Starmer Is Facing the Final Curtain as British Prime Minister

At the height of the Profumo ministerial sex scandal in 1963, the death knell was sounded on one of Britain’s most successful postwar prime ministers, Harold Macmillan, by a fellow Tory quoting a line from Robert Browning’s poem The Lost Leader: “Never glad confident morning again.” Nigel Birch’s intervention signaled the “glimmer of twilight” for his boss. Within three months he had departed No. 10 — and Macmillan was a political giant compared to current incumbent Keir Starmer.

It will never be glad confident morning again for Labour’s PM, as it rarely has been since he took office in July 2024. Macmillan looked like a man out of his time after six years in office and a decades long political career. Starmer has been in No. 10 for only 18 months and has already exhausted the credit of a landslide election victory. By admitting to the House of Commons this week that he was warned of Peter Mandelson’s continuing friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein before appointing him US ambassador, Starmer has placed himself on political Death Row.