Critics assail Starmer’s support of Israel’s genocide on Gaza, his government’s terrorist proscription of Palestine Action and his neglect of the working class, Brad Reed reports.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer during a press conference at his executive office in No. 10 Downing Street, London, last week. (Lauren Hurley / No 10/ Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
By Brad Reed
Common Dreams
U.K, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced his resignation Monday, less than two years after his Labour Party swept into power in a landslide election.
In his resignation speech, Starmer said that he was stepping down because members of his party did not feel he was the best choice to lead them into the next general election, with polls showing the far-right anti-immigration Reform Party currently on track to receive the most votes.
Starmer also said that whomever is chosen as his successor “will inherit a Britain that is far stronger and fairer than the one I inherited two years ago, better prepared for the challenges ahead and better able to ensure the Labour Party secures a second term in office.”
Starmer’s progressive critics disputed this characterization of his governance, which they said has done little more than legitimize the far right.
Specifically, critics pointed to the Labour government’s continued support of Israel in its genocidal assault on Gaza, its decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist group, and its efforts to court far-right voters by restricting immigration as some of its most destructive actions.
Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said that Starmer had wasted the large majority that Labour had won and had done little if anything to improve the lives of the U.K. working class.
“Keir Starmer could have ended child poverty, homelessness and the grotesque levels of inequality in this country,” Corbyn wrote. “Instead, he abandoned those in need, destroyed our civil liberties, and facilitated genocide in Gaza. That is how this prime minister will be remembered — and that is the legacy of moral and political bankruptcy he leaves behind.”
Starmer, left, and Corbyn, then leader of the U.K. Labour Party, at a 2019 press conference. (Jeremy Corbyn/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 2.0)
Corbyn added that “getting rid of Keir Starmer is not enough,” as “we need to get rid of the politics he represents: corporate greed, anti-migrant rhetoric, and endless war.”
Member of Parliament Zarah Sultana, a former Labour MP who has since joined Corbyn’s Your Party, noted after watching the prime minister’s speech that “the most emotion Keir Starmer has shown is over losing his job, not enabling the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
“Good riddance,” Sultana said. “His next stop should be The Hague.”
Sultana speaking in the House of Commons in June 2025. (House of Commons/ Flickr/ CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party, predicted that Starmer’s premiership would be remembered entirely negatively.
“Bills up. Wages too low,” Polanski wrote on X, summarizing life in the U.K. under Starmer’s leadership: “Record profits for oil and gas. Fifty richest families with more wealth than 50% of population. Shit in our rivers. Pensioners jailed for protesting. Migrants thrown under the bus. Supporting a genocide. That’s Starmer’s legacy.”
Bills up.
Wages too low.
Record profits for Oil & Gas.
50 richest families with more wealth than 50% of population.
Shit in our rivers.
Pensioners jailed for protesting.
Migrants thrown under the bus.
Supporting a Genocide.
That’s Starmer’s legacy.
— Zack Polanski (@ZackPolanski) June 22, 2026
Journalist Owen Jones delivered a similarly scathing assessment.
“Keir Starmer lied through his teeth to become Labour leader,” Jones wrote. “He justified Israeli war crimes, arrested opponents of genocide, attacked pensioners, disabled people, and migrants, pocketed freebies, crushed dissent, and threw others under the bus to save himself. History damns him.”
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis delivered a lengthy rundown of Starmer’s failures as prime minister, arguing that he “was not merely a disappointment” but “a mendacious figure of ethical decrepitude, a man who won the Labour Party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning.”
“History will remember Mr. Starmer as a man without conviction,” Varoufakis wrote, “a prime minister who offers not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. He is ethically decrepit because he had chosen, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. Good riddance, I say.”
Brad Reed is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
The views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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So Starmer quits. Meanwhile, what about the guy who started the biggest war in Europe since WWII, wiping out huge swaths of Ukraine and killing 250,000 of his own soldiers (so far), driving millions of civilians out of their homes while denying the right to exist of the country he is attacking? He is still in his “job”.
The guy who started the biggest war in Europe since WWII is in retirement somewhere in Delaware. (He had help from previous U.S. administrations).
Far right Reform party. Give us a break, 20 years ago what they are saying was accepted wisdom. Control your borders, select who you want in the country, control the spending and debt, law and order that is not biased in one direction. Basic stuff you need to do to have a functioning country. After years of what you call progressive we do not have a functioning country.
The sooner he is relegated to the dustbin of history, the better. He was/is an utter failure – as a leader, a politician, and a human being.
No wonder Larry the No. 10 Cat can’t stand him!
Starmer was a Blairite manufactured droid so is Burnham. The only hope for the UK are the Greens who most former Labour voters have already moved to. If there is an election the morally bankrupt Labour & Tory parties will lose badly as most voters hate them both. The ‘winners’ will be the 2 protest parties, Reform & the Greens. The UK is spiralling into an economic & social abyss due to 47 years of neoliberal economic policies by both Tory & Labour governments. As Thatcher observed that Tony Blair & ‘New’ Labour were her ‘greatest creation’. Until Labour is destroyed there cannot be a socialist alternative as Labour is ‘Tory Lite’.
