Keir’s farewell

Interestingly Samwan, the Good Law Project had a Facebook post that echoed what you were saying.
Morgan McSweeney got a few mentions.

Out of interest … will you call John Healy ‘John from accounts’?

I have never understood why he took those gifts.
Just don't, anyone, just don't.

That article sums Keir Starmer up perfectly. He was the most dreadful PM, worse than the previously dreadful incumbents. Thanks goodness you can now look ahead with at least a hint of optimism and a half decent leader.

The Morning Star does at least know what a woman is.

67notout

I always disliked that Rachel from accounts tag, very demeaning and frankly the kind of thing women have had to put up with from men and the media for years/decades. I particularly disliked it when women friends of mine were using the tag.

I agree. I also dislike deliberate mispelling of names or making up names E.G Millibrain instead of Milliband. It just looks childish to me.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

I just think so many of the LP had their knives out for KS tgat some of the back slapping and cheering seemed disingenuous really. Maybe suddenly some felt emotional because they felt a tad guilty?

More than a tad guilty I would say. What a load of hypocrites they are.

watermeadow

I felt so sorry for Keir Starmer, a good and decent man who was so unfit for his post and will be remembered as yet another failure at the top job.

This is so patronising.
There were several reasons why he left, but having failed at his job wasn't one of them.

The Morning Star ! No thank you

I will always maintain that she was under far more scrutiny as a woman than a male Chancellor would have had.

I always disliked that Rachel from accounts tag, very demeaning and frankly the kind of thing women have had to put up with from men and the media for years/decades. I particularly disliked it when women friends of mine were using the tag.

The Morning Star is a communist newspaper with a small circulation. Their biased views are of no interest to me.

Written by the Morning Star! Well, they would say that wouldn’t they. An orgy of grifting? A few clothes and a pair of glasses….

Editorial from the Morning Star

This sums up Starmer as leader and PM for me perfectly.

ON FRIDAY Keir Starmer will leave the leadership of the Labour Party, having debased and disgraced the office over his six-year tenure.

Whatever hopes and fears there may be concerning his successor, Andy Burnham, it would be near impossible for the new leader to be as bad as the outgoing one.

Starmer was elected on a fraudulent prospectus, posing as a supporter of Jermey Corbyn with added “competence” when he was no such thing.

He soon revealed himself to be an entrenched rightwinger, who discarded all the policies and commitments on which he had stood for election.

He also discarded the coalition of voters that Corbyn’s leadership had assembled in 2017 and secured even fewer votes in 2024 that Corbynism did at its 2019 nadir.

Instead he handed the party over to the most bitter and malicious rightwingers, thirsting for revenge against the left.

The most authoritarian Labour leader ever, his tenure was marked by expulsions, witch-hunts, the withdrawal of the whip from dissenting MPs and the marginalisation of the membership.

His initial mendacity and deceit shaped everything that happened since, marking him out as untrustworthy and politically incoherent.

His predilection for falsehoods stayed with him to the end. At his last Prime Ministers Questions in the Commons he smeared Labour under Corbyn as having been found “institutionally antisemitic.” No such finding was ever made.

Just two weeks ago he claimed he had inherited a bankrupt party. False again.

Having failed so spectacularly as prime minister, it seems that Starmer can only find consolation in smearing his predecessor, who was everything he is not in terms of principle and conviction.

Nor was he competent. It is now acknowledged that he failed to make any preparations for government, despite it being evident from 2022 at least that a Labour victory was certain.

So he had blundered from U-turn to U-turn, launching attacks on working people only to be forced to retreat under mass pressure.

He has hewed close to Treasury and City orthodoxy in economics while backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, sabre-rattling against Russia and pandering to Donald Trump.

At home, he has extended authoritarianism by every measure, from proscribing Palestine Action to curbing jury trials to clamping down on the right to protest.

The future of our economy and social provision has been mortgaged to a massive arms build-up.

And, like Boris Johnson before him, Starmer has been up to his neck in sleaze.

In opposition he claimed epic expenses. Then he took free clothing, glasses, accommodation and tickets from millionaire Waheed Alli in an orgy of grifting, even as he was slashing winter fuel benefit for pensioners.

