The Curious Case of Sir Keir Starmer and the Vanishing Principles

Once a defender of the oppressed; now a defender of “public order.” Palestine Action banned, pensioners arrested, moral high ground foreclosed.

Oct 27, 2025

Let’s not beat around the jittery tea-table. Keir Starmer had a good run in law: his résumé includes some decent work—sure: representing clients in death-penalty cases in the Caribbean, assisting the McLibel campaign, etc. These aren’t nothing, but the iteration of his past that gets sold? Big. Very big. As though he was simultaneously rewriting the Geneva Conventions and juggling chainsaws of injustice. The reality: he did some good work. But among many lawyers doing good work. He wasn’t a solo Superman, more a member of team “Good Guys”. But when you switch from sera-cape-waving litigator to grey-suit PM, the music tends to change. And in Starmer’s case, the theme might as well be “Please hold for the next operator.”

The “Human-Rights Lawyer” Opening Credits

Starmer’s legal CV: definitely respectable. He built his reputation on civil-liberties cases, became DPP, hung around high-profile terrain. For a moment, it looked like the golden hand-shake from the courtroom to No 10 could be earned by virtue alone. But the version we are served — “Starmer the Great Defender of the Weak”, is more marketing buzz than mountain-moving reality.

Yes, he represented protestors. Yes, he argued hard. But so did countless others without headlines. His achievements are real. The hype? A little puffed. The narrative: shiny. The behind-the-scenes: far more incremental, far less headline-grabbing.

Sliding From Courage to Caution

So he swaps the wig and gown for the tie and smile. But here’s the the blunt truth: the boldness that once helped him stand up to large corporations seems to have been replaced by a fixation on not upsetting anyone. Not the billionaire donors. Not the entitled centre-ground voters. Not the boardrooms. The star-lawyer becomes the board-room’s favourite new recruit.

He backed his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn (sort of), only once the defeat was assured. That wasn’t maverick politics. That’s playing safe. And within Labour, he rewrote the rule-book: minimise member influence, curb the left flank, centralise power. The radical touch? Absent. The managerial glove? Very present.

Internal Coup Without the Rock-and-Roll

The fall of Corbyn was less seismic than surgical. Starmer didn’t storm the barricades—he assembled the blue-prints. He cleansed the party of unpredictability. He removed dissent like an uncomfortable stain from a well-pressed shirt. If you believed Labour was “of” the many and “for” the few, you might ask: which many? Which few?

The regime shift: from grassroots thunder to hush-room consensus. Starmer rode the wave of power, but with the finesse of a policy wonk rather than a movement leader. The fire-brand became the suits-and-tie man.

Rights, Freedoms and the Odd Blank Page

Here’s the kicker: the very guy whose brand started with human rights is now associated with some of the most heavy-handed British government moves in decades.

• His government proscribed Palestine Action — classified it a terrorist organisation alongside the very heavyweights of extremism. Many of those arrested? Pensioners with placards. Over 500 arrests.

• Freedom of protest? On standby. The reforms? Unmistakably right-wing: cuts to pensioner benefits, tougher immigration stances, pro-business foreign accords (yes, helloooo Saudi investment). The image of Starmer as champion of the weak? Let’s just say the calendar now lists “protecting rights” between tax policy reviews and investment board lunches.

So yes—Starmer talks about rights. But his government acts like rights are optional extras. A seasoning. Not the main meal.

