Keir Starmer: Traitor or Incompetent?

Keir Starmer is now officially the most unpopular Prime Minister in modern history. A paltry 18% of the electorate view him favourably, while the majority of 75% do not. More than half of the British public want him to resign – and if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that percentage was significantly higher across the Labour frontbench. This is not the mid-term wobble of a government finding its feet. This is the slow-motion collapse of a man who promised “integrity” and “stability” and has instead delivered the political equivalent of a clown car: endless screeching U-turns, donor sleaze in lieu of custard pies, and a growing suspicion that, far from being lost, the driver’s clown face indicates he is heading exactly where he wants to go.

All political careers end in failure, so they say, but it usually takes a trifle longer for the electorate to fall out of love with its leaders. Major, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson and Sunak had their detractors certainly. And while none of them were particularly inspiring, neither were they universally hated in the way that Starmer appears to be. Even Thatcher and Blair - who I think it’s fair to say were genuinely hated by the end of their tenures - needed three terms to fully earn the public’s disgust. In Thatcher’s case it was the Poll Tax that signed her death warrant; for Blair, it took the unsolicited crowbarring of the borders and a phony war to fully engender loathing. Starmer has matched and surpassed them in 18 months flat. There’s a reason for that, and I believe I know what it is.

First of all, the incompetence defence which is customarily wheeled out to keep Starmer in situ – and bizarrely something even his political enemies are fond of – (‘Decent bloke, not overly suited to the job’ etc) no longer holds any water. Genuine incompetence is random, scattergun, and occasionally self-harming. Starmer’s errors display the eerie consistency of a sat-nav programmed by a pig on the way to the abattoir. Every major ‘mistake’ points in the same direction: open borders, selective justice, protected vote banks, and the punishment of those who notice. Under Starmer, the British are no longer arguably second-class citizens in their homeland – they are declared to be so.

I prefer an alternate explanation for the Pillsbury Dullboy’s lack of popularity: Starmer hates both Britain and the British people, and the electorate knows it. Not the new Britain you understand, the multicultural hellscape inculcated by Blair and hollowed out by the stream of cowardly ‘Conservatives’ who followed in his wake. No, the old Britain - the once great nation. The land of Magna Carta, Shakespeare and the Empire. The history of these islands, and the people that stand testament to it. No doubt that sounds like ridiculous hyperbole, but consider for a moment the relentless assault on our heritage. Just as the bank rarely makes errors in your favour, so too does the anti-British trajectory under Starmer suggest a similar desire to keep ‘errors’ all one-way.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to stick to a few key areas – because I genuinely believe an encyclopedia could be written on the gaslighting Starmer has committed against the British people.

Illegal Immigration

Prime Minister Starmer promised the electorate he would get tough on illegal immigration: “I am clear: we will not reward illegal entry. If you cross the Channel unlawfully, you will be detained and sent back.” In fairness, so did every PM since Cameron – each of whom was an abject failure. However, under Starmer one cannot dodge the suspicion that he is not even pretending to try. Since Starmer took office in July 2024, 65,922 migrants have crossed the Channel - more than under any previous Prime Minister in a comparable period. The weekly average is 790 arrivals, almost double Boris Johnson’s 404. In 2025 alone, 41,472 people arrived – 13% higher than 2024, and the second-highest annual total on record. Rwanda was scrapped on day one with the theatrical flourish of a man tearing up a parking ticket. The much-feted Border Security Command has little more substantial than press releases, while the returns agreement with France remains the diplomatic equivalent of a strongly worded letter.

Women & Girls

Earlier this year, Starmer claimed that “Tackling violence against women and girls is not just a priority for my government. It is central to who I am.” But is this really the case? This is the man after all, who dismissed the national grooming gang inquiry as “far-right bandwagon” politics, and did everything he could to block it. Only after Baroness Casey’s devastating audit and sustained public pressure did he U-turn in June 2025. Even now the inquiry stumbles amid survivor resignations and claims of government manipulation. Furthermore, a vital Courtsdesk archive involving 4.8 million court records that shed light on the true scale of the scandal was ordered deleted by HMCTS for “unauthorised sharing”. Deletion was paused and another U-turn conducted, again only after public outrage.