An arrest warrant should be initiated International Criminal Court of Justice for Starmer… for enabling Crimes Against Humanity in Gaza… and the same for Trump.
“People get the government they deserve, and they deserve to get it good and hard.” – H.L. Menken
And you’re getting it good and hard as you lapped up the, “Corbyn is an anti-Semite” and turned instead to the likes of Boris, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, and the next sociopath in the wings. In the near future Farage and Reform will cement in the history books what the true soul of the UK has always been. I wonder if the ghosts of all those destroyed by “the Empire” are watching the demise with glee.
Starmer’s government also opposed nuclear disarmament and deliberately sought to prolong and escalate the war in the Ukraine.
His demand that British troops should act as ‘peacekeeping’ troops in the Ukraine after the war is over seems to me to be a deliberate attempt to prevent a settlement. No Russian leader is going to agree to that given Britain’s role in the conflict.
Any working class person in the UK who does not vote socialist is a fool. Have they learned nothing? Guess not, since they still support the parasitical existence of the “Royal Family” of grifters.
You are aware that the only self declared socialist party in the UK is Starmer’s Labour ?
The socialist Labour party, infested by zionists, actively supports genocide in the ME and the destruction of Ukraine, it actively supports the destruction of peoples democratic rights.
This is what you suggest the fools should vote for ? There are NO socialist parties in the UK.
Re. “to court far-right voters by restricting immigration”, to be clear this statement is false.
Neither Starmer or any of the previous ‘leaders’ have done anything to restrict immigration, quite the opposite.
The only thing Starmer and his predecessors have done is to reclassify immigrants and increase the ways that immigrants can enter the UK ‘legally’. For example, as care workers or health professionals, whilst restricting the ability of the indigenous population to work in these professions.
Starmer and his government have robbed the third world of its talent to increase the profits of UK industry.
“The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), England and Wales’ public prosecutor, has no knowledge of what records it has destroyed related to its previous head Keir Starmer, it can be revealed. […] Starmer made trips to Washington in 2009, 2011, 2012 and 2013 at a cost to the British taxpayer of £21,603. It was his most frequent foreign destination while in post and included a meeting with the US Attorney General. Starmer served as DPP from 2008-13, a period when the body was overseeing Julian Assange’s proposed extradition to Sweden to face questioning over sexual assault allegations [for more information on the comparable destruction of evidence in Sweden, see Kevin Gosztola, “Swedish Prosecutors Destroyed Assange Documents,” The Dissenter, Feb. 3, 2023]. During Starmer’s time in post, the CPS was marred by irregularities surrounding the case of the WikiLeaks founder, destroying key emails related to the Assange case, mostly covering the period when Starmer was in charge.”
Source:
Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis, “CPS Doesn’t Know What Records It Destroyed Related to Keir Starmer’s Washington Trips,” Declassified UK, Oct. 9, 2023
As head of the CPS Starmer also provided legal cover for the infamous abuser Jimmy Savile , friend of police, politicians and the monarchy (Charles). The rot goes deep with Starmer, as it does with many of his ilk.
And he cried his “crocodile tears” after his resignation.
Thanks for the reminder.
Starmer’s abuse of British justice is exemplified by the treatment of Assange and the anti-genocide protestors.
Britain is now a decrepit, immoral caricature of a democracy.
How the mighty have fallen.
But still they beg for war with Russia, so they have not yet reached their nadir.
The next PM may decide to temper his rhetoric around the issues that led to Starmer’s resignation, but I would bet his policies will remain the same. The Western “democracies” are in the clutches of bankers and investors who care not a whit about those on the receiving end of their fascist policies. It’s all about expanding unfettered capitalism to keep the ruling class living like gods at the expense of the rest of humanity and other life forms on this threatened planet. What a stupid outdated world view.
And Starmer’s replacement will be no different. Democracy has been hi-jacked by lobby groups controlling political parties. It is so much simpler than controlling an electorate. A strategy proven in the USA and now being exported to the rest of the European world.
His support of zionism, israel and genocide has cost him his leadership. Just as the same thing cost Harris the election. Couldn’t have happened to nicer people.
Their blindness to the suffering of the Palestinians turned against them. Good.
Poetic justice since he was part of the plot to remove Jeremy Corbyn, using ‘alleged’ antisemitism as the weapon. Now, his support for that evil state has backfired on him! Serves him right.
Starmer actually had the nerve to say this in his ‘leaving speech’ :
“He had “inherited a Labour Party that was politically, financially and morally bankrupt” when he took over in 2020, adding: “I was told, time and time again, that my party was finished.”
The Party was in far better financial shape under Corbyn and as for morals, Starmer wouldn’t know them if he fell over them. He was right on one thing though, IMHO the Labour Party is finished, but its destruction started once Starmer and the likes of Labour Together started their plot to remove Corbyn.
Although not as enmeshed in Labour Together as Starmer, Burnham is from the same stable and I don’t hold out great hopes….