And let’s not forget the foreign-policy side quest in this great morality play. The same man who once argued against death sentences abroad now manages to find Israel’s open-air imprisonment of Palestinians a bit complex, bless him. From his very first days in office, he clung to Tel Aviv’s script like a bureaucrat clutching a risk assessment: “We condemn Hamas.” Sure, fine—everyone condemned Hamas, but then… silence. Deafening, camera-friendly silence. Hospitals were being flattened, journalists killed, and aid convoys bombed, multiple times when marked as aid convoys in bright colours and massive words like “WORLD CENTRAL KITCHEN”, yet our “human rights” alumnus could barely summon a strongly worded sigh. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the atrocities; it’s that they didn’t poll well in marginal constituencies. When the public began marching in droves for a ceasefire, his instinct wasn’t moral leadership, it was optics management. Cue the banning of Palestine Action, cue the arrests of pensioners waving banners, cue the press releases about “public order.” Somewhere, between representing the oppressed and representing the establishment, Starmer misplaced his moral compass, probably in a donor’s jacket pocket. And when he finally recognised a Palestinian state, after months of outrage, international condemnation, and polling panic—it felt less like justice and more like damage control with a stupid flag emoji. The man once hailed as a crusader for rights now treats human suffering as a scheduling issue.

Just A Quick Note on the UK Voting System

Right, yes—the voting system: UK uses First-Past-the-Post (FPTP). One seat per constituency, the candidate with the most votes wins, even if they don’t have a majority of the total votes cast. Under Corbyn, Labour had big vote shares but fewer seats. Under Starmer, the pivot: win the right seats, keep the radicals in check, not overhaul the system. He didn’t fix FPTP, he mastered it.

The Far-Right Vacuum That Starmer Built

Irony o’clock: by neutralising his party’s left and presenting himself as the safe, steady alternative, Starmer created space for louder, more radical actors on the right. The Boris-Johnson-era chaos replaced by Starmer-era calm, but calm can breed complacency and dissatisfaction. When people feel unheard, they seek louder voices. And Starmer’s centrism might just hand them one.

What He’s Become

Starmer’s not incompetent. He’s clever. He’s disciplined. He’s very good at the game of Westminster. But leadership isn’t just winning. It’s changing. It’s burning white lines, not just colouring between them. The “lawyer-turned-people’s-champion” narrative has aged into “lawyer-turned-manager-in-waiting”. The hero origin remains but the sequel? A quietly efficient chief administrator.

And what of rights, protest, justice? They remain buzzwords. The deeds? Slippery. The pensioners? Feeling ignored. The protesters? Feeling (and actually being) criminalised. The movement? Mostly muted.

The Final Verdict: The Picture Doesn’t Match the Pitch

If you write up the transition: human-rights lawyer → Labour leader → Prime Minister, you’d expect a heroic arc. You got technical excellence → cautious strategy → safe governance. The pitch was “for the many, not the few.” The reality: “for the many who don’t ask too many questions.”

Starmer hasn’t failed because he’s rubbish. He hasn’t failed because he’s amoral. He’s failed because he lowered his moral ambitions while raising his administrative competence. From legal crusader to stable club captain. From rally-cry to board-meeting minutes. The story we were told was thunderous. The story we get is humdrum.

And in politics, humdrum rarely electrifies. It rarely demands loyalty. It rarely inspires. Instead it sates. And when people are satiated but not inspired, well… They leave. They look elsewhere. Loudly.

So here we are: Starmer, the man who once stood up for rights, now standing behind them, politely. Who once challenged the system, now runs it under safe settings. He’s not the villain. He’s worse: the token hero turned institutional cog. Manageable. Predictable. Lacking fire.

And in a world in which the loud fringe is gaining traction—thanks partly to the vacuum he created—that could come back to haunt him.

This article is part of a series. If you’d like me to examine other people or organisations whose public image and private reality diverge—drop your nominations.

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Once upon a time, the BBC was Britain’s national conscience in a cardigan: Reliable, dull and faintly educational. It was Radio 4 trapped in a teapot.

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Mitchell Hall

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"And in politics, humdrum rarely electrifies. It rarely demands loyalty. It rarely inspires. Instead it sates. And when people are satiated but not inspired, well… They leave. They look elsewhere. Loudly." Great paragraph. One of the best examples of writing i've read this year.

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The Curious Case of Sir Keir Starmer and the Vanishing Principles

Once a defender of the oppressed; now a defender of “public order.” Palestine Action banned, pensioners arrested, moral high ground foreclosed.

A Note on Subscriptions:

The BBC Goes Biblical

Discussion about this post