He was finally undone by appointing Peter Mandelson, already known to be a close friend of convicted financier and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and an intimate of sundry oligarchs, as ambassador to Washington.

A brazenly factional move, it led to the departure of Starmer’s consigliere Morgan McSweeney, without whom he lost whatever capacity to govern that he had to begin with.

The damage he has done to the Labour Party is immense and lasting. Even by David Lammy’s diminished standards to declare this week that Starmer will be remembered as “a giant of the labour movement” was a remarkably stupid encomium.

He will be remembered in fact as Labour’s least successful prime minister since Ramsay MacDonald, who at least had the distinction of being the first, and its most dishonest and undemocratic leader ever.

Starmer was one thing only — a loyal servant of the bourgeois state. When he steps down today, the air is at least a little cleaner in the labour movement.

The dreaded trump won’t be happy to see the Mayor of London made a Lord! Good. I am pleased that someone is being sent to the Lords who actually deserves it. Can anyone remember the young woman who Boris J recommended a peerage for? Apparently we aren’t allowed to talk about it! She was only 29 and I think worked in the Cabinet Office at a not particularly high level. Bizarre. But Sadiq Khan - yes very well deserved.

On 19 June 2025, Keir Starmer set out the roles and responsibilities of all parties involved in making nominations to the House of Lords.

www.theyworkforyou.com/wms/?id=2025-06-19.hcws718.h

This includes providing citations that clearly set out to the public why an individual has been nominated to the House of Lords. I expect party leaders to take full responsibility for properly considering the suitability and quality of their nominations, including whether nominees have the skills, ability and willingness to contribute to the work of the House and a commitment to high standards in public life.

You can read the citations here for nominations made by Starmer (including the citation for Sadiq Khan), Badenoch and Davey plus the nominations for crossbench peers.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a58d0643ae256c99b702f01/Political_Peerages_July_2026_-_Citations.pdf

14. The Rt Hon Sir Sadiq Khan - Mayor of London and former Member of Parliament for Tooting. Sir Sadiq is the Mayor of London, first elected in 2016 and re-elected for a historic third term in 2024. He is the first Muslim Mayor of a major Western capital and has led London through significant challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, terrorist attacks and the climate emergency. Under his leadership, London has expanded affordable housing, introduced free school meals, increased youth provision, transformed public transport including the completion of the Elizabeth Line, and introduced the world's largest clean air zone. Before becoming Mayor, Sadiq was a councillor and MP for Tooting. He has held various Ministerial positions, attending Cabinet as Minister of State for Transport. The son of a bus driver and a seamstress, he grew up on a council estate, working as a prominent human rights lawyer before entering politics. He remains an advocate for social justice, equality, and the role of cities in tackling global challenges.

What is this citation indicates that the appointment is stupid?

GrannyGravy13

Tuliptree The Guardian is reporting that KS has appointed SK as a Lord, making him eligible to join AB’s Cabinet

What’s that got to do with it not being a resignation honours list? I know what’s being said

Tuliptree The Guardian is reporting that KS has appointed SK as a Lord, making him eligible to join AB’s Cabinet

Primrose53

The stupidity of making Sadiq Khan a Lord deserves a thread of its own.

Well start one and explain your opinion to us then please.

semperfidelis

There is no evidence whatever that Rachel Reeves has had a hatred of older people.

Indeed - if she did how can it be explained that she left the ISA limit at £20,000 for older people but it’s going down to £12,000 for everyone else?

There is no evidence whatever that Rachel Reeves has had a hatred of older people.

The stupidity of making Sadiq Khan a Lord deserves a thread of its own.

GrannyGravy13

In June 2023 Keir Starmer said if he ever became PM he would never dish out resignation honours

He has changed his mind, again…

It’s not his resignation honours list. There’s always a list of new peers every July. For some reason the resignation honours list is always months after the actual resignation. Perhaps KS won’t issue one then - but let’s wait and see before rushing in to condemn him for something he hadn’t actually done yet.

MawsRosie

He never was Sir Khan but Sir Sadiq

Yes Maw I am useless at multitasking 🤦‍♀️

He never was Sir Khan but Sir Sadiq