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Keir Starmer’s time as a politician has come to an end. Quite frankly, he will not be missed.
He promised to restore integrity to British politics but was taking freebies from a party donor within weeks of entering Downing Street. He promised socialism when he stood as Labour leader but delivered a government whose defining reflex was to go after the poorest people in the country. He promised to put human rights at the heart of his foreign policy but sat in a radio studio in October 2023 and said Israel had the right to commit war crimes and cut off water to Gaza and then spent days claiming he never said it.
Starmer behaved in this way repeatedly throughout his time as a politician; his lack of integrity should be remembered as the defining feature of his political career.
Today he announced that he is standing down as an MP, leaving Parliament, he says, to concentrate on international affairs. He spent only 11 years in Westminster, where he managed to get to the very top of our political system, and now, with that job gone, he has chosen to leave altogether. While other former prime ministers, like his predecessor Rishi Sunak, have stayed on to complete their parliamentary term and represent their local constituents, Starmer’s decision makes it clearer than anything else that the destination mattered more to him than anything else.