LONDON (AP) — Dutiful rather than dynamic, Keir Starmer was elected Britain’s prime minister to be a safe pair of hands who would end years of political chaos under the Conservatives.

His term is ending less than two years later after missteps, party infighting and one colossal error of judgment that indirectly ensnared him in the scandals surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, a man he had never met and whose sexual crimes he was not complicit in.

On Monday, Starmer said in an emotional statement that he is stepping down as leader of the governing Labour Party, though he will remain caretaker primer minister until a new Labour leader is chosen in coming weeks.

“The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election,” he said. “I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.”

Starmer’s selling point was “no more soap opera politics,” said Rob Ford, a political science professor at the University of Manchester. Instead, Ford said, his government was “the antithesis of what he said he was going to be about, and it’s very hard to survive that.”

A trouncing for Starmer’s Labour Party in a midterm set of local and regional elections on May 7 proved the final straw. It triggered a series of government resignations and challenges that look set to sweep former Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham into 10 Downing Street.

It’s a precipitous downfall from July 4, 2024, when Starmer brought the center-left Labour Party back to power after 14 years, winning 411 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons.

Standing outside 10 Downing Street the next day, Starmer pledged to restore “respect to politics” and lead a government of “public service.” After the chaos of the last years of Conservative rule, which saw a constant churn of scandal and the toppling of prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss in quick succession, Starmer promised to lower the temperature and make politics a little bit more boring.

Some of the problems that felled him were baked into his victory, which was built on a wide but shallow base of support. Despite Labour’s huge majority in Parliament, it was backed by only 34 percent of voters — and many of those appeared motivated by anger at the Conservatives rather than enthusiasm for Labour.

This lack of excitement for his government from the start was compounded as Starmer made a series of missteps. An early furor over accepting free gifts, including designer spectacles and Taylor Swift concert tickets, was followed by a series of policy U-turns, especially clumsy attempts to cut welfare spending that stirred anger........

© The Times of Israel