Oops! Starmer became Prime Minister by mistake
JVL Introduction
We tend to avoid conspiracy theories but the work of Labour Together (sic) behind the scenes to get Starmer elected as Leader of the Labour Party was too obvious to dismiss and clearly conspiracy fact. But it was only meant to be temporary, for him to be Leader for another period in opposition. But they “got it wrong”, largely by failing to see how capable the Tories were of self destruction, provides scant comfort. For those of us on the left a Wes Streeting premiership holds no more appeal than what we now have with Keir Starmer.
The plotting, doubtless, continues and Streeting is somehow managing to both be at the heart of government and separate from the Downing Street “cabal”. But, as argued in this article, a Party with ambition and no vision is doomed to failure. People want honesty and transparency and really do deserve better.
LL
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Thu 13 Nov 2025. Read the original here.
Starmer’s backers never meant him to be prime minister – his leadership was doomed from the start
His alliance with the party’s anti-Corbyn faction was a shotgun marriage that totally lacked vision. Now Labour is paying the price
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What staggers me about the factionalists’ preferred candidates for Labour’s leadership is how devoid of talent they ALL are.
It’s a risky business organising a putsch. Each time you do it, your treachery is more likely to be exposed and punished; and you harm the resources and organisation you’re aiming to capture. Even if you need to act fast to stop what would be disaster for you (eg Corbyn’s leadership becoming unassailable), how come there was no-one better than Eagle, Smith, Starmer and now -perhaps – Streeting to back as your candidate?
Perhaps the factionalists have very much less support in the Labour party than we’d feared? They’ve effectively seized the levers of party control … and that’s ALL they’ve been able to do?
Is there is now a chance of a considerable part of the councillors and MPs who are nominally “Labour” returning to progressive politics as battle-hardened new “Greens”, SNPs, YPs, etc?
The LP has always been an alliance. When Starmer and the right wing kicked out ‘the left’ by weaponising phoney antisemitism, they destroyed the alliance. The activists who were the soul of the party have gone into hibernation. Its support has collapsed. All you have left is fairly incompetent careerists. When parties come to be rejected there are usually many reasons for the discontent – BUT they all rally around the one thing that everyone can agree on that is so blatant that being oppposed to it is universal. That issue is Gaza. When political parties lose their moral bearing this becomes the issue that unifies discontent.
May I suggest this book to all comrades:
“Keir Starmer, Labour Together, and the Crisis of British Democracy”
Author: Paul Holden.
Published: November 2025.
Paperback.
Available from OR Books:
https://orbooks.com/catalog/the-fraud/
It’s an amazing expose of the relationship between “Labour Together”, the Labour bureaucracy and particularly the role of McSweeney in engineering the anti-Semitism “Crisis”, about undeclared donations of hundreds of thousands of pounds, and the intimate workings of the campaign to promote Starmer to defeat the left. Its specific details of how this campaign was deliberately engineered is concerning and revealing at the same time. It details the role of Eagle and Nandy [amongst others ], and their role in the manufacturing of lies and deception.
I couldn’t put the book down. I genuinely recommend it.
Paul Holden is interviewed about his book by Owen Jones on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwiDLh1NLuY