Who is his constituency now? Not the left or the right – and not the centre any more. That’s why there’s been a nosedive in the pollsAfter a tumultuous few weeks, we are once again in “reset” territory. Keir Starmer has bought some more time, there is a modest bounce…After a tumultuous few weeks, we are once again in “reset” territory. Keir Starmer has bought some more time, there is a modest bounce in his polling, and he has had the well-timed fortune of the Munich security conference. His call there for the “remaking” of western alliances and taking the initiative on European defence cooperation has fumigated the air a little of the sense of imminent demise that has been swirling around him. But it will probably be a temporary hiatus. He is in a hole that is too deep to climb out of. The prime minister’s persistent unpopularity is best understood as the result of abundance: there is simply, in Starmer, something for everyone to deplore. In policy, he has taken stances that have established him in the minds of many people as devoid of principle and compassion. On Gaza, Starmer got it wrong from the start. From his early assertion that Israel had the right to cut off water and power, to refusing calls for a ceasefire and then cracking down on protest (a move now judged as unlawful by the high court), the prime minister positioned himself against a huge domestic swell of distress. Add to that the cuts to disability benefits that made him appear callous after so many years of austerity, and what you have – whatever U-turns or watering down followed – is an impression of a politician whose instincts are those of a state apparatchik; someone whose default is enforcing pre-existing conventional wisdoms in foreign policy and economics, no matter how damaging or unpopular they are. Feeding into this is his feverish immigration rhetoric and policy. The “island of strangers” speech; the hectic posting and projection of imagery and footage of crackdown, arrests and deportations; the launch of measure after measure making life harder for those already working and living in the country legally; and for refugees, extending the qualifying time for settlement and ending family reunification. More positions that simply build on the immigration hysteria of the late Tory years and communicate that under Starmer, Labour is a continuity consensus party. And then there is Starmer himself. Personality alone does not make a politician, and God knows we have suffered enough from big personalities such as Boris Johnson – but you need something. Not necessarily fireworks and charm, but at the minimum just a sense of tangibility. Starmer is impalpable; not in the sense that he isn’t there, but that he is hiding. He doesn’t dream, he says, nor does he have phobias, nor favourite novels. He communicates in only the most generic terms, in staccato sentences using repetitive themes – “change” or his working-class roots – connected by meaningless “let me be clears” and “make no mistakes”. This manner summons all sorts of characters that overpopulate our corporatised lives – the middle manager, the jobsworth, the emissary from whatever head office. He has a way of somehow always communicating that sorry, he’s just doing his job – while holding the most powerful office in the country. Again, a state representative rather than a leader with volition and conviction. Who is this person’s constituency? Not the left, to which he has made clear in policy and in purges that this is not its Labour party. Not the right, which will never be at home in Labour, no matter how many people it deports or how much capital it courts. And not the centre any more, for which Starmer’s incompetence and lurching from one debacle to the next is becoming increasingly hard to rationalise. This is why there has been a nosedive in the polls, one that for past prime ministers would have been cushioned by whichever constituency they explicitly served: Brexiters, anti-immigration ultras, establishment free-marketeers, the working class. Who is out there banging the tables for “growth” and genocide? And then there is the obvious: two lords appointed to senior roles despite associations with sex offenders, and the disruption caused by the changing of personnel in the wake of related staff departures. The lack of judgment in these appointments is once more an indictment of Starmer’s tendency to defer to establishment names, networks and advisers who staff the senior ranks of a government that is a mash-up of zombie New Labour and austerity management inertia. If it’s broke, don’t fix it. But Starmer’s problem is even bigger than that. Disliking him has become something wider: an expression of, once again, being thwarted and let down by politicians. He is feeling the impact of the country’s recent history of government instability, corruption and short premierships. The time he had to prove himself was always short, so violated was the country by the Brexit and pandemic years. Starmer was supposed to wipe the slate clean, not further sully it with his own record. More serious still is his failure in not having even the faintest ability to understand that the entire political establishment was on probation – and that he needed to break with the past in the most dramatic and surefooted ways in both policy and affect. The public is on high alert for cliquishness and chaos. The feelings of those who hate Starmer are sharpened by the fact that even he – finally a Labour leader who campaigned on being a decent, hardworking and upright person – could not deliver. There is no stronger feeling than one inspired by those you expected better from. All this doesn’t fit neatly with macro-concerns about paving the way for Reform with a sooner rather than later election, or the risks of plunging the country into another phase of economic and political instability by dumping yet another prime minister. But that doesn’t refute in any way the reasons for Starmer’s unpopularity. In a way, the prime minister is a manifestation of the dead end British politics finds itself in – either far-right populism, or Starmer’s all-at-once volatile, unintelligible and remote regime. What’s not to hate? - Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist --- Original source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/feb/16/keir-starmer-prime-minister-left-right-centre-polls
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