Has Keir Starmer passed his sell-by date?

Andy Burnham was a sign that the country was losing patience with a prime minister who, for a large part of his time in the public eye, had mystified the commentators. The question "What is Sir Keir Starmer about?" had dominated the editorials ever since Labour's landslide victory in 2024. He was a puzzle the country had yet to solve. Maybe the day had come to admit defeat and simply toss the puzzle away.

One only had to look at Starmer's announcement that Britain had decided to recognise the state of Palestine. Another politician might have made that announcement momentous. Starmer played it down. Given his rise following a scandal over perceived antisemitism in his party, maybe it was the only honest approach to take. But he also employed the phrase 'this great country', which sounded like a sop to the 'patriots' who have waved their St George flags throughout the summer and most recently outside parliament—people for whom the Palestinian cause is anathema.

Whatever Starmer's motive for referring to his country in that way, there was no denying the underwhelming delivery. For those parts of the nation that are falling, yet again, under the malign spell of Nigel Farage, there is a yearning for charisma which cannot be satisfied by quiet dignity. His every utterance seems to confirm the mystification of the pundits. No one really knows what makes Starmer tick.

Adding to his comms woes, Starmer has suffered two major crises in as many weeks, firstly with the loss of his deputy, Angela Rayner, over an unwitting avoidance of stamp duty on a Brighton flat, and then—more damaging —the loss of our man sent to lie abroad in Washington, Lord Peter Mandelson.

The teething problems, the U-turns, the designer glasses gifted by a rich peer, even the unedifying display of toadying to a new president, these might have been forgotten over time as the new regime bedded in, but the singular lack of judgment that led to giving Peter 'Mandy' Mandelson the top ambassadorial role despite his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein... this is likely to stick and prove as hard to recover from as the interview Prince Andrew gave to Emily Maitlis.

There is something about the association, however many times removed, with a super-rich convicted paedophile that can cast a pall over anyone's reputation. Without the charisma at his disposal to brazen this out, suddenly Starmer has dwindled to his actual size, which is less than prime ministerial stature. To see the peril this places him in, one only has to consider recent political history.

There are many verbal habits among political commentators in Britain. The Westminster bubble is one. Who makes the political weather is another. At times of turmoil in any party, they invariably refer to the more important characters as big beasts. These are the ones who, often belatedly, have acquired the charisma of being in the know. They are the ones who can pronounce with authority on the political fates of those who rule over us.

There is a similar tendency to refer to some actual beasts in the natural world as charismatic. They are the ones, such as tigers or elephants, that conservationists have no trouble persuading the public to protect. After a year in office, there's no doubt Keir Starmer still has the status of a big beast in the Labour Party. What is less certain is that he can summon the charisma to go with it.

Back in Labour's seemingly endless opposition days, which stretched over a decade, Conservative prime ministers came and went with remarkable frequency. These sudden changes at the top contributed to voters' growing distrust. The age of "the Cameroons"—David Cameron and George Osborne—soon gave way to the "Brexit means Brexit" tribulations of Theresa May after the referendum on membership of the European Union.

It's fair to say that, despite efforts to project her personality, which included dancing to an Abba tune at a conference, May was up against a charismatic force she could never hope to overcome in the shape of that rarity in politics, a man who shared the charisma of Bono or Madonna enough to earn himself a mononym: Boris.

Here was the blond Etonian beast who could promise to get Brexit done. Having translated himself from mayor of London to the back benches of the House of Commons, Boris set about disheveling his hair and neologising his way into Downing Street. His was a moment of Tory charisma becoming fully manifest: the king across the water, the bumptiously charming if insouciant Regency cad who would save the nation.

Then, out of the blue, Covid struck. Boris, apparently unshaken by the advent of a pandemic, both continued to party as every freeborn (Tory) Englishman is entitled to do, and managed to go down with the lurgy himself. But the virus didn't actually kill him. It was the parties that did for Boris.

After expending so much of his charisma that people started to call him Johnson, the Etonian chancer was replaced by Liz Truss, darling of the Tory membership, whose premiership failed to outlast the lettuce which, in a zany move, the Daily Star wagered would survive her. Soon after her chancellor spooked the markets and very nearly destroyed the economy, she was gone.

Truss was followed by Rishi Sunak, a previous Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was brought in to fix the economy again and therefore had no star qualities to speak of. Despite the fact that, for those with a long enough memory, his accent resembled that of Tony Blair, nothing else about Sunak hinted at charisma. Which, in truth, was his single best asset. If he'd had charisma, the people around him would have made sure he kept it concealed at all times.

Sunak's role was to calm the markets. He presented himself as a technocrat, the kind of individual who is parachuted into crisis situations to clear up the mess made by the charisma of their predecessor(s). But the sheer quantities of fetid charisma left lying about the place proved too much even for the most boring Tory prime minister in recent memory. Sunak announced a snap election at a lectern in Downing Street, and the heavens opened, drenching his nice new suit. No one bought the idea that a man who disdained the use of an umbrella had the competence to fix the economy.

