The campaign leaflets Labour canvassers are handing out on the doorstep in Holborn and St Pancras make no mention of the man who served as as the local MP for eleven years. Starmer has been erased from history…
Instead, the party boasts of “our record“, with the first ‘achievement’ being “cutting VAT on electricity bills“. Which is a Burnham policy…
Labour has quietly removed all merchandise featuring Keir Starmer from its party shop. Presumably it was flying off the shelves previously…
The ex-PM, ex-MP’s face used to be plastered all over the site. Leaflets, banners, posters, the lot. Whoever bothered to open their wallets for this stuff now owns collectors’ items…
Anyone with £20 burning a hole in their pocket can now splash it on a pack of 500 leaflets featuring a smirking Andy Burnham with “BRING BACK HOPE” emblazoned next to him. All hope was lost on last guy…
Starmer himself loved to dish it out to Sunak over his supposed plans to flee to California.
Which of these men will actually leave the Commons first? Answers on a post card…
In July, Starmer assured hacks he would serve out the remainder of his term as the MP for Holborn and St Pancras. Today he delivered the final U-turn, confirming he’s actually off after all to focus on “international affairs“. Remember when they all made fun of Sunak because he was definitely going to quit as soon as he lost the election?
| # | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | Party |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Keir Starmer | 18,884 | 48.9 | −17.4 | LAB |
| 2 | Andrew Feinstein | 7,312 | 18.9 | — | IND |
| 3 | David Stansell | 4,030 | 10.4 | +6.4 | GRN |
| 4 | Mehreen Malik | 2,776 | 7.2 | −8.0 | CON |
| 5 | David Roberts | 2,371 | 6.1 | +4.2 | REF |
| 6 | Charlie Clinton | 2,236 | 5.8 | −6.5 | LIB |
| 7 | Wais Islam | 636 | 1.6 | — | IND |
| 8 | Nick the Incredible Flying Brick | 162 | 0.4 | — | MRL |
| 9 | John Poynton | 75 | 0.2 | −0.1 | UKIP |
| 10 | Tom Scripps | 61 | 0.2 | +0.1 | SEP |
| 11 | Senthil Kumar | 40 | 0.1 | — | IND |
| 12 | Bobby Smith | 19 | 0.0 | — | — |
| Majority | 11,572 | 30.0 | −21.1 | ||
| Turnout | 38,602 | 54.1 | −5.0 | ||
| Registered electors | 71,300 | ||||
It is by no means a guaranteed win for Labour. If the left flank coalesces around one candidate, Burnham faces an embarrassment…
Keir Starmer’s ex-chief of staff Sue Gray has given both barrels to her former colleagues in Number 10, claiming it was “unbearable” working in Starmer’s team and lamenting the briefings against her during her (brief) tenure in Downing Street. She told Ed Balls on the Political Currency podcast:
“Stories about supposedly trying to move Morgan McSweeney to the back of the building. Actually, that was a genuine … ‘I can’t believe so many of you are going to sit in this small room. Let’s find a better room for you.’ It just got to the point where you know everything you say, you feel somebody is recording it…
I talked to [Starmer] a couple of times about it, and I don’t really want to disclose individual conversations. But I was disappointed that not more was done because I think it could have been done… [the atmosphere was] definitely unbearable, particularly for me…”
Gray was one of the first major departures from Starmer’s catastrophic administration. She can probably take comfort in the fact that so many others followed…
Burnham expected to arrive at the Palace shortly…
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”
