Starmer was a fabricator and a fraud. Good riddance

Starmer was a fabricator and a fraud. Good riddance

Submitted by
Peter Oborne
on
Fri, 07/17/2026 - 16:08

From attacking Corbyn for political gain, to abandoning the key pledges that got him elected, the UK leader leaves office in disgrace

Starmer rose to power by twisting and distorting the truth - and he leaves office in exactly the same fashion (Henry Nicholls/AFP)

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The most serious parliamentary misdemeanour that a minister can commit is to deceive MPs. 

That is exactly what Keir Starmer did when he answered questions, for his last time as prime minister, on Wednesday.

Exploiting the occasion to justify his record, he told MPs that when he became UK Labour leader, “we had just lost the 2019 election, which nearly broke my party. It was the worst result since 1935, and we were found to be institutionally antisemitic.”

This statement contained a serious falsehood. Many would call it a lie.

Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, swiftly issued a statement in response: “The prime minister today falsely claimed that Labour was found to be ‘institutionally antisemitic’ under my leadership. There was no such finding.”

It’s not difficult to guess why Starmer levied such a damaging - and false - allegation against Corbyn. He has been driven out of office by parliamentary colleagues who did not like or trust him, and who thought he was useless at his job. It has been a terrible humiliation.

It’s human, natural and entirely forgivable that Starmer should seek to boast of his achievements in office. But it’s despicable to justify those claims by making false insinuations about a former colleague.

Ugly questions

Starmer repeated the falsehood on his trip to Kyiv on Thursday, telling Sky News that he wished to be remembered “as the person that saved the Labour Party, turned it into a party that could face the public again.”

He added: “We were a party that were found to be institutionally antisemitic, that was not fit to actually face the country and the electorate.”

A month ago, as part of his mission to restore his reputation by trashing Corbyn, he claimed that he had “inherited a Labour Party that was politically, financially and morally bankrupt”.

Needing to gain the support of Labour's left-wing membership, he presented a pitch that was entirely at variance with the way he subsequently ran the party

This was another fabrication. Corbyn’s Labour was nowhere near bankruptcy; in fact, the party’s 2020 annual report noted that the party had emerged from the 2019 election campaign “with our finances intact”.

Starmer, who served as a senior member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, must have known that his statement about Labour’s finances was false - but he made it anyway. 

I have written two books about lying in British public life. One book, The Rise of Political Lying, focused on former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his deceitful inner circle. The second, The Assault on Truth, dealt with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the sordid coterie that surrounded him.

I don’t think Starmer was as serious a liar as Blair (remember weapons of mass destruction and the Iraq War) or as habitual an offender as Johnson. But ugly questions surround his personal integrity, especially his dealings with Corbyn.

Seven years ago, Starmer actually went on record dismissing claims that Labour was institutionally antisemitic. Now he’s saying the opposite. This kind of double dealing is typical of Starmer. 

Back then, Starmer described Corbyn as a “friend” of his. Three years later, he insisted that Corbyn was “never a friend”.

Structural dishonesty 

Consider, too, Starmer’s campaign for the Labour leadership at the start of 2020. He presented himself as a radical politician who would build on the best elements of the Corbyn era, end factionalism and unite the party. 

In an interview with Jamie Driscoll, then Labour’s popular mayor for the North of Tyne region, he said: “If you’re going to go for unity, you’ve got to inspire people to come together. You can’t force them to come together. Disciplining people to be united is going nowhere.”

In his campaign launch, Starmer described the party’s 2017 manifesto as a benchmark and said: “We are not going to trash the last Labour government … nor are we going to trash the last four years.”

He presented the party membership with 10 policy “pledges”, which included a hike in taxes for higher earners and taking “rail, mail, energy and water” into public ownership. He went on to abandon almost all of these pledges. 

It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that in 2020, Starmer ran a leadership campaign that was deliberately dishonest. Needing to gain the support of Labour’s left-wing membership, he presented a pitch that was entirely at variance with the way he subsequently ran the party.

This structural dishonesty helps to explain why Starmer went on to be held in such contempt not just by Labour Party members, but also by so many British voters.

Twisting the truth

To sum up, Starmer rose to power by twisting and distorting the truth - and he leaves office in exactly the same fashion.

In October 2020, the UK government’s equalities watchdog published its investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party. It found “specific examples of harassment, discrimination and political interference”, and said that Labour could have tackled antisemitism more effectively “if the leadership had chosen to do so”.

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At no point did the report deem Labour under Corbyn to be “institutionally antisemitic”. That claim was made by Alan Johnson, a senior research fellow at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre.  

On Thursday, I approached Starmer’s media office with a question. I pointed out that the ministerial code, signed off on personally by Starmer, insists that “it is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity”. 

I asked a media officer whether the prime minister would return to parliament to correct the record, as the ministerial code demands. The officer heard me out, then asked me to put my request in writing - so I did. No answer. I chased the office for a response. Still no answer.

After Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Starmer received a standing ovation from colleagues. He was widely praised for a dignified performance. Meanwhile, British journalists have been writing kind articles, saying what a decent man he was.

I can’t agree. Starmer is a fabricator and a fraud - a thoroughly nasty piece of work who has inflicted deep damage on the Labour Party and dishonoured British public life. Good riddance.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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