The Man Who Saved Labour is Leaving the Building

1 September 2026 | Rob Fellows

Sir Keir Starmer has just announced his resignation as the Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras. His imminent departure from Westminster has made me reflect on what he has given to Labour, and how quickly politics moves on. A leader can spend years dragging a party back towards government, win an election that once looked beyond its reach, and then find their entire contribution reduced to the arguments surrounding their departure. Whatever judgements people reach about Keir’s premiership, I believe the party owes him a considerable debt.

I don’t know Keir particularly well. I have met him a few times, but I’m not going to pretend we are old friends or that I was part of his inner circle. What I do have is a very long and close connection with some of his closest political allies, people I know extremely well and whose judgement I respect. That doesn’t give me ownership of their experiences or the right to speak for them. It does mean that, for me, this has never simply been a story about a man on the television.

I have known Andy Burnham for years and supported him in both his 2010 and 2015 leadership campaigns. But I did not like the way he went about challenging Keir, and our long history does not change that. As Keir leaves Westminster, he deserves recognition for what he gave to Labour and the country, along with every good wish for his life beyond Parliament.

It is worth remembering where Labour was when Keir took over. The defeat of 2019 was a catastrophe, and the problems went much deeper than a disappointing campaign. Too many people had stopped seeing us as a credible party of government. Others felt that the party had stopped listening to them altogether. For those of us who had spent years wanting Labour back in office, the prospect of another long stretch in opposition was thoroughly miserable.

Keir’s task was to persuade people to look at Labour again. That required discipline, difficult decisions and a willingness to upset people within the party. It also required an understanding that winning an argument among Labour members is not the same thing as winning the confidence of the country. We had become rather too comfortable with the first while failing badly at the second.

I did not agree with every decision he made. I don’t think anyone needs to pretend that they did. But I respected the seriousness with which he approached the job of making Labour electable again. Restoring credibility is painstaking work. It rarely produces the most exciting speech at a rally, but without it all the promises about changing people’s lives remain just that: promises.

The victory in 2024 mattered enormously. Of course the Conservatives’ record helped bring about their defeat. Of course voters were exhausted by the chaos. But governments do not simply hand their opponents credibility on the way out. Labour had to become an alternative that enough people were prepared to trust, and Keir deserves substantial credit for making that happen.

Winning power and using it well are different tests. His premiership deserves scrutiny, including the mistakes, the disappointments and the gap between what people expected and what they felt in their everyday lives. Those questions cannot be waved away by pointing to an election result. Equally, the difficulties of government should not erase the scale of the political recovery that preceded it. An honest assessment ought to be capable of holding both thoughts at once.

What I dislike is the speed with which politics turns disappointment into contempt. People who were perfectly happy to celebrate a leader’s victory can become very keen to explain that they never rated him in the first place. There is something deeply unattractive about that retrospective certainty. Having been around politics for a fair while, I have learned to be wary of anyone whose version of history always places them on the winning side.

There is a human being underneath all of this, too. We ask people to give years of their lives to public service, expose their families to extraordinary scrutiny and accept a level of personal hostility that most of us would find intolerable. None of that puts them beyond criticism. It should, however, leave us capable of some basic generosity when we assess what they tried to do.

The people who need a functioning NHS, a secure home, a decent job or a future for their children are entitled to expect more from us than another argument about personalities. Labour has to show that it can make a practical difference. The responsibility now rests with those holding office, but they should remember the work that helped put the party there.

Keir’s departure from Westminster deserves a proper moment of reflection. Leaving Parliament brings to a close a chapter of public service that extends well beyond his time in Downing Street. Alongside leading Labour back into government, he served the people of Holborn and St Pancras as their MP. As he looks towards life outside the Commons, I hope he has the time and space to decide what comes next, enjoy more time with his family and take pride in what he achieved.

That is why I want to put my appreciation for Keir on the record. Not because I knew him especially well, or because I think his record is beyond criticism, but because I remember how far away a Labour government once felt. He helped turn it into a reality. Whatever comes next, I won’t pretend that achievement was small, and I won’t forget it.