The morning of July 5, when Sir Keir Starmer was celebrating his landslide General Election victory, seems a long time ago now in the wake of the sea of damning headlines that have dogged his premiership, most recently concerning the resignation of chief of staff Sue Gray.
Today, one of our readers asks if this is the steepest slide a UK Prime Minister has ever had.
Alex Orr of Edinburgh writes: "I wonder if any British Prime Minister has had a more catastrophic honeymoon period on winning a General Election than Sir Keir Starmer?
The resignation of Sue Gray, his chief of staff, comes after only 94 days in office, and further adds to his growing catalogue of miscalculations. This includes penalising pensioners with the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance, and demonstrating incredible greed through acquiring a staggering array of freebie gifts. As Benjamin Franklin famously said, 'glass, china, and reputation are easily crack'd, and never well mended'.
Liz Truss lasted only 49 days as PM, but it must be remembered that she had not just won a landslide election. Sir Keir has no such excuse. He has been handed one of the largest parliamentary majorities in history, and yet seemed to have entered office with no coherent plan, and we are now seeing voters on an unprecedently quick scale express buyers’ remorse.
Until the Truss débâcle, George Canning had held the highest office for the shortest time: just 119 days in 1827. But Canning insisted on being Chancellor of the Exchequer as well as PM and worked himself to death in short order.
Keir Starmer is also unique in his ability to spread doom and gloom, and I cannot recollect any former PM in modern history, given the mandate won, losing popularity so rapidly."
The Herald is only £1 for 3 months.
Read more in our Letters page
Letters should not exceed 500 words. We reserve the right to edit submissions.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel