FOR A long time, the accusation levelled against me by some of my more centrist colleagues was that I have been disloyal to Keir Starmer. That I should look on him with affection because he was the driving force in masterminding my election as the MP for Alloa and Grangemouth.

I always viewed that as insulting to my Constituency Labour Party and the dedicated activists and campaigners who came out to knock doors for me in the winter, spring and early summer of 2024.

The assertion from Starmer that it was “his” Labour Party has always sat uncomfortably with me.  

It is no more his as it is any of our members. It was an arrogant, ignorant and insensitive comment to make and opinion to hold.

My local party members went out out in all weathers in the run-up to the general election because they believe that the Labour Party is the best vehicle we have to build a fairer and more equal society. As long-standing members, they have had their share of heavy and heartbreaking defeats.

Many of those members lived through the dark days of the Thatcher years, and not just the period of her time as prime minister. They remember when, as education secretary, she abolished the free provision of milk in schools.

The nickname of “Margaret Thatcher, Milk Snatcher” stuck way beyond when she left No 10 with tears streaming down her cheeks, crying not because of any guilt at the suffering and degradation she inflicted on working-class communities, nor in the gross inequality her greed-is-good economic policies created, but because her ideology had finally been rejected by her own ministers and that power was taken from her after near 12 years.

I can only speculate that Starmer’s tears when he announced his resignation were because of him feeling a sense of betrayal from those closest to him, and not because of any self-reflection he may have undertaken.  

His wooden demeanour and dour authoritarianism, the initial policy mistakes and the subsequent U-turns, and of course, the scandals — whether that be free spectacles, clothes, hospitality tickets to the football or the legacy defining political misjudgement in appointing Peter Mandelson, the friend and apologist of the world’s most notorious and prolific paedophile — all contributed to Starmer being the least popular prime minister in living memory.  

Perhaps Starmer’s tears were that of relief, that for him his nightmarish time as prime minister is nearly over.

What I do know is that there will be no thanks coming from me for his service. No empty praise that so many have indulged in saying he is “a decent man.”

There was no decency when he announced that Israel had the right to withhold power and water from Palestinian civilians. Under his premiership, Starmer has been complicit in allowing Israel to commit ethnic cleansing, war crimes that break international law and a genocide.

Domestically, Starmer gushed in his praise of Thatcher and her “letting loose Britain’s natural entrepreneurialism” — something that no Labour leader should ever have done — and as well as the tears outside Downing Street, he has found himself with something else in common with the Iron Lady.  

Just as her milk snatcher nickname hung around, so will the “Sir Kid Starver” moniker. The lifting of the two-child benefit cap perfectly encapsulates the round-the-houses manner Starmer’s government ultimately got to the right position on issues.  

Lifting hundreds of thousands of kids out of poverty should have been a day one achievement of this Labour government. In failing to do that Starmer showed that he would not provide the transformative change the country needed and voted for.  

Then in immediately suspending Labour MPs for their dissent, it also gave a glimpse into the draconian nature of how he wanted to run the Parliamentary Labour Party.  

As his final days in office as prime minister and party leader end, Starmer’s final insult to Labour members was in the claim that the party was financially, morally and politically bankrupt.  

The party’s finances were not in a perilous position. Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership there was a huge increase in membership to nearly 600,000 people. To suggest that the party was in financial trouble is wrong.

Neither was the Labour Party morally bankrupt. The previous leadership set up the first inquiry into antisemitism and from the inquiry commissioned by Starmer undertaken by Martin Forde KC, it uncovered that the disciplinary process of dealing with antisemitism was used as a weapon by the faction in control of the NEC.  

And as for political bankruptcy, I have touched on more than enough examples already.  

Starmer leaves behind a Labour government that in just two years, has burned through nearly all the goodwill we had after winning the general election.  

Starmer has alienated much of our core support and abandoned sections of society that have always looked to a Labour government for help. While I am glad that Starmerism is over, we do not have the luxury of time. We must be a real Labour government that will live by real Labour values. — the values that I as a member of the party, and hundreds of thousands like me hold dear and will always be loyal to.