Euan McColm: Anas Sarwar's criticism of Sir Keir Starmer rang true with voters

There was no hint of the jubilation that surrounded the election of Tony Blair back in 1997. A new dawn had not broken.

Sir Keir Starmer’s great selling point as a leader wasn’t that he was a visionary, it was (how drab) that he was a safe pair of hands.

If the cowboy builders of the Tory party had wrecked the house, Starmer would make it wind and watertight again.

But what, beyond his reputation for being safe and steady, were the Prime Minister’s significant political skills? And what, more importantly, was his great plan for office?

As he manoeuvred to become Labour leader after the failed Jeremy Corbyn project, this lack of definition was a plus for Starmer. He was whatever Labour supporters – and a significant proportion of the wider electorate – wanted him to be.

To those who had backed Corbyn, Starmer was a continuity candidate: Slicker than his predecessor, for sure, but firmly of the left. To those who had watched with horror as Corbyn dragged Labour into a quagmire of antisemitism and crankish extremism, Starmer was the moderniser who’d reset the party as the centre ground force it has once been under Blair.

But, if Starmer was all things to everyone before July 4, 2024, afterwards, he quickly became nothing to anyone. In power, his failure to articulate anything approaching a political vision saw his premiership falter from the word go. He hit the ground stumbling and, since then, has lurched from bad decision to bad decision, from crisis to crisis.

At the heart of these problems is the void where a political project should exist.

Starmer is the faintest outline of a politician, a dinner party idea of a statesman and he has failed to deliver a compelling and coherent political vision because, I’m afraid, he doesn’t have one.

The past week was the worst yet in Starmer’s miserable premiership.

A call, last Monday, by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar for Starmer to step down prompted the cabinet to unite in support of the Prime Minister. He had been given a mandate for change, they chorused with an enthusiasm dripping with pathos.

This carefully orchestrated outpouring of loyalty, could not begin to conceal the damage wrought by Sarwar on an already weakened PM.

Sarwar’s intervention may not have triggered a wave of criticism from other senior Labour politicians but voters heard him loud and clear when he criticised Starmer. His words rang true.

Sarwar is right: Starmer has cost Scottish Labour dear, driving away supporters and handing a seemingly limitless number of attack lines to the SNP. His continued presence in Downing Street considerably heightens the possibility of Labour’s humiliation in May’s Holyrood election.

Since Starmer’s decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the USA blew up in his face, his fate has been sealed.

Defenders of the Prime Minister may insist that his fury over the extent of Mandelson’s relationship with the paedophile and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein is deep and sincere but he knew, before appointing him, that his new ambassador had continued his friendship with the deceased predator after he completed a first prison sentence.

Starmer also knew, when he elevated him to the House of Lords, that his former press spokesman Matthew Doyle had campaigned for the Labour councillor Sean Morton after he had been charged with child pornography offences.

Last week, after learning facts he already knew, Starmer withdrew the Labour whip from Doyle. At Holyrood, Anas Sarwar did likewise with MSP Pam Duncan Glancy, who has maintained her close relationship with Morton, despite his convictions.

In common with the Prime Minister, the Scottish Labour leader took his principled but difficult decision having considered facts which have been in the public domain for some time. In Duncan Glancy’s case, these facts were previously not considered sufficiently serious to merit her suspension from the party.

Defenders of Starmer have a well-rehearsed line. They will – for how could they not – concede the existence of some imperfections, admit to a number of missteps but, they will continue, Sir Keir is a fundamentally decent guy.

Is he? All I see is a powerful man doing the right thing only when he has to, when his own mistakes have left him no option.

Starmer’s moral radar is jammed. Across a range of issues, from the rights of women to the complex matter of assisted dying, he gives the impression of not having done the thinking.

The consensus across the Labour Party seems to be that Starmer will be permitted to limp on until the May elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliament and a number of English councils, at which point he will be blamed for the catastrophic results and removed by those same colleagues who, five minutes ago, were blathering on about mandates.

Keir Starmer is mortally wounded, prey now to hungry pretenders.

Until last week, Health Secretary Wes Streeting was a serious prospect. Then he released – in the name of transparency – messages between himself and Mandelson and that was the end of that.

Streeting’s chummy relationship with the disgraced Labour grandee has destroyed any chance of him ever becoming PM. The touch of Mandelson is upon him and it can never been washed away.

Former deputy PM, Angela Rayner remains under the cloud of an HMRC investigation which, coupled with her evident unsuitability for the position of Prime Minister under any circumstances, means she’s not a serious contender.

The muttering around a third potential candidate grows louder. In this, the party’s time of need, a number of Labour politicians believe his time has come.

We might be just three months away from government led by Prime Minister Ed Miliband.

The list of reasons to hold Starmer in contempt grows longer.