01/09/2026
Keir Starmer took the biggest Labour majority in a generation and, in twenty-three months, turned it into a national wreck. That is not misfortune. That is what he did with power.
He walked into Downing Street in July 2024 with 411 seats. By June 2026 his own party had pushed him out. He is now slinking out of Parliament as well. No other Labour prime minister has collapsed this fast.
Weeks after the election he stripped the winter fuel payment from around ten million pensioners. Then he and Reeves piled on tens of billions in tax rises, including a huge employer National Insurance raid, after telling the country they would not hammer working people. Growth was supposed to be the mission. Unemployment still rose. Living standards barely moved. Farmers were threatened with an inheritance tax raid until the revolt forced another humiliating U-turn.
He cut winter fuel for British pensioners while signing a deal to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius and pay billions, estimates from £3.4 billion to claims of tens of billions, to rent back a military base Britain already controlled. He appointed Peter Mandelson ambassador to Washington despite the Epstein association. He oversaw early prisoner releases because the system was bursting. He talked tough on borders while the country still seethed over hotels, small boats and social cohesion.
In May 2026 the verdict arrived in public: Labour lost nearly 1,500 council seats. Reform surged. Wales was lost after 27 years. His personal ratings hit historic lows. The party that had just been given a landslide decided he was no longer fit to lead it into the next election.
He did not inherit chaos and restore order. He inherited a mandate and squandered it on U-turns, freebies rows, a deadening lack of purpose, and decisions that treated the public as an afterthought. The damage to trust, to the public finances, to the sense that government exists for the people who live here is not a footnote. It is the record.
That is why the word traitor fits for a lot of people: not because he sold secrets, but because he was given the country and left it weaker, poorer in spirit, and more fractured than he found it. Unforgivable is the right word for that.
