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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Marina Hyde

Starmer seems to think he can do no wrong – two weeks of Mandy-mania hearings point to the opposite conclusion

Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, appearing before the foreign affairs select committee, 28 April 2026.
Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, appearing before the foreign affairs select committee, 28 April 2026. Photograph: House of Commons/UK Parliament/PA

Have his enemies done it? Have the rebels managed to find a thermal exhaust port in the Death Starmer that would enable them finally to destroy it? No, would seem to be the answer after yet another morning of increasingly unwatchable procedural drama for the prime minister.

You know what, it’s such a shame procedural rows aren’t a path to growth. The UK would be a global economy unicorn by now. Still, here we go again for another trip down committee corridor, as the displacement activists of the British political system mine further nitty-gritty on how a sex offender’s best pal was accidentally-on-purpose appointed ambassador to the US. If we keep digging, we’re totally going to strike gold and be able to pay for all the infrastructure upgrades and housing and incentives to capital investment that are the only way out of our decline spiral, to say nothing of the defence boosting urgently required. And I’m barely kidding. There’s probably genuinely more chance of those happening via an orgy of recriminatory committee hearings than via the policies of Keir Starmer and his chancellor. If we stuck the prime minister on the psychoanalyst’s couch, I think they’d find he subconsciously provokes these endlessly consuming process crises. It’s certainly more his happy place than big ideas.

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