Why has Keir Starmer been so unpopular?

“Why did I like women’s breasts so much?” Kingsley Amis wrote in That Uncertain Feeling, “I was clear on why I liked them, thanks, but why did I like them so much?” With apologies for repurposing such a ribald quote while addressing a serious subject, the question I want to ask today is not why Keir Starmer is unpopular but why he is so unpopular.

As Keir Starmer announces that he is leaving Number 10, it can hardly be claimed that he has ruined the country. All the major problems Britain faces in 2026 predate his premiership. Indeed, the best defence of Keir Starmer — as I have written — is that he inherited such a dire set of circumstances. One reason Starmer is disliked that is actually unfair is that he is reaping what other governments sowed. The UK is creaking under a decades-long lack of infrastructure that he could hardly have reversed. Immigration has gone down but the effects of years of human quantitative easing — to borrow a concept from my esteemed colleague Tom Jones — are being experienced. I think it would be absurd to claim that Starmer is among the worst British PMs — if, at least, “worst” is defined as “most destructive”.

So, why is he so disliked? As someone who lives abroad — and thus has some distance from the day-to-day realities of British life — let me propose a theory. At a time when the system was failing, Prime Minister Keir Starmer was the perfect representative of the system.

When the Labour Party returned to government, one thing we heard from its admirers was that the grownups were back in charge. (“It’s nice, isn’t it. The quiet,” tweeted the centrist hysteric Otto English.) The idea, it seemed, was that the UK just needed to be managed more maturely. Get out the likes of Boris Johnson and bring in the pros.

Britain was suffering less from a failure to govern by the book than from being beaten around the head with the book

Keir Starmer seems to have had the same sense of his role in politics. A natural lawyer, he fetishised procedure. They didn’t call him “Mr Rules” for nothing. Well, with all due apologies to my long-neglected inner High Tory, sometimes the procedure is the problem. From the ECHR to planning law, Britain was suffering less from a failure to govern by the book than from being beaten around the head with the book.

Starmer believed in the system. He also believed in the people who had been favoured by the system. It should have been obvious to all sentient observers that giving Peter Mandelson a significant position would be catastrophic. His deep connections to Jeffrey Epstein were hardly the stuff of obscure conspiratorialism. They had been reported on by the Guardian. But while outsiders, like Jeremy Corbyn, could be shanked in the back, Peter Mandelson was the consummate establishmentarian. What could go wrong?

Starmer seemed to have no opinions of his own when it came to moral and epistemic issues. Britain was becoming an “island of strangers” until it abruptly wasn’t. Women could have penises until they suddenly couldn’t. Freedom of movement was going to return until it definitely wasn’t. A man can change his mind, of course, but Starmer never explained how he had changed his mind. He barely seemed to have a mind.

We can’t avoid a vibes-based discussion here because the fact is that Starmer’s vibes have been historically bad. He seems stiff and humourless — the sort of man who says that his guilty pleasure (his guilty pleasure) is a pint with friends — but there is a broader issue here. In an era where Britain should have been trying to avoid a fate of managed decline, Starmer seemed like a man who actively embraced it. So, he did odd things like trying to pay Mauritius to accept the Chagos Islands. But he also had the grim and awkward manner of someone brought in to manage a once great football team that, having been relegated from the Premiership, was now structurally destined to collapse through the leagues. Britain, to him, seemed to be Leicester City with an army — barely — attached.

The problem for Andy Burnham — or, if something crazy happens, whoever else replaces Keir Starmer — is that while Starmer has been an unusually fitting representative of the system, his departure will do nothing to remove systematic problems. There will be just as little money to spend, Britain will be just as short of infrastructure, Britain will be just as divided and so on. This is not to presumptively excuse indecision or bad decisions (both of which Keir Starmer can be faulted for). It is just to say that it will be difficult for any prime minister to win popularity contests after more than a few months in the job — and acting like an alternative, unless you really have an alternative, could make the backlash even more aggressive.