{"id":422026,"date":"2026-02-12T16:19:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T16:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/422026\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T16:19:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T16:19:12","slug":"why-you-hate-keir-starmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/422026\/","title":{"rendered":"Why you hate Keir Starmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can probably determine the emotional-political register of Britain through the songs that are sung at sporting events. And right now, \u201cKeir Starmer\u2019s a wanker\u201d has become so omnipresent, so all-inviting, that even highly tribalised football fans have put aside their rivalries to sing it. Sky and ITV partially mute the ditty from their live sports broadcasts, trying to avoid transmitting political statements, but at this point, it\u2019s barely a political statement at all. It is more like a display of mass casual bullying, a playground chant carried out on a national level.<\/p>\n

After the scandalous past week \u2013 Mandelson, McSweeney, resignation scare \u2013 some widespread antipathy might be expected. But the important thing is that this sentiment set in long ago. Starmer is incredibly unpopular. The Economist has a special page<\/a> that exhibits and examines this unpopularity among varying demographics. The scale of ostracism it represents for one man is spectacular. And the results are in: the people of Britain do not like Starmer.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t always like this \u2013 Starmer was sort of a centrist champion during the Brexit period, and had some momentum during the succession of Tory governments. But after an election campaign that is difficult to remember, the Prime Minister has become profoundly unpopular. Tony Blair was voted \u201cBritain\u2019s worst person\u201d in a 2003 Channel 4 show, but went on to win another election two years later. Starmer, on the other hand, can barely win the full loyalty of his party. Despite \u201cFuck Boris\u201d becoming a youth phenomenon during his premiership, but there was always the sense that he could pull it out of the bag when needed. Starmer\u2019s government, meanwhile, has, at times, been less popular than Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.<\/p>\n

And this scale of dislike means the political is entwined with the personal. Try as he might, Starmer is not a slick, dynamic, showy presence; he appears to be an anxious, awkward, appeasing kind of type. He comes from a working-class background in the most middle-class part of Britain \u2013 a niche narrative that was always going to be hard to convey. He loves football, but won\u2019t commit to the spikier aspects of it, denying his passion like a suburban Dad who claims to not know what PornHub is. He was a lawyer \u2013 and a good one \u2013 but Atticus Finch he is not. He was the kind of lawyer that excelled in picking over details and data, not in winning over erring juries. He comes from a technical, institutional, sensible world that looks bygone in the Acid Patriotism<\/a> era, where some of those at far-right protests perform Nazi salutes to Eurodance classics.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Subscribe to the New Statesman today for only \u00a31 a week.<\/p>\n

Perceptions and expectations of masculinity weigh heavily on Starmer. For swathes of the public, something about him just doesn\u2019t sit quite right. To call upon some cheap personality polling, men don\u2019t want to be his mate and women don\u2019t want to give him a hug. Much of the time, he appears on the verge of tears, like he\u2019d be more at home chairing some obscure committee than standing over the lectern. Perhaps in Sweden this might work. But in Britain \u2013 a country that still values pomp, character and how you look in the cockpit of a Harrier jet \u2013 it doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

The term \u201ccharisma void\u201d is used in reference to Starmer, but it goes well beyond personality politics. He could also be accused of being a policy void, an ideas void, a conviction void, a gaping absence of almost everything people want a leader to be. None of these epithets are entirely fair, because Starmer does show conviction at times \u2013 but usually it comes late and lopsided, too limp at times and too steadfast at others. It\u2019s telling that his major scandal has come not from being proactively corrupt or delinquent, but deferential. The briefings suggest that it was McSweeney pushing for Mandelson\u2019s appointment, and that Starmer had his doubts about him. But that seeming inability to voice concern has sucked him into a vortex of shame.<\/p>\n

But Mandelson and McSweeney aside, there is only really one person Starmer can blame. More than anything, Starmer\u2019s leadership has been tainted with an air of complacency, a feeling that is incompatible with public feeling. He seems to have come into the job thinking it is a walkover, an easy 4-0, \u201cbring on the kids at 60 minutes\u201d job. It is anything but. The country he took over is very different to the one his initial plan was hatched for, and the global stage he walked onto is particularly chaotic.<\/p>\n

Britain lives in the midst of a civil-culture war. The divisions are not party political, but demographic and largely digital. The battle lines are not Labour vs Tory, North vs South, old vs young \u2013 but Facebook vs TikTok, \u201cBritish\u201d vs not, drink chlorine vs don\u2019t. Worldwide, there are genocides, land grabs, head of state grabs, potential revolutions and a rise in Christian fundamentalism. Having a PM who wants to be \u201cmore like Sweden\u201d, as one pundit put it on election night, is a nice idea. But feels a bit like trying to practice cognitive behavioural therapy at a coke-induced Aintree brawl.<\/p>\n

In such a landscape, the complacency that seems to sit at the core of Starmer is inadmissible. It places him at odds with the freewheeling radicalism of the age, but equally does not gift him the heroics to stand up to it. At time of writing, he is moving like Tony in the last series of The Sopranos, gone to the mattress with a handful of loyalists and an assault rifle, waiting for his assassins to reveal themselves. For a man who made a big noise about de-radicalisation, his ineffectiveness has pushed even his loyalists into becoming plotters. But the public \u2013 from the football terraces and Palestine Action, to Strictly fans and the organised far right \u2013 is already in open rebellion.<\/p>\n

[Further reading: Keir Starmer\u2019s silver lining<\/a>] <\/p>\n

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