Are the leaders we have today less exciting than the Great Men of the past? You could probably write a competent tragedy about any of the individuals to have contested, or won, the US Presidency in the 21st century. The Oedipal problems of Bush 43; Hilary Clinton, a highly intelligent puppet-mistress, thwarted every time she seems assured of power; Obama, a groomed messiah who began to believe his own prophecies and failed to fulfil them to say nothing of Donald J. Trump, who has turned all news since his descent of the escalator into his personal telenovella.
“Sir Keir Starmer, KC” is a man who appeared from nowhere to embody absolutely everything about the society which created him
But David Cameron and Theresa May did not rise to power for the sake of poets. Tony Blair, despite a huge sub-industry within our taxpayer funded broadcasters trying to make him interesting, was an essentially insignificant man. Perhaps some would say the Johnson premiership, with its feuding factions, dynastic tinge and long-term impact constitutes a British tragedy but while tragic, it is the tragedy of an individual. The most compelling political protagonists are so because they represent something in the zeitgeist; rather than any inherently interesting quality in themselves. They are confronted with choices in which Destiny, with a Germanic capital “D”, manifests itself in the form of deep historical processes. This is why I believe Keir Starmer is the most interesting man to have ever held political office in this country.
For “Keir”, “Sir Keir Starmer, KC” is a man who appeared from nowhere to embody absolutely everything about the society which created him. The obsession with football, the Boden catalogue, the confident anti-intellectualism, the fact alcoholic beverages are never entirely far away, the Friday night curry; his is the oratory of David Brent and the doctrine of Zadie Smith. The personality is mirrored perfectly in the subject’s political career: Keir rose to power in the field of Human Rights Law which was the signal innovation of the New Labour government and which now looks set to destroy his premiership. In everything else, this man is non-ideological, he genuinely believes himself guided by “decency” and surely takes pride having simply done “a good job” rather than a singular, terrific achievement, in the various posts he has held. The two guiding stars of this society, a careerism which accepts certain things work in a certain way, and the reality of ideological orthodoxy which always lurked in the background, now come into dangerous conjunction above the fate of Sir Keir Starmer.
As a man of destiny arrives on scene, the stage suddenly expands. British politics has attracted a global audience in a way, even during Brexit, it has never done before. The overreaching hand of our populist regime of censorship has at last been slapped on the wrists by Uncle Sam, with Elon Musk beaming news from Britain into every American household. The Chagos Islands attract Presidential comment, peace in Ukraine depends, to some extent, on whether the holder of an Arsenal “season ticket” feels trigger happy that morning. All the problems in the world, Gaza, Tech, Ukraine seem in some sense to revolve around a 63 year old former silk from The Pineapple pub.
There has long been debate, common about all executive offices in Late Democracy, on whether the office of Prime Minister has become, with the growing power (or dysfunction, depending on your prejudices) of the civil service, part of the “ceremonial” constitution rather than an office which actually makes decisions. However, so long as the office was held by people like Sir Keir Starmer or Rishi Sunak, the sort of people who ‘look like Prime Ministers’, the illusion of potency could be stretched to remarkable levels of credulity. If Nigel Farage encounters the same problems faced by Rishi Sunak and Starmer, he will lack this crucial advantage: people will, I suspect, simply stop pretending that who “the Prime Minister” is, is actually important for writing about politics. It will be understood, even by lobby journalists, that real power is exercised elsewhere as a fact openly acknowledged rather than one pretended away.
On the other hand, if Farage succeeds, he can only do so through a Presidential revolution in how British government works. Already, Reform are planning to use appointments from the Lords to staff their Cabinet, rather than MPs; separating the link between the Cabinet and the House of Commons. I suspect Orders in Council will be used with far greater enthusiasm than precedented thus-far. The conventional instruments of persuasion, the Lobby press, the big morning news shows and opinion polls are already eclipsed by Xitter and in-house TV channels.
Keir Starmer is a terminus. His failure is … judgment day for a whole social order
In either event, the office of Prime Minister as understood by Andrew Marr or Anthony Seldon will soon be extinct; viz. a figure who represents the consensual will of “the Establishment” under the Crown, a leader of a Party rather than a President whose job it is to embody the General Will by executive action. Once these changes are enacted, it is difficult to see anyone repealing them. The person who replaces Nigel Farage will either be even more radical, or resemble him far more than they do any politician 1997-2020. Conservative MPs described as “up and coming” (in the same hopeful notes used to describe certain London postcodes), now understand the key to relevance is making videos online, rather than editing The Spectator or making partner at Slaughter and May.
Whatever the outcome, Keir Starmer is a terminus. His failure isn’t just the failure of an individual or even a caesura in the rule of two-party politics; it is the judgment day for a whole social order. The world of Newsnight, of “the Lobby”, of polling companies, of crisis comms and “decency” will pass into the midnight gallery of the past to join the Cavaliers and crusading Knights.
