrificial lamb in the Mandelson scandal.
He would take the MPs in to see the Prime Minister. But McSweeney, 48, would then chair the meeting, with Starmer sitting off to the side, listening but contributing little.
That’s Starmer, right there: a man who delegates even business meetings with his own MPs to subordinates. He doesn’t lead those meetings because he has nothing to say… no opinions, no beliefs, that spring from a properly formed political philosophy or ideology.
The best Labour credential he could muster was: “I’m the son of a toolmaker.”
He is the black hole of politics, light years away from the real world and swallowing the lies of chancers such as Mandelson, who passed sensitive financial information to the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein but misled Starmer about their relationship to secure the job of His Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States.
Starmer spoke of “the depth and darkness of that relationship” but insisted that he had been taken in by Mandelson’s dissembling. In fact, Mandelson was recommended for the appointment by Irish-born McSweeney and that’s why McSweeney fell on his sword.
This was followed on Monday by the resignation of Tim Allan, 55, Starmer’s head of communications, who was only in the job for four months. He stepped down “to allow a new No.10 team to be built”. Allan had previously held the same role for Tony Blair.
And Starmer’s chief of staff before McSweeney was Sue Gray, now Baroness Gray, who was eased out of the job in October 2024 when things were already beginning to go wrong for the new Prime Minister.
Starmer came late to politics and clearly doesn’t get it. He was elected MP for Holborn and St Pancras in 2015 and became leader of the Labour Party in 2020.
But the law was his happy place. He got into Leeds University on the strength of A level grades of B, B and C in maths, music and physics and left with a first-class honours degree in law in 1985. After that he gained a Bachelor of Civil Law degree from St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
He was called to the Bar in 1987 and worked mostly as a criminal defence lawyer, specialising in human rights. Later he became Director of Public Prosecutions. Throughout his legal career, he gained a reputation for hard work and thoroughness, always in command of his brief.
As a politician, he has hidden behind the law, citing statutes and treaties as a reason why Britain could not take effective action. International law has hobbled our attempts to bear down on illegal immigration.
Returning the Chagos Islands to Mauritius was thought necessary because two international courts, the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the International Court of Justice, ruled that we held them illegally.
That is just an opinion, of course, but more than enough for Starmer and his like-minded Attorney General Lord Hermer to cry “Colonialism” and prepare to hand them over. We don’t even get back the three million quid we paid for them.
Indeed, the Conservatives claim the deal to give away the islands to Mauritius and lease back the military base on Diego Garcia is set to cost us £35 billion.
When you’re the PM, there is no hiding place, as Starmer will soon discover. His Cabinet and many MPs have rallied behind him, perhaps reluctantly. But in truth, none of the contenders to oust him has yet got their ducks in a row.
It now looks unlikely he will go this week and the week after is recess. But there’s a by-election coming and it won’t end well.
That might finish him. If not, the May local elections almost certainly will.
It will be good riddance to the most clueless Prime Minister in living memory.
*****
A new book about Rupert Murdoch contains a revealing nugget. The divorce agreement with his fourth wife Jerry Hall had a clause that barred her from offering story lines to the writers of the hit TV show Succession.
As you probably know, the show is about a media mogul, Logan Roy, who encourages his children to wrestle ruthlessly to be his chosen heir. It’s said to be based on the real-life Murdoch clan.
The book, Bonfire of the Murdochs, by Gabriel Sherman (Simon and Schuster, 265 pp, £25) is reviewed in the latest edition of the New Statesman by its associate political editor Rachel Cunliffe.
The rivalry between Murdoch’s children was, says Sherman, “much more than a boardroom battle. It was a blood feud to win a father’s love.” He made a deal with Disney that gave each of his children $2 billion.
At the end of the phone hacking scandal that almost cost Murdoch his beloved News Corp, he ordered his daughter Elisabeth to fire his son James, then executive chairman of News International, as a test of her loyalty.
But whatever dark stories emerge about Murdoch, they will not dim my admiration for the best newspaperman and the finest businessman of his generation. This is a proprietor who can sub a news story, can change the plates on the presses, can offer advice to his editors at length (ask Kelvin MacKenzie) even as he buys another newspaper or plots the downfall of a Prime Minister.
