https://anotherangryvoice.substack.com/p/notes-on-keir-starmers-desperate
Notes on Keir Starmer's "make or break" speech
Another Angry Voice
May 11, 2026

After Labour suffered disastrous local election results last week, Keir Starmer has given what many have described as a "make or break" speech, in a last-ditch effort to save himself from an impending leadership challenge.

Starmer chose to be introduced by the Labour MP Jade Botterill, who worked as a privatised water company lobbyist, and then for the Blairite PR company Portland Communications, before becoming an MP in 2024.

Given that a policy of renationalising England’s filthy, greedy, debt-laden private water profiteers would be the kind of thing that would appeal to Green voters and Reform voters alike, it does seem like a deliberate "fuck you" to the electorate to have chosen this particular person to do his intro.

Things deteriorated once Starmer took to the stage.

Starmer set off talking about "taking responsibility" for Labour’s losses, but was soon bragging about how he’d actually "got the big political choices right".

I’m not sure many would agree that scrapping the winter fuel allowance; dragging his heels on repealing the vile Tory two-child policy; economically sanctioning disabled people; betraying the WASPI women his party tricked into voting for them; appointing Peter 'paedophile pal' Mandelson; and wilfully collaborating with Israel’s genocide and war crimes would amount to "getting the big political choices right".

He did point out a few of things Labour have been doing well, like getting NHS waiting lists down from the appalling state they were in under the Tories, and eventually scrapping the child poverty exacerbating two-child policy.

One of the big issues with Starmer’s leadership is that perhaps people might have paid more attention to Labour success stories like this, had it not been for the party’s repeated self-inflicted wounds under his leadership?

Starmer once again fell back on his doomsaying assertion that stepping down would "plunge our country into chaos".

It’s bizarre and delusional to keep repeating this claim, as if the sky is going to fall down if he quits.

It seems more likely that people across the country would breathe a big sigh of relief that he’s gone, including a lot of Labour’s own supporters, voters, and MPs. He’s clearly out of his depth, and the only people really hoping for him to stay on seem to be political rivals who expect that they can lure away even more Labour voters for as long as he stays.

Throughout the speech Starmer conflated the Green Party and Green voters with Reform and people who voted for the crypto billionaire bankrolled far-right.

Labour are delusional if they think they’re going to win back support from the millions of people who have switched to the Greens after Starmer told them to "leave if you don’t like it" by portraying them as dangerous ideological extremists.

Starmer went on to assert that "I've spent too much time talking about what I'm doing for working people, and not enough time talking about why or who I stand for".

I wouldn’t have thought it possible to have read the room so badly, if I hadn’t heard it come out of the guy’s mouth.

Nobody cares that you’re the son of a toolmaker mate, and everybody knows that you spent your first year in power hoovering up cash and freebies from mega-rich donors.

The speech was extremely thin on actual policy, with only an announcement that the shattered remnants of British Steel will be renationalised to fill it out a bit.

It’s not a bad policy, but it’s so far from what’s required.

How can he stand there and talk about Britain’s energy security without acknowledging that the rip-off privatised energy profiteers are the biggest obstacle to British energy security?

One of the most egregious parts came when he said "I will never stop fighting for the decent, respectful, diverse country that I love" which is quite something from the guy who channelled Enoch Powell in his "Island of Strangers" speech, in which he accused immigration of causing "incalculable damage" to Britain.

One minute he’s trying to make out that he’s slipped up by not properly explaining who he is, and what he stands for, and the next he’s proving that he just reads out speeches that have been written for him, even though what he’s saying is absolutely the opposite of previous speeches he’s mindlessly read out.

Towards the end Starmer said "this is nothing less than a battle for the soul of our nation … we cannot win as a weaker version of Reform or the Greens, we can only win as a stronger version of Labour, a mainstream party of power, not protest".

It’s such an odd thing for a leader who has been in power for nearly two years to say.

It’s the rhetoric of an opposition party seeking political power, not a party that’s being slammed for not having done anything like enough with the massive parliamentary majority they’ve had for almost two years.

Yes mate. You’re the government, You’re not there to protest against the government, because that’s you!

What we care about is whether your exercising power on behalf of the people who elected you, and whether you respect people’s long-standing British right to engage in non-violent protest if they don’t like what you’re doing. And on both measures you’re demonstrably failing.

One of the worst aspects of the speech was the continued dishonesty.

Starmer repeated his pretence that Britain isn’t involved in the US/Israeli attacks on Iran when he’s been allowing the US to use British RAF bases to lauch their attacks.

Towards the end of the speech he claimed that Britain is now "free from austerity" when Rachel Reeves has not revered the ruinous Tory austerity cuts, and is just as obsessed with austerity penny-pinching and absurd, arbitrary fiscal rules as any of Cameron and Osborne’s lot were.

This was billed as Starmer’s rousing speech to save his job, but it was more of the same bland, scripted filler that’s characterised his leadership.

It is however fitting that the guy who lied his way into the Labour leadership, still can’t bring himself to be honest with the public, even as he’s going down in flames.