There’s no end in sight to Starmer’s struggles | Letters
Letters: Readers respond to an editorial and other articles on the fallout of the Peter Mandelson scandal
What a great editorial (The Guardian view on Starmer’s trust crisis: it is unlikely to be managed away, 13 February). Your statement that the prime minister has “learned nothing and forgotten nothing” sums up much of his and our present situation. He was put where he is now by apparatchiks who failed to suggest that without any vision he would be at the mercy of people who would tug him to and fro – which they have. This weakness – which was shared by Boris Johnson, and why Dominic Cummings called Johnson “the Trolley” – means few people have any reason to trust him.
That Starmer’s judgment is flawed is demonstrated by the number of U-turns that he has been forced to make. I heard somebody on Radio 4 saying that Starmer “emanates blandness”. On the benches behind him are many stronger people. He needs to be ditched before the country is totally shrouded in gloom.
Juliet Solomon
Frome, Somerset
• Your analysis of Keir Starmer’s probable slide out of power quotes his use of the word “fight”. He was well trained by Morgan McSweeney to appear aggressive. But aggression is for opposition. A prime minister should look to govern, aiming for communal unity. As you say, Starmer has learned nothing, instead bigging up the opposition. He has chosen a foolhardy path that will lead him, and perhaps his party, to oblivion.
Andy Jordan
Wirksworth, Derbyshire
• As so often, John Harris illuminates the thoughts and feelings of disappointed and sceptical voters, and the political and ethical vacuum at the heart of the McSweeney-Starmer project (Politicians ‘don’t live how we live’, voters tell me, 8 February).
The Starmer government’s disdain not just for critics of Peter Mandelson’s privileged lifestyle and friendships, but for advocates of anything resembling principled leftwing policies, has been responsible for numerous missteps that seem to confirm the “Politicians are all the same” narrative. This applies as much to the international as the domestic sphere.
We should not forget that the main argument (accepted by both Labour and the Tories) for appointing Mandelson as ambassador to Washington was the perceived need to appease Donald Trump. Let’s hope that the Mandelson-Epstein scandal will prompt not just a procedural inquiry into who knew what and when, but also a reckoning with Labour’s overriding obeisance to Trump and his foreign policy.
Dr Chris Sinha
Cringleford, Norfolk
• A few of us predicted Starmerism would end, but not in the way that Owen Jones thinks (The left warned that Starmerism would end like this. Now all of Britain faces the fallout, 9 February). Labour’s left wing, the biggest election-losing machine in the party’s history, has lost no time in getting its knives deployed into Keir Starmer’s back.
One expects confected outrage from the opposition to, well, anything, but it is particularly damaging when the party itself is publicly intent on destroying its leader – particularly one who is barely a year into delivering a huge programme of national renewal. If there was ever a time for the left and its supporters to keep their own counsel, this is it, because the only winners out of the current furore will be Reform UK.
Des Senior
Aylesbeare, Devon
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