Murdoch arguably saved the entire British newspaper industry when he moved his titles to Wapping in January, 1986. It broke the power of the print unions and gave newspapers 30 profitable years before they faced a new existential crisis.
Murdoch believes in offering readers a quality product. His papers are properly staffed and resourced; brilliant journalism is not only allowed, it is expected. And they have embraced the digital age thoughtfully and intelligently.
His newspapers are – unlike those at Reach – entirely equipped for the Big Dipper ride of the 21st Century. The Times, in particular, is superb – as good online as it is on the news stand. Those who, like me, love newspapers, owe him a debt of gratitude.
*****
What the hell happened to news? Real news, I mean. What’s happening in the world, with facts and quotes and a little analysis. That won’t do any more, apparently; or maybe there are too few of us with a long enough attention span.
I was already sick of Sky News, which has become so woke I couldn’t bear to watch. I usually tune in to BBC for the 10 o’clock news now.
But not on Saturdays when Auntie’s bulletin is delayed for a few minutes. So I switched over and ran into Sky’s The Wrap. It is aimed at younger viewers and draws on its journalists’ TikTok and YouTube accounts.
It is comment, much of it dull and uninformed, interlaced with news items. But even these are opinionated and contain so much conjecture you half-expect Mystic Meg to appear on screen.
Studio guests on the night I watched were Lucy Beresford, a psychotherapist, and Michael Spicer, who’s billed as a comedian and satirist. Why? Did Sky expect Freudian analysis or acid wit? It was weird and pointless, journalism reduced to cheap showbiz.
This is all part of preparations for the apocalypse due to hit the channel in 2028. Comcast took it over in 2018 and guaranteed to maintain funding at the same level for 10 years. The pledge runs out in two years.
So the focus now will be on “premium video journalism”, rather than breaking news. Managing director Jonathan Levy told Press Gazette: “It’s absolutely vital that Sky News is made commercially and editorially fit for the future.”
He denied it was cost cutting but conceded: “The composition of our newsroom is going to change.”
It all has a terrible whiff of Reach about it.
I remember copytasting for night editor Kelvin MacKenzie one quiet afternoon on the Daily Express when he turned to me and said: “Come on, Dick, where’s all the copy? I’m a news junkie.”
Well, I am too. And so should the journalists on Sky News be. The clue’s in the title, guys.
I think I might go back to radio. Three minutes of urgent, up to date information, on the hour. It’s all you need.
*****
The CIA World Factbook is no more. I mourn its loss, even though its compilers work for an organisation dedicated to deception and disinformation.
The Factbook helped me many a time while researching articles or simply helping our sons with their homework. Want to know the ethnic make-up of Armenia? Refer to the Factbook.
How important is wine in Chile’s agricultural industry? The Factbook would tell you how many hectares in which valleys are given over to viticulture. How many Christians in Syria? You know where to find the answer.
Now it has gone, or “sunset”, as the CIA website puts it. The Atlantic, an American magazine, asked why. It received no answer.
But that did not stop the stridently liberal publication from coming up with its own theories. “The demise of the World Factbook is part of a broad war on information being waged by the Trump Administration.”
It reported the Associated Press as saying that the move followed “a vow from [CIA] Director John Ratcliffe to end programs [sic] that don’t advance the agency’s core missions.”
If Trump is to blame, even indirectly, it surely ranks as one of his pettiest and most ignoble actions.
The Factbook was launched in 1962 as a bound volume, secret, for internal distribution only. Then they declassified it in 1971 and finally put it online in 1997. It was a must for every journalist’s computer “favourites” list.
*****
Watching England demolish Wales at Twickenham on Saturday, I heard a familiar phrase uttered. It took me right back to the south side of Blackfriars Bridge.
Wales were being penalised time and again for poor play and poorer discipline. When they went down to 13 men for a second time, the commentator said: “It’s a vortex of doom.”
You could get into a lot of trouble for saying that on the Daily Express. I know I did.
RICHARD DISMORE
11 February 2026
