Thank you Keir

As Keir Starmer steps down today as leader of the Labour Party, I want to take this opportunity to thank him for everything he has done for the party we both love. Even if we have both found that love challenging, unreciprocated and downright painful at times.

I took over as Editor of LabourList at the start of September 2025 – the week of Angela Rayner’s resignation that led to first a reshuffle and then the race to be Deputy Leader. My second week saw the removal of Peter Mandelson as US Ambassador. The words baptism of fire don’t quite cover it.

But the complexities of covering the Labour Party at times of high drama while still working out how to log in to the back end of the website pale into insignificance compared to the complexities of the job of unravelling the damage of 14 years of Tory misrule and replacing that with a better Labour programme of government. Keir Starmer had an exceptionally difficult job on his hands and the challenge Labour faced on entering government should not be underestimated even as we critique some of the ways that challenge has been handled.

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On Wednesday, as I watched Starmer’s last PMQs from the press gallery, opposite me were a number of campaigners and people whose lives had been changed by things Labour has done over the last two years. Many of them were visibly moved by Starmer’s final words. They were a really important reminder that no matter how badly some things went, no matter how dark things got at times, Starmer’s government has done a lot of good for a lot of people. The old adage is still very true: the worst day under a Labour government is better than the best day under a Tory one. That would go double for Reform.

Many seeds have been sown under Starmer that have not yet come to fruition. That can feel frustrating – especially when the next person gets both to steer those projects to completion and get the credit for them. I read a fascinating book once about the concept of ‘cathedral thinking’. Usually this is about understanding at the start of a large project with a long timeline that it will inevitably outlast your contribution to it.

Politicians never really think this way at the start of their terms. And in our world of ‘Amazon Prime’ politics with the need for quick delivery, that’s not unreasonable. But perhaps it might be a better way for all of us to look at politics. Labour governments should be both cathedral builders (like Attlee and the NHS) and instant deliverers too. We need to find a way for them to do both. And ways to thank those who helped to get us there.

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Perhaps when the inevitable hurt dies away, Keir Starmer will be able to see things that were started under his watch and come to fruition under Burnham not as frustrations to his own ambitions but as a shared project that he can and should be proud of playing a part in. To do so, while it is right that Labour now moves on, we should do so with grace, not repudiation. We should say thank you. 

Labour under Keir Starmer didn’t just win an election – we won a landslide. An adage I don’t abide by is that oppositions don’t win elections – governments lose them. Of course, to an extent that is true and the Tories did a spectacular job in setting out almost from the moment of the 2019 election to demonstrate it. But it can only be true when an opposition is seen as a reasonable alternative. There was a lot of work that needed to be done to present ourselves as that. But Starmer achieved it and we should thank him for it. 

Tomorrow marks the start of a new chapter for the Labour Party and we should approach that with hope and optimism. Equally, my excellent colleague Daniel Green is completely right that Labour has always been bigger than one leader. The party endures because its principles and values endure. 

But today, for a moment, before we move on to our coverage of Andy Burnham’s leadership of the Party and country, I want to say again – thank you, Keir Starmer. 

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