The British Interest

On the world stage, Starmer appears hellbent on reducing the stature of Britain. The surrender of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a British overseas territory for over two centuries, and the £10 billion leasing of the joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia is impossible to justify for a PM who has the nation’s best interests at heart. The fact that Putin has hailed the deal while President Trump called it “a big mistake”, suggests that Starmer isn’t doing much to cement the ‘special relationship’ either.

As if this were not sufficiently pleasing to China, Starmer has also approved a massive Chinese “super-embassy” at the heart of London. Traditionally the Chinese had to work a bit harder to spy in the capital, often using Labour MPs or their spouses to do so. What did Starmer get in return? Visa-free travel for UK citizens - not much of an ask really, since the Chinese government now probably knows more about us than our own government does. There isn’t much more Starmer could give away, although the Conservative leader did quip he might give away the Isle of Wight. There’s still time.

Kid Gloves for Islam

While Starmer preaches endlessly about “tolerance” and “community cohesion,” his government reserves the softest kid gloves - and the deepest pockets - for one special interest group above all: Britain’s Muslim community. After a single suspected arson at a mosque in Peacehaven, Starmer rushed out an extra £10 million in October 2025 for CCTV, alarms, fencing and security guards, on top of the £29.4 million already lavished on mosques and Muslim faith schools that year. Churches, synagogues, and old people shivering in their homes weren’t privy to the same level of protection, but then those people don’t have the sense to vote the right way.

Next up was the candidacy of Shahid Butt, a convicted terrorist standing for Birmingham City Council. Not to worry - Butt may be a ‘former’ jihadi, who wants Muslims to “learn to fight”, who demanded “all Muslims” descend on Villa Park to protest the side’s game against Maccabi Tel Aviv, and has advocated for Muslims to “knock people’s teeth out” if they come into your face, but he assures us he is “the ideal candidate” to represent his ward. Presumably Starmer was too busy for this to cross his desk, as he was already pushing for a new official “anti-Muslim hostility” definition, and the appointment of an Islamophobia Tsar to tackle criticism of Islam, mass migration, or grooming gang cover-ups.

Worst in show however, was Starmer’s response to the Southport massacre. What was it that particularly piqued the empathy of Keir Starmer? Not the three little girls murdered, nor the grieving relatives. No. A cringing public statement of solidarity, with the Muslim community - the true victims of this atrocity. “We are with you” he simpered. He should have been removed from office on the spot.

The White, Working-class

Starmer is a man who cares about optics. He is determined to align himself with every demographic under the sun; all except one - the white, working-class, the group to which he interminably claims to belong. When the concerns expressed are those of the white, working-class - the backbone of the country, once Labour’s core vote and incidentally, those least able to defend themselves from the consequences of Labour’s suicidal policies - it’s “far-right” this and “far-right” that, and jail in the blink of the usually blind eye. The Lucy Connolly case is now textbook. Connolly was fast-tracked as an “emergency charging decision”, with Attorney General Lord Hermer signing her off in just 12 hours. Internal notes show ministers were “determined to make an example” of her. Her crime? A single inflammatory post in the aftermath of the Southport murders, quickly deleted, with remorse expressed. She received 31 months in prison.

Sir Keir is not a Bond villain stroking a white cat in a volcano lair. He is something far more dangerous in a democracy: a careerist without fixed principles; a man whose ‘socialism’ is the armchair variety that has never once inconvenienced him. He believes in nothing except what the focus groups and donors will tolerate. When the interests of native Brits clash with the priorities of ethnic vote banks, it is always the former that must be made to give way.

The definition of treason is the betrayal of one’s sovereign or country; I prefer the latter. I believe Blair was nothing short of a traitor to this country, and I’d put Starmer right up there with him. Britain needs a PM who puts her interests first. Until Starmer does that (and he is unlikely ever to do that), he convinces the public that he is not merely incompetent, he is headed exactly where he wants to go.

The public would be wise to vote accordingly.

Frank Haviland is the Editor of The New Conservative, and the author of Banalysis: The Lie Destroying the West.

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This piece was first published in The European Conservative, and is reproduced by kind permission.

(Photograph: Number 10, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)