Ruth Dudley Edwards: ​Like them or not, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher were leaders – Keir Starmer is not

​The big anniversary of his appointment will be this Saturday, and if he has any sense he’ll be kicking a football somewhere private with his mates.

Reports suggests doing this is his only escape from the cares of office.

I’ve looked at or listened to innumerable appraisals in newspapers and on the radio, and from the far left to the far right, no one had anything positive to say about his performance.

Even those who used to defend what he did abroad are drowned out by the evidence of his uselessness as a negotiator on such issues as the future of the Chagos islands, co-operation with France over the small boats and the ceding of fishing rights to the European Union.

All seemed to involve caving in.

The judgement I found most memorable came from the Daily Telegraph’s Annabel Denham, who described what she called an “excruciating scene” less than a month after Starmer became prime minister.

Standing at a police cordon in Southport, where three children had been murdered and six others and two adults badly injured in a mass stabbing at a yoga and dance workshop, with wild rumours circulating, he placed his floral tribute among the hundreds already there and had nothing to say when he was heckled from the crowd with “How many more children?”

This, said Denham, “crystallised in many minds the sense that Starmer was the wrong leader at the wrong time”.

Unlike the surefooted Tony Blair whose response in PR terms was faultless after the death of Princess Diana, “Starmer would not – could not – rise to the occasion. Try as he might, the words wouldn’t come”.

Denham ran through so many other such crises: “Donorgate, Rosie Duffield, the riots and Lucy Connolly, Sue Gray, the Budget, Louise Haigh, Tulip Siddiq, Israel, the Winter Fuel Allowance U-turn, the trans women U-turn, the ‘island of strangers’ U-turn, the assisted dying absence… somehow the words never flow. Ill at ease, repetitious, robotic – and increasingly tetchy.”

And now after the benefits debacle, he faces a party that unites only in their contempt for him.

The contrast I most remember is with Margaret Thatcher emerging from the wreckage of the Grand Hotel after the IRA Brighton bomb to announce that the Conservative party conference would proceed as planned.

She delivered a fluent speech of absolute defiance of terrorism.

Like them or loathe them, both Thatcher and Blair were leaders.

They understood their job involved being on top of a range of briefs and responding flexibly to the unexpected.

Starmer just can't multi-task.

He is a lawyer in every atom of his being.

He responds to every crisis by looking for rules and precedents to guide him.

And he is incapable of forming any kind of relationship with the rank and file of his party.

Apart from the useless idiot Lord Stermer KC, his Attorney General, who is equally hopeless in politics, his closest colleagues despair at his apparent lack of an inner core of belief in anything except international law.

Labour is useless at getting rid of leaders, but Angela Rayner, his deputy, is licking her lips.​

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• Ruth Dudley Edwards is the author of ‘The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions’ and 'Aftermath: The Omagh Bombing and the Families’ Pursuit of Justice.’​

Ruth’s website is www.ruthdudleyedwards.com, Twitter is @RuthDE, Facebook is Ruth Dudley Edwards