View from USA: The uncomfortable parallels between Starmer and Biden

Starmer (left) visits former President Biden in the Oval Office of the White House

In Britain, some argue that Prime Minister Keir Starmer, by rejecting calls to step aside, risks repeating the mistakes of President Joseph R. Biden Jr., ‘The New Times’ stresses.

A center-left leader is under siege from party members calling for his resignation. Aides are furiously closing ranks to protect him. The party’s future and the direction of the country are at stake as he digs in, convinced he is the only man for the job, even as his popularity plummets.

For Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, the parallels with former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. may not be welcome, but they are certainly evident. Under fire like Mr. Biden was, he has lashed out at critics within his Labour Party in recent days. He dared them to use a “process for challenging a leader” and insisted that “the country expects us to get on with governing. That is what I am doing.”

That was an echo of Mr. Biden on July 8, 2024, just 11 days after a disastrous debate performance against Donald J. Trump triggered a torrent of demands from Democrats that he abandon his re-election bid. Appearing on the “Morning Joe” program, Mr. Biden lashed out at the “elites” in his own party.

“They don’t think I should run? Run against me,” Mr. Biden said, sounding angry and bitter. “Go ahead and announce for president. Challenge me at the convention.”

The two men are very different. Mr. Biden was 81 and looking feeble when he finally dropped out just four months before Election Day. Mr. Starmer is 63, with no apparent health issues, and his term is slated to last another three years. Their paths to political peril were by no means the same.

But there are striking similarities in their predicaments, now that Mr. Starmer, too, is mired in a fight for survival against friends and supporters. Faced with threats to their positions of power, the initial instinct of both men appears to have been to downplay the concerns of their supporters and refuse to step aside.

“He’s rapidly becoming Joe Biden because he’s basically in a bunker with his wife saying, ‘It’s all going to be fine,’” Rory Stewart, a former Conservative government minister and a co-host of The Rest Is Politics, said during an episode of that podcast recorded on Friday.

Mr. Stewart added: “There’ll be flatterers around him saying, Keir, come on, you know, you’re much better than these other people. You’ve got to stay because, you know, for the country and for the party.”

In Mr. Biden’s case, the midterm elections of 2022 had gone better than expected, giving him ammunition to claim that Americans had endorsed his agenda. It wasn’t until his stumbling debate performance that his party started questioning his future in a serious way.

For Mr. Starmer, last week’s elections to English municipal councils and to the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments were the final straw. Labour Party members had nervously stuck by the prime minister through scandals, economic misfortune and policy flip-flops. But the huge losses for Labour underscored just how unpopular his government is.

For both men, the friendly fire started as gentle nudges, in private and in public, urging them to think about a gracious move to the exit, and eventually became blunt calls to step aside.

In Mr. Biden’s case, the New York Times editorial board was one of the first out of the gates in June, publishing a scathing editorial the day after his debate with Mr. Trump titled “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race.”

The drumbeat of calls for Mr. Starmer to step aside has been similar over the last several days. Over the weekend, about two dozen Labour backbenchers issued statements saying that the party would be better off with a new leader. On Monday, after Mr. Starmer tried to quell the revolt with a speech in London, things got worse by the hour.

The BBC and other news organizations started tracking the number of Labour lawmakers calling for him to resign. The numbers crept up on the BBC blog — 40, then 44, 55, 70 and over 80 by the end of the day. (There are 403 Labour members of Parliament in total.) On Tuesday, four junior ministers resigned.

For both Mr. Biden and Mr. Starmer, there was plenty of evidence of the damage they were doing to their parties. Public and private polls showed the president was deeply unpopular and was dragging down his party’s chances of winning in 2024. For Mr. Starmer, the election results, and the testimony from Labour candidates about voters expressing their loathing for the prime minister, were hard to miss.

On Monday, under fire for the election results, Mr. Starmer said he took responsibility for the party’s losses, but he also insisted that he would not step down. “I also have a responsibility to deliver the change that we were elected and that we promised this country, and I’ll deliver on that,” he said.

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