With Starmer’s resignation, Britain’s experiment with technocratic centrism is over for now

LONDON - With a voice cracked with emotion and struggling to hold back tears, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has resigned, setting in motion a succession struggle which could take months.

Addressing his nation from the doorsteps of the historic 10 Downing Street official residence, Starmer said that becoming prime minister was the “proudest moment” of his life, but admitted that his falling popularity means he may no longer be “best placed” to lead the country, and claimed to have accepted his fate with “good grace”.

He will remain in office until the ruling Labour Party elects a successor, a process that can be completed by mid-July, but could also drag on until September.

Starmer is the sixth British leader to be forced out of office over the past decade, and the lessons of his failed premiership are not only about one man’s failings but about a political system that no longer lets any leader govern long enough to be judged on results.

Few British leaders experienced a faster rise to power. A lawyer who became the country’s top prosecutor, Starmer only entered politics in 2015 when he was in his mid-fifties, an age when many others reach the peak of their political careers.

Within five years, he became Labour’s leader, and four years after that, he was in Downing Street with one of the largest parliamentary majorities in Britain’s modern history.

Yet the fall was just as rapid. The man who promised to return stability to a country profoundly shaken by a decision to break with the European Union is now leaving after less than two years in office, with his personal approval in the doldrums and his authority in tatters.

Curiously, Starmer’s undoing was the same attribute that initially made him popular: his claim to be an outsider. He inherited a Labour Party demoralised by languishing for many years in opposition, and wrecked by Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left leader who had zero chance of ever winning national elections.

And he faced a nation exhausted by endless disputes over membership in the EU, ruled by a centre-right Conservative administration which was both unpopular, yet somehow contrived to cling to power.

Starmer promised cool, no-nonsense governance. There never was a Starmer vision, let alone an ideology; the man who took Britain’s helm on July 5, 2024, without having previously served in any British Cabinet, promised to turn his lack of experience into an asset.

His rule was going to be based on technocratic centrism, on the objective of running the country efficiently.

Sadly, his lack of government experience quickly became a liability. Britain’s prime minister developed a unique talent of both introducing unpopular measures to cut government spending and then withdrawing them, thereby ending with the worst of all worlds.

Soon after he came to power, Starmer cancelled a winter fuel allowance scheme which paid lump sums to Britain’s elderly so that they could afford to heat their homes. Unsurprisingly, the move was deeply unpopular with pensioners.

But after claiming that the cut, which aimed to save £1.4 billion (S$2.38 billion) of taxpayers’ money each year, was necessary, Starmer reversed himself and reinstated the subsidy. The pensioners did not forget the episode, but Britain’s finances still went deeper into the red.

The same happened to Starmer’s subsequent plans to cut disability benefit payments, which have soared since the Covid-19 pandemic. Again, the objective was justified: the bill for this welfare benefit alone is now £65 billion a year and is projected to increase to £100 billion by the end of the decade.

But a prime minister who runs a centre-left Socialist party should have known that cutting welfare payments would be a tricky affair, requiring a great deal of persuasion and political pressure. Instead, Starmer prepared nothing; he announced the cuts, and then promptly withdrew them when faced with the predictable rebellion from his backbench MPs.

And as he grew politically weaker, key members of his Cabinet ignored the prime minister. Rachel Reeves, his finance minister, refused to hand over the extra money Starmer promised to boost Britain’s armed forces.

And Edward Miliband, the Energy Secretary, continued with his efforts to eliminate carbon emissions, despite the fact that Britain now suffers from the highest energy prices in the industrialised world.

For environmental reasons, Starmer’s government refuses to issue licences to exploit existing oil and natural gas fields in Britain’s territorial waters in the North Sea. But instead, it imports huge quantities of the same commodities from Norway, which extracts them from the same sea. A more contradictory policy can hardly be imagined.

Starmer initially scored better on the global stage. For a while, his style of handling US President Donald Trump through a mixture of flattery and humour was the example many other world leaders followed.

The British prime minister was also good at providing leadership in Europe’s handling of the war in Ukraine.

Ultimately, however, even these advantages evaporated. President Trump was angered by Starmer’s refusal to back the US attacks on Iran. The resignation of the British prime minister was first announced from Washington, by a US president posting on social media before the leader in London had said a word. The self-styled “Trump whisperer” is now openly derided by the US president.

Sir Keir Starmer was elected to make competence dull again and failed at the one thing he was hired to do. Meanwhile, the promised economic growth never came, and the cost-of-living crisis did not ease. Pledges to build 1.5 million new homes backed by £39 billion in investment for social and affordable housing also produced no outcomes.

More by accident than design, Starmer succeeded in alienating every interest or age group in the country. The scandal over the appointment of Peter Mandelson, a former minister with a dubious personal record and a known friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted US paedophile, sealed the prime minister’s fate.

Starmer’s resignation will be written up as a story of personal failure. Still, it is better read as one more casualty of the realignment tearing through many European countries: the centre-left in office, presiding over stagnant economies and frayed public consent, remains under siege from far-right populists.

His most likely replacement is Andy Burnham, a man who spent a quarter of a century in politics and a decade aiming for Downing Street. So, the rule of the technocrats is now over.

And we will soon discover whether the return of a professional politician to Downing Street could restore the stability Britain used to be famous for.