In the wake of Ann Widdecombe’s murder, JOHN GREEN wonders whether the government will really get to grips with the root cause of these attacks on our MPs
A WHOLE host of top journalists are openly claiming Sir Keir is crap at being PM. These are the very same journalists who only months ago were saying Starmer was super at the job, so this tells us something about SW1 journalism as well as our PM.
For example, Jason Cowley had a column in the Times just before Christmas about Starmer’s first six months as PM, saying that “even Labour veterans are calling it the worst start by a government in a lifetime.”
Cowley wrote that Labour might have had a “strategy to win the general election” but “not to govern.” Or it might be worse: Cowley thought it may be that “they did have a plan, it was incoherent and undermined by factionalism.” This is slightly generous about Starmer’s plan to win the election, as his Labour Party really came into power on a “loveless landslide,” with fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn, because the right was split between Reform and Tory. But it is an admission from a Starmer-friendly pundit that the PM is in trouble.
The PM leaves office having squandered Labour’s electoral mandate and alienated its grassroots. He will not be missed, writes BRIAN LEISHMAN MP
Keir Starmer's early political life suggests a very different future from the one he ultimately embraced, says KEITH FLETT
As the PM and his chief of staff’s blunders have mounted up, ANDREW MURRAY wonders who among Labour’s diminished ‘soft left’ might make a bid for the leadership
The Prime Minister’s hamfisted promotional video promising to go ‘further and faster’ coincides with Angela Rayner’s resignation over tax dodging and Mandelson’s long overdue departure over Epstein — incredible timing, writes MATT KERR