Enter Sir Keir. By now, the Labour Party had their own shiny new technocrat. A brief and turbulent period under the left wing of the party had elevated a bearded old purist with all the cussedness and even some of the charisma of his long-forgotten hero, Tony Benn. Admittedly, Jeremy Corbyn's brand of star appeal was slightly glum. He was no orator and clearly hated journalists, which served to obscure the dazzle the Labour left attributed to him. Still, for a while, it was a promising experiment. Down in Glastonbury, it led to chants of support at the country's biggest music festival, where the nation's coolest cohort sang "Oh Je-rem-y Cor-byn!" to the tune of the White Stripes' 'Seven Nation Army'.

However, Corbyn's cool failed to defeat Theresa May at the ballot box. It was clear that the man who had briefly earned himself (among his fans at least) the mononym of Jezza was never going to restore the fortunes of the party.

His replacement was a man who had impressed everyone with his grasp of detail during the long parliamentary battles over Brexit, an articulate, sometimes witty human rights lawyer who knew his way around the dispatch box and was comfortable in his skin when attacking the incompetents on the Tory conveyor belt. He didn't have charisma, because look where that had got us. Instead, he promised a proper cleaning out of the Augean stable after the Tory beasts had departed. His name was Keir, in common with the founder of the Labour Party. Not Herculean, but something far more reassuring: a safe pair of hands.

The paradox at the heart of all this is the way people view charisma itself. There's no doubt when it appears. The world witnessed it in Soviet Russia, for instance, when the system threw up someone as charismatic as Stalin. He was followed, however, by a whole string of apparatchiks no one can remember the names of. The papacy has a similar habit of producing dull popes interspersed with the occasional charismatic figure, like Francis.

In the cases of the Kremlin and the Vatican, the general public has very little to do with the charisma quotient of the individuals who rise to power. In Britain, it is more in the gift of the public, but ultimately, it's the newspapers and other media who serve it up to them. The public, despite their better judgment, then falls for it over and over again.

Right now, this settled preference for charisma – the only thing which makes show business for ugly people worth watching—has bestowed the limelight on Nigel Farage. His Reform Party are topping the polls, drawing on a whole list of grievances and attributing them all to migration. Politics is always at its most charismatic when it has a simple agenda. The same phenomenon might explain the charisma of John Milton's Satan. He wants to make Lucifer great again. Blake famously claimed that the great puritan poet was 'of the Devil's party without knowing it.'

Accordingly, Farage is viewed with studied contempt by the established parties. His recent pronouncements on immigration have been roundly condemned as vicious and divisive. Even the Liberal Democrats, who are not known for using satire against their political foes, called him a 'plastic patriot' at their recent party conference and distributed a Farage-type Lego figure as a gift to journalists.

The leader of Reform UK is regularly portrayed as a beer-swilling, chain-smoking bigot. Once, a Bath pub only served him on condition that he supped his pint in the busy street outside. Yet, oddly enough, Farage shares the honour of being expelled from a Bath pub with, of all people, Keir Starmer. In the right-wing demagogue's case, the crowd of pundits and cameras that his charisma had attracted led to his expulsion. In the case of Sir Keir, a mere leader of the opposition at the time, there was no attendant press retinue. The publican just didn't share his politics.

Even his most liberal enemies admit that Nigel Farage is the most consistently influential political figure of our times. He was a chief engineer of Brexit and has outlasted numerous prime ministers. Far from being burnt out like them, he may be hitting his stride.

So, whoever it takes, the Labour Party may find its only chance of survival is to find a charismatic replacement for the present incumbent. Maybe that really is Andy Burnham. He has succeeded in Manchester, helping make it one of the few parts of the country with economic growth, while economic turnaround continues to elude national government. Neal Lawson, the chief executive of the thinktank Compass and co-founder of the new Labour grouping Mainstream, which Burnham endorses, says the mayor now "feels comfortable in his own skin and beliefs. I think that's instantly attractive whether you're on the left or the right."

Lawson believes the mayor of Manchester is the most plausible successor should Starmer fail. "There is no perfect leader, but in the existential crisis we're facing with the threat of the far right and the decline of the Labour party, a good leader is enough."

More to the point, Burnham has oodles of rizz. When he addressed a gala dinner last month, he was as coy as he could have been in a week when speculation about his future abounded. "I love this job," he said. "I am very happy where I am. I have no ambition to be ... ambassador to Washington."

The Guardian reported that "it was a gag that got a big laugh. Burnham has never played the game of pretending that he doesn't seek to enter Number Ten. But he also does not give the standard ambitious politician's response of saying that no vacancy is available. Instead, he takes a more honest approach: that he would not have run twice to be leader of the Labour Party if he didn't want the job."

He would first require a seat in parliament, however. And there are other big beasts who could be in the running. Wes Streeting is a confident performer with a mind of his own who might be able to tap into the charisma he has so far suppressed in cabinet, as Secretary of State for Health. The two women running to replace Angela Rayner as deputy prime minister—Lucy Powell, an ally of Burnham's, and Bridget Phillipson—also have the requisite skills and authenticity.

The one undeniable fact is that the fatal question is now being asked of Starmer. A glance across the Atlantic shows that charisma is fashionable there, more than ever, and is embodied by those with a gift for persuading people they are hearing what they already think. If enough people hear what they're already thinking from the likes of Farage, our dithering, soft-spoken, technocratic prime minister could end up emulating Rishi Sunak and offering his resignation at a rain-soaked lectern. Though—given his image as a safe pair of hands—he'll probably be armed with an umbrella.