The failure of many of the UK’s recent prime ministers, who have passed through Downing Street in quick succession, seems easy to explain. Theresa May couldn’t do what she promised and didn’t “get Brexit done”. Boris Johnson broke his own rules, and the law. Liz Truss failed through sheer incompetence.

But Keir Starmer won an election by a landslide and led his party to victory after 14 years out of power. So why is he looking at a probable leadership challenge after less than two years in office?

It is true that Starmer faced deep problems left by the Conservatives, Brexit and COVID. He then had to deal with the war in Gaza, a capricious US president in Donald Trump, and now a war in Iran. But Starmer’s struggles boil down to a failure of leadership.

US political scientist, Ronald Heifetz, has written that political leadership is about disappointing your followers at a “rate they can stand”. Hi fellow American scholar, Richard Neustadt, argued that leadership (in the case of presidents) was about “the power to persuade”. Keir Starmer has struggled because he disappointed too many, and persuaded too few.

Crucially, Starmer has never won over the public. Labour’s election in 2024 was an anti-Tory vote, not a pro-Labour one, and Starmer rode a wave of unhappiness from a moody and volatile electorate. Even at the height of his........

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