Report me to Prevent. Lock me up under the Online Safety Act. Clockwork Orange me into watching Adolescence. Come, Stella Creasy, Jess Phillips, take away my phone. I have been radicalized online. It all started with the edits. His chiseled face on vintage Communist propaganda posters. A video of him spitting out the words “Fuck off!” The synthpop beats of MGMT’s “Little Dark Age”, and the soaring climax of the organ version of Gigi D’Agostino’s “L’Amour Toujours”. It is all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished. I have won the victory over myself. I love Sir Keir Starmer.

We “Starmtroopers” are not happy with the events of the past week. The People’s Prime Minister, the People’s Keir, is beset by snakes on all sides. No less than Donald Trump’s supporters on January 6 — only this time with right on our side — we are determined to “Stop the Steal”. The circumstances of the recent scandals, involving Civil Service missteps in the vetting of Peter Mandelson, bear some hallmarks of a deep-state stitch-up; the script for a “Starmerite QAnon” practically writes itself. There is a famous picture of the Prime Minister surrounded by other statesmen: all the rest are wearing silly-looking plastic ponchos, but our man braves the weather. A Starmtrooper account posts this image with the caption: “Why should the storm fear the rain?”

Obviously, this is an ironic joke, fit for us irony-poisoned digital natives. The humor in a Keir Starmer cult of personality hardly needs explaining. There is, however, something more serious afoot. Partly it arises from a genuine preference for Starmer over any likely alternative. The threat of Andy Burnham marching down from the North, or even an Ed Miliband putsch, steels hearts, focuses minds, and produces a rallying effect.

However disappointing Starmer might have been as PM, his successor will surely be worse. A quick glance at the markets ought to concern us that Labour could soon have an answer to Liz Truss, another debacle brought to us by a noxious combination of mid-parliamentary regicides and an unaccountable cadre of party members. Starmer’s successor will likely sack Shabana Mahmood, extend Indefinite Leave to Remain, and bake the “Boriswave” into Britain’s demographic future. They will write out a blank check for the WASPI women. They will throw red meat at the Labour membership by reviving the culture war: it’s not hard to imagine some meddling with the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, or legislation to dilute the Supreme Court judgment handed down in For Women Scotland. All this is an attack on democratic legitimacy. Nobody asked for this. Nobody asked for Prime Minister Burnham; we explicitly asked not for Prime Minister Miliband. The country voted for a Labour manifesto which showed Sir Keir, and nobody else, on its front cover.

Starmer, moreover, could always have used a bit more bravado and bluster. Here is a prime minister with one of the biggest mandates in history: he should have waltzed into Downing Street in 2024 with the confidence that his landslide victory betokened. Instead, his authority was chipped away in a matter of months by petulant backbench revolts and nonstop “rigmarole” stories about Lord Alli’s suits. Imagine how he would seem if somehow injected with a dose of Trumpian alpha: just one tweet going after “Slimy Streeting”, “Fat Wes”, or “Big Mad Andy” might just reverse his fortunes.

Bizarrely, at what seems like the certain dusk of a short-lived premiership, Starmer finally seems to have rediscovered that old fighting spirit. He has carried himself well at PMQs. He seems unfazed by Wes Streeting’s resignation and the looming Makerfield by-election. “There was something in his eyes I hadn’t seen before,” said one minister, “and I liked it.” All any of us seem to want is for the Prime Minister to act, at last, as what he is: a winner.

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Samuel Rubinstein is a writer and historian.

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