One last Starmer U-turn, then it’s over to Andy ‘less policy, more vibes’ Burnham

Keir Starmer’s latest U-turn has given John Crace one final opportunity to mock the former prime minister before attention turns to Andy Burnham and his supposed “less policy, more vibes” approach.

Only weeks earlier, Starmer had insisted that he would remain a member of Parliament until the next general election. Crace writes that everyone should therefore have expected him to leave at the earliest opportunity. U-turns, he says, had become a defining feature of Starmer’s two years in office.

The timing added another layer to the satire. Starmer chose to upstage the new prime minister just hours before that politician’s first appearance at the government dispatch box in 16 years. The new prime minister had also been plotting Starmer’s downfall for at least a year, according to the column.

Crace presents the departure as the kind of political spectacle that, in his telling, everyone would have wanted.