Grateful to Novara Media for giving me the word count for a proper political obituary of Starmer! "Starmer might not have a political economy, but he certainly has a moral one. He inhabits a world where some people are deserving of attention, grace, kindness or deference. Usually this is determined by whether he thinks they are ‘proper’ people: the suit-wearers who hold zippy ‘bilats’ or who wield the sort of institutional power he alternatingly fears or valorises. These people Starmer treats with genuine warmth, care and respect – like the media class that repeatedly defends him as a ‘decent man’ because they fall within his internal Venn diagram of respectability, cultural cache and power, so Starmer treats them decently. But woe betide those who fall into his out-group of the contemptible. These are usually people other powerful and socially adept people think are worthy of ridicule, and will give Starmer a thumbs-up if he punches down. For this group, Starmer has nothing but disdain, or cruelty or indifference. We know who falls into this category: leftwingers, Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, peace activists and Palestinians; those who stand up at Labour conference and demand accountability for genocide; the irresponsible idealists who refuse to put aside childish things like protest marches and human rights and justice and saving the climate in return for incrementalism, stoicism, ‘grown up’ politics, handshakes with dictators, dinner parties in Davos and accommodation with the ‘reasonable demands’ of capital. Or, more concretely, the hundreds of thousands of members he told to leave the party – and did." novaramedia.com/2026/07/17/i…