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We're all paying for Starmer's obstinacy - it's trouble if he stays but double if he goes
Reach Daily Express | May 13, 2026 4:39 AM CST

Philosophers have an annoying habit of throwing up life's huge imponderables, in the full knowledge they have no truly satisfactory answer.

Aristotle asked "what is a good life?", Descartes questioned "what is consciousness?" while Joe Strummer inquired "should I stay, or should I go now?" in his punk classic.

Strummer, of course, followed up with the ominous qualifier "if I go there will be trouble, if I stay it will be double."

A statement as profound as it is troubling.

And it is Strummer of course with whom we should be concerning ourselves today; If Starmer goes there will indeed be trouble, but if he stays there will arguably be double. The Great British public and the once great British economy is shafted either way.

Meanwhile, the elected leader of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and several of his hostile cohorts, play No10 Hokey Cokey. Will Starmer's left(y) leg be in or out this time tomorrow?

A crisis cabinet meeting was held this morning and many of Starmer's colleagues poured out of the door of No10 each confirming with truly am-dram earnestness that they had the Prime Minister's back.

History suggests that at times like this colleagues usually have the back of lame duck PM to more easily facilitate the insertion of a knife... which is surely coming.

And yet predicting the demise of a sitting PM is a fool's errand.

Some years ago I was at an entirely different newspaper when two chaps called Tony Blair and Gordon Brown fell out. I ran a front page headline proclaiming in 72-point Helvetica that Blair had "Only Hours To Go" such was the certainty of the impending immediacy of his departure.

Technically I was correct. It was just that the number of "hours to go" ran to about 5,000 as he clung on for another six or seven months.

(Luckily back then news stories rapidly became chip paper so my journalistic shame is largely lost to history).

Point being, that despite this morning's hack feeding frenzy outside Downing Street, it is hard not to feel history may be about to repeat itself.

Days and weeks of bluster and wind from various factions of the party, talk of challenges from the disgraced Rayner, the wildly ambitious Streeting, and of course Burnham who has the teeniest handicap of not actually being a Labour MP.

All have come to nothing.

All of which is pant-wettingly exciting to the London-centric chattering classes, journos, commentators, politicos, you know the type. A real-life Westminster version of The Traitors.

But it is fury-inducing to the rest of the country, who would just like to see someone in charge, just once, who gave the appearance of actually knowing what he or she was doing and actually giving a crap about Britain.

Because this isn't just some political panto (where's your career Keir? It's behiiiiiiind you!) it is poison to Britain.

There has been much talk of things like "30 year gilts edging up" which means as much to most people as saying "Wingardium Leviosa Expelliarmus".

All you need to know is that when Britain's political landscape looks like a WW1 battlefield, would-be foreign investors run for the nearest exit door, mortgages go up, businesses are hit, and we all have less money in our pockets.

The high-octane Downing St drama which is manna for political reporters is strychnine for Britain's economy.

But right now we find ourselves in unchartered political territory - it is impossible to say what will be more destabilising for the economy (and thus for Britain) Starmer staying or Starmer going.

Of course what seems alarmingly opaque to the Labour Party (and indeed chattering classes generally) yet crystal clear to everyone else is that last week's wholesale rejection of Labour was not a call for a leadership change in any way shape or form.

Most voters couldn't give a toss about the internal pearl clutching of this all-at-sea Labour Party.

What they wanted was a change of Government. But the mechanics of Britain's political system don't really allow for this eventuality.

However, the King's Speech is the big set-piece political event tomorrow, and, as reigning monarch, King Charles does have the power to kick out the Government and force a general election.

You don't think... ?!


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