Ruth Dudley Edwards: Holier-than-thou Keir Starmer is a prime minister who won’t stand up for anything or anyone
I get a lot of simple pleasure from the name of our prime minister’s nemesis, Sir Olly Robbins, which sounds like a dodgy character in a Regency comedy.
I couldn’t stand Sir Keir Starmer — whom I thought leaden, smug, hypocritical and holier than thou and an empty-headed babbler about process and procedures — even before he won the election.
Yet, as a true Brexiteer, I greatly disliked Robbins’s naïve but dangerous Euro-federalist sympathies.
So after Sir Keir sacked Sir Olly, I settled down this week to watch both knights battling it out in the public arena that is the House of Commons.
I was one of those who wanted them both to lose.
But Sir Keir trudged boringly down his familiar ignoble path of blaming others for all his misfortunes, and Sir Olly made his case with grace and conviction.
He reminded me of the generation of civil servants with whom I worked in the late 1970s who took public service seriously.
This week will be fascinating, and I’ll be glued to the TV, but just for now, may I remind you with the help of a few salient facts of how terrible a PM we have, and how he seems unable to see a bus without throwing a colleague under it.
Endlessly stressing the importance of restoring stability after chaos, since he came into office on 5 July 2024, it’s been the exit for:
- Chiefs of Staff Sue Gray (October 2024) and Morgan McSweeney (February 2026);
- Principal Private Secretary Ninjeri Pandit (August 2025);
- Director of Political Strategy Paul Ovenden (September 2025);
- Directors of Communications Matthew Doyle (March 2025), Steph Driver and James Lyons (September 2025) and Tim Allan (February 2026);
- and Sir Chris Wormald (Cabinet Secretary/head of the civil service, February 2026).
Oh, and let’s not forget Lord Mandelson.
Then there are the endless u-turns when he caves in to threats and negative coverage, on issues such as:
- national insurance;
- winder fuel payments;
- trans women rights;
- grooming gangs national enquiry;
- welfare cuts;
- two-child benefit cap;
- farmers’ inheritance tax;
- pub business rates;
- and local elections postponement.
He won’t stand up for anything or anyone.
At Prime Minister’s Questions in recent weeks Kemi Badenoch has asked him 24 questions; he answered only one.
He has soured politics because he seems to have no discernible principles or loyalties, yet even now is sanctimoniously condemnatory about the failings of others.
As the editor of the leftwing New Statesman put it this week: “The prime minister cannot do the job.
“The events of the past fortnight have cast this collective failure in a spotlight so glaring it is impossible to unsee the ugliness of what has been revealed.”
He quoted a senior official: “The decency is just a facade. Ask Chris. Ask Sue. Ask Morgan. Ask Olly. He will say he takes responsibility, but then he makes everyone else pay.”
I look on the bright side.
At least his lack of conviction and courage looks like seeing off the appallingly unjust Northern Ireland Troubles Bill.
l Ruth Dudley Edwards is the author of The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions and also of Aftermath: the Omagh bombing and the families’ pursuit of justice