Believe it or not, but Keir Starmer, despite being the most unpopular prime minister in Great Britain since records began, was not the worst of the six leaders the country has entertained since 2016. Rachel Reeves might have been the worst Chancellor of the Exchequer ever, as much as an inch above Gideon George Osborne (who was Chancellor from 2010 to 2016), but Starmer cannot outmatch the sabotage inflicted by Theresa May and Boris Johnson, the most supreme kickers of gift horses’ mouths of this era.

Theresa May was a LazyBoy in a non-American household – breaks down frequently, with a mechanical whine and no chance of blending in with other furniture. Hers is a story of over-judicialisation – one example will endure.

The data couldn't be clearer when it comes to the last two decades of knife crime: records from 2017 indicate that of the arrests in London for possession of knives, 53% were black (black Londoners account for around 13% of the city). A wider scope confirms that black people are also the largest victim group in relation to stabbings. This is a problem that has long stalked the police and black families (spiking in the mid-2000s).

As Home Secretary under David Cameron, Theresa May wasn’t happy with the stop-and-search functions of police, irrespective the threat. So, she changed the guidance and ultimately scrapped a demonstrably successful mitigant proven to avert tragedy. Worse, she then went on a victory lap, claiming at a party conference that the policy existed – in The Office’s David Brent pandering style – “just because they were black”.

In 2023, May sat with another former Member of Parliament (MP), Ruth Davidson, on the subject of May’s first book.

“Are you woke?” Davidson asked May.

“Yes,” May answered, “I am woke, and proud of being woke.” She then rattled off a list of luxury beliefs, ranging from net zero to climate change to transgenders.

Worse Than Starmer

May and Johnson were worse than Starmer inthe same way Great Britain’s decline is more tragic than South Africa’s: what these two leaders had and what they squandered is a greater loss and a bigger threat to a country uninitiated in the arts of state-proofing.

Boris Johnson was the most successful hoodwinker in modern British political history. Some years ago, a former colleague told me a story.

Johnson’s time as editor of The Spectator included standard Johnson behaviour – i.e., having extramarital affairs and drinking too much. It also coincided with a bump in fame – he was now invited onto television shows and soon, to address groups as a paid speaker. On one occasion, Johnson woke up pig-drunk on a day he was due to give a speech for which he had already been paid, but couldn’t bear the type of hangover he was about to experience. So, he called his father, and got him to go and speak instead.

In June 2021, Johnson hosted the G7 summit in Cornwall, one of the country’s most beautiful regions, to which South Africa had been invited as a guest. His first mistake was to butcher President Cyril Ramaphosa’s name – fortunately some Canadian village’s lost idiot called Justin Trudeau was lurking around the vicinity, on hand to enthusiastically correct Johnson, before sitting back smugly: “See, I down with the brothers.”

As was his way, Johnson was unprepared for the occasion, not helped by a wandering Joe Biden who’d been heard asking, “Where are the Irish?” Johnson’s second mistake occurred in full view of the world's cameras: “When we build this world back from Covid,” he remarked to leaders, “I’d really like to build it in a more … gender fluid way.” Nobody responded – not even Trudeau, gender fluidity’s most excitable volunteer. Few spoke about the comments afterwards, an indication of a nation’s pleading hope that the sequence was a deepfake.

Opportunity

May inherited an opportunity to break with the past and chart a new course. She bottled it. Johnson then inherited the same, this time with a significant parliamentary majority – and he too failed. No biographer of either’s terms has ever emphasised just how much these people lost from what they had – rippling failures that would set future conditions for a farcical theatre of succession ending on Monday with Keir Starmer.

Starmer was, on good days, an average MP, who – but for exposure to north London’s excesses – should never have been considered. At most he would have been admired by 100 000 people, roughly the combined populations of Primrose Hill, Muswell Hill, and Kentish Town, plus the suburban west inhabited by right-on boomers. An astute leader, noting his taste for ruthlessness, would have holed him up as chair of the party’s internal disciplinary committee in 2010, ruining his ambition by feeding him wayward members to torture with procedure.

That is not to say he was a failure in the sense of May or Johnson: one glance at the declining numbers of immigration – the country’s enduring obsession – reveals levels last witnessed in 1993. This is largely due to the competence of Shabana Mahmood, Starmer’s Home Secretary. Cynics will argue that a non-white woman would be the only candidate to chase non-white people out, or that she’s been aided by an economy no longer interested in growth. These views ignore Mahmood’s intelligence and her ability to slice through the permanent bureaucracy. Starmer appointed her, and she delivered.

Not Around For Long

Liz Truss didn’t stick around for long. Her successor, Rishi Sunak, was the pill slipped into the party’s end-of-life care. What had emerged during May and Johnson’s terms was denial, then chronic delusion, attached to unwillingness to acknowledge what exactly makes Great Britain so ungovernable and uninvestable.

That is what Starmer left with. His resignation speech was filled with fantasies of accomplishments, every one highly contestable, perhaps the truest inheritance of failure.