We now know, beyond reasonable doubt, as a lawyer would say, that Keir Starmer has all the political acumen of a gerbil.

The Prime Minister is being kicked around by his backbenchers, stretched on the rack by news media and stalked by a bloke in Manchester who wants his job.

And all this with a majority of 157 and just a year into the role.

He woke up yesterday with a triple crisis to deal with. Most urgent and damaging was the fallout from his disastrous decision to appoint Lord (Peter) Mandelson, “best pal” of the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, as Ambassador to the United States.

What did he know and when did he know it? He attempted to explain and before long was counting angels dancing on the head of a pin.

Then one of his most senior Downing Street aides – Paul Ovenden, director of strategy – stepped down after ITV news uncovered grubby sexual texts he wrote to a colleague about Labour MP Diane Abbott.

And the party was still struggling to understand his bungled handling of his deputy Angela Rayner’s resignation over her complicated living arrangements and alleged tax avoidance.

So how did we get here? How did the leader of a great Western democracy, who by rights should be riding a wave of popularity, come to be so humbled, so belittled?

It helps to answer the question if you think of Starmer as The Accidental Politician.

After modest A level results – two Bs and a C, though this was before grade inflation took hold – he studied law at Leeds University and left with a First to continue his legal studies at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

His parents had wanted him to have a “proper profession” and the law fitted that bill. He set out hoping to become a trade union solicitor.

Starmer applied in 1987 to join a chambers renowned for championing liberal causes. Among the lawyers there were John Mortimer, who wrote Rumpole of the Bailey, Emlyn Hooson, QC, MP, who defended the Moors murderers, and Geoffrey Robertson, KC, a human rights barrister, broadcaster and writer.

It was Robertson who ran the rule over the young Starmer. “Keir interviewed badly,” he wrote after Starmer’s huge General Election victory, “lacking both confidence and dress sense.”

A colleague of Robertson asked: “How can we take a man who wears a cardigan?”

“But I needed a junior so we took Keir on,” Robertson wrote in the Guardian. And so Starmer, somewhat by chance, found himself in his happy place, drawn to the bosom of the law, locked in the warm embrace of the liberal Left.

The law seems to have provided him with an entire belief system; as important to him as the scriptures are to a Christian. He did not have to form his own view of the world, the law gave him a ready-made philosophy with tested precepts.

He once explained it like this: “The essence of being human, irrespective of who you are, where you come from, and what your circumstances, is dignity. It means all people have rights which cannot be taken away.

“The idea of irreducible human dignity became a sort of lode star which has guided me ever since; it gave me a method, a structure and framework by which I could test propositions. And it brought politics into law for me.”

Robertson wrote of his gauche young charge: “I took him to Strasbourg for his first case in the European Court. He forgot to bring his passport and the gendarmes were about to put him on the next plane home until, with the help of the British consul, he was freed in time for his human rights debut.”

He won his case and, as Robertson reported, he would go on to write a textbook on human rights law.

Robertson added: “A Starmer government will not repeal the Human Rights Act.”

Starmer became a legal officer for Liberty and in 1990 joined Robertson in founding Doughty Street Chambers, with a focus on human rights and civil liberties.

During his time there, he lived with a girlfriend, Phillippa Kaufmann, KC, another Doughty Street barrister, who always expected him to move into politics.

She recalled: “If you’d told me back then that Keir would be Prime Minister, it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit. Law was never going to be enough for him.”

He became a QC in 2002, aged 39. Six years later, he took over from Ken Macdonald as Head of the Crown Prosecution Service and Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

His style as a lawyer was not fiery oratory but mastery of his brief through diligent research. He would argue quietly and persuasively. His work ethic was renowned and he was known for his ability to find compromise.

The notion of a political career seems to have crept up on Starmer. During his time as DPP, he began to believe that his ability to achieve social justice as a lawyer was limited. Instead of interpreting and implementing the law, he wanted to make it.

“I had a sense that to fix problems you have to pull levers only politicians could do. I wanted to be part of making social justice.”

In 2014, aged 52, he was selected to fight as Labour candidate for the Holborn and St. Pancras seat. This was where his lack of political instinct was laid bare.

According to a biography of Starmer by Tom Baldwin, published last year by William Collins, he was about to give a speech to the National Farmers Union conference in 2023 when he asked his team whether he should mention that his first job had been on a farm.

The speech had been through many drafts and the audience was already filing into the hall. “After a short silence, while one or two advisers exchanged glances and the chief speechwriter buried his head in his hands, they ventured that, yes, that would be worth mentioning,” wrote Baldwin.

There was also the small matter of his knighthood. Starmer’s working class credentials have always been a bit hazy, despite his insistence on telling us he is the son of a toolmaker and a nurse.

But the honour he accepted made focus groups think of him as “posh” and “a member of the Establishment.”

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch dismissed Starmer during an exchange at Prime Minister’s Questions as “a lawyer, not a leader”.

And it is true that Starmer has always adopted the methodical, analytical approach to solving problems. Some feel that doesn’t cut it in politics, where instant reaction to events is required.

“That goes against every instinct that a lawyer would have, which is to pause, weigh it all up and then come to a considered view,” Robert Buckland, the Tory former Justice Secretary and barrister told POLITICO.

One thing is sure: Starmer will have to be lighter on his feet in the months leading up to key local elections in May or his colleagues could appoint themselves judge, jury and executioner as they deliver a verdict on his brief tenure.

*****

I’m in favour of distilleries. Bakers win all the plaudits for getting up at 4am to make our breakfast. But those who manufacture our gin deserve recognition too.

They make the world a fuzzier place and I like it better that way.

However, some folk in our road are fomenting a rebellion against the distillery at the bottom of my garden.

It makes Sipsmith, a premium tipple that retails for about £30 a bottle. Sales haven’t been so good of late. They lost £17 million in 2023, their fifth straight year in the red.

Now they want to boost the number of distillery tours they offer and extend the hours in which they can serve and sell their mother’s ruin to visitors.

This would involve scores of folk traipsing up and down our quiet residential street, some of them bent on lurching home legless.

Sipsmith tried once before to diversify their operation at the distillery. There were parties, tours with dinner and unsurprisingly raucous behaviour ensued.

When they asked the council to grant them a licence we hired a coach and turned up at the hearing to argue our case.

This time they have asked us politely to support changes to their licence. We’re sipping a G&T and mulling it over quietly.

*****

MI5 has confessed to spying on journalist Vincent Kearney while he was working for the BBC by collecting data on his phone: Who he called, when and how long the calls lasted.

It is believed to be the first time the security service has confirmed unlawful surveillance of a journalist. I’ll wager it is not the first time they have done it – nor will it be the last.

*****

I have discovered a superpower I had no idea I possessed. Walking up our High Road, I came upon a gang of charity muggers.

One look at my face and they cast around for another chump to milk. You see? It sometimes pays to be a sourpuss.

RICHARD DISMORE

17 September 2025