Two years after winning in a
landslide, with his Labour group being given its largest majority in Parliament
in decades, PM Starmer found himself polling as the least favored PM on record
and was forced by the political reality of his political group to resign. Why?
I contend that the actual reason, behind and obfuscated by the headlines, is
rather basic, or fundamental.
Unlike Tony Blair, Starmer did
not join an unpopular foreign war, and unlike Boris Johnson, Starmer did not hold
parties during a pandemic. Neither did Starmer ruin an economy; the secession
of the E.U. state of Britain could be blamed for that. According to CNN,
Starmer’s “missteps were more mundane: an attempt to make wealthier pensioners
pay more to heat their homes; a plan to cut some benefits to disabled people;
accepting freebies; and, . . . a scandal over his appointment of Jeffrey
Epstein-linked politician Peter Mandelson to the role of UK ambassador.”[1]
Even though such policy “missteps alone cannot explain Starmer’s fall,”
according to CNN, the American media company conveniently ignores a glaring, and
perhaps the glaring, reason for Starmer’s stunning unpopularity.
It turns out that Starmer, who
is Jewish, exploited a personal conflict of interest not only in standing up
for Israel as it cut off power and water in Gaza, but also in having pro-Gaza
protesters in Britain arrested as if they were aiding and abetting terrorists. Enabling
a holocaustic genocide and impairing democracy at home are damning moves that the
American media company utterly ignores in its post-mortem of Starmer. The combination
of defending an apartheid state engaged in decimating Gazan cities and treating
protesting British citizens as criminals rather than as heroes for standing up
for other people’s human rights resulted in the prime minister falling like a
rock in a pond in terms of popularity. When John Kennedy was campaigning for
the U.S. presidency in 1960, not a few Americans feared that he, a Roman Catholic,
would do the bidding of a foreign state—Vatican City—at the expense of American
interests. The fear turned out to be overblown, but Starmer’s unfettered
defense of Israel as it was destroying populated cities in Gaza arguably
evinces the exploitation of a personal conflict of interest because Starmer is Jewish.
This is not to say that every Jew is a Zionist. Noam Chomsky, for example,
publicly stated that Israel no longer had the right to exist. U.S. Sen. Burnie
Sanders lambasted Israel for its crimes against humanity. In utter contrast,
Starmer was ignoring international law abroad and democratic principles of free
speech at home. This is why he was forced out by his own political group. That
CNN is silent on this rather obvious point speaks volumes about the
relationship between giant American media companies and American foreign policy.
1. Christian Edwards, “Why Is Starmer Resigning, Two Years after Winning in a
Landslide,” CNN.com, June 22, 2026.
