Ben Lowry: Keir Starmer seems to have been almost destroyed by office, like many prime ministers

His tenure in Downing Street has been unsuccessful.

Indeed, it has been a succession of crises and u-turns. He is almost a figure of ridicule.

The Shakespearean element is that he was a man with a top-flight legal career, reaching director of prosecutions, who entered politics late (he was not elected an MP until well into his 50s) and quickly then reached the pinnacle of government. Sir Keir seemed pleasant, almost charming, intelligent, sane moderate and he was photogenic.

Now he seems to have aged noticeably after only two years as prime minister, and almost battered by events. How ever much he tries to smile on his overseas trips, meeting British soldiers and foreign leaders, projecting the image of international statesmen, he seems to have lost his former spirit.

In many respects the PM is undeserving of sympathy. He was ruthless in harrying the Tories, mocking their minor failures, such as Boris Johnson’s covid birthday party in 2020 (compare that event to the IRA mass funeral the same month, June, with Sinn Fein at the helm, the party that had been so sanctimonious about lockdown, and the way in which their hypocritical conduct was essentially vindicated in one useless official report after another).

He promised a new broom. He said that Labour would lead to a “clean-up” of public life compared to the “chaos” of the Tories.

Instead, he has been beset by his own sleaze, such as that avowed woman-of-the-people Angela Rayner underpaying stamp duty when holding a key government role in a party that has hiked taxes for everyone else, not least specific stamp duty rates, which are now levied at a 5% surcharge for second home owners such as Rayner (on top of existing stamp duty).

Starmer has been forced into u-turn after u-turn, on scrapping winter fuel duty payments, on the family farm tax, on welfare reforms, on digitial ID, etc. The party that sneered at the supposedly Tory approach to tackling immigration, ditching the Rwanda scheme which, whatever its shortcomings might have acted as a deterrent, has had to take an ever more frantic approach to trying to stop uncontrolled illegal immigration.

Now Sir Keir Starmer is floundering politically over the former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Mandelson. My own first instincts is not sympathetic, when I think of the foolish things that he has done, such as gushing towards an Irish government that is suing the country of which he is premier, the UK, over legacy while giving essentially nothing in return. Yet he is not a bad man. He seemed at sea when I asked him about that Irish legal action (click here for a link to an article with a video of my question).

I think Starmer’s tragedy is wider than him – it is almost a curse that hovers around 10 Downing Street. People yearn for that address, yet as I get older I see more and more prime ministers being broken by that unforgiving office.

I cannot comment with confidence on the PMs prior to Margaret Thatcher, because she came to power when I was aged seven, and I have no meaningful memory of them. And while I have ready plenty about Harold Wilson and Edward Heath and James Callaghan, it is hard to assess a leader if you have not lived under their rule.

Almost all of the prime ministers since Mrs Thatcher have been damaged in some way by their immense strains of their office. John Major, an honourable man, became a laughing stock, Tony Blair seemed to be a success but ended up defined by the Iraq War (a Westminster journalist told me that after leaving office he became haunted by the constant opprobrium he faced about his role in that conflict), and Gordon Brown was ejected by the electorate within three years of taking the helm.

David Cameron seemed to have an effortless time at the top but lost the Brexit vote and was out within days. Theresa May entered Downing Street confidently but emerged three years later a shadow of her former self, unable to deliver the referendum result. Boris Johnson was abandoned by his own MPs and ejected in a humiliating way. Liz Truss’s premiership was something of a joke. Only Rishi Sunak seemed to emerge with his calm, confident psyche more or less intact, and yet he was finished by a brutal electoral defenestration.

Even Mrs Thatcher, the most robust of them all, stayed in office too long and became detached, her trusted advisor Lord Powell told me late last year.

Starmer’s handling of Mandelson has been woeful, and yet even that saga shows how hard politics has become. It is almost impossible now to find good candidates for key public posts who both want the job and have an impeccable CV.

• Ben Lowry (@Benlowry2) is News Letter editor