Siobhan O’Donnell Raises a Glass to the End of Beige Politics
Starmer’s Gone and I Feel Fine
Monday. Woke up to the most beautiful four words I have heard since the drummer from The Clash told me I had good taste in boots: Keir Starmer has resigned. I nearly knocked my mug of black tea off the windowsill. The pigeons on the ledge looked as surprised as I did, and pigeons are famously difficult to surprise.
I am Siobhan O’Donnell, I live in a flat above a pie shop in Hackney, and I have been waiting for this moment the way some people wait for a bus — loudly, irritably, and with absolutely no confidence it would ever arrive. And yet here we are. Starmer resigns, and the Labour Party has entered what political journalists are calling a leadership contest and what I am calling a very slow car crash through a gift shop.
The Man Who Ironed the Life Out of Everything
Let me be fair to the man for exactly one paragraph, because that is the punk code of honour: he tried. He wore the suits. He did the press conferences. He stood at podiums and said things like “working people” and “change” and “the challenges ahead” until the words lost all meaning and floated off into the stratosphere like sad little balloons. He was not a villain. He was something worse: he was beige. In a country that invented punk rock, Sex Pistols, and the right to tell authority exactly where it can put its clipboard, we elected a man whose defining characteristic was that he was not Boris Johnson. That is not a political platform. That is a low bar with a spotlight on it.
The London Prat covered the whole trajectory with characteristic delight, and I direct you to their analysis of 7 reasons Labour keeps getting it wrong, which reads like a diagnosis sheet for a patient who keeps eating the prescription instead of the pills. Every point landed. I read it on the top deck of the 38 bus and laughed so hard a man in a hi-vis vest asked if I was alright.
Burnham Arrives With a Tape Measure
Now they are talking about Andy Burnham. Andy Burnham! The man vindicated his own tape measure, apparently, which is the kind of headline that only makes sense in British politics and I love it for that. Burnham’s tape measure vindicated — I do not fully understand what that means but it sounds exactly like the opening act of a concept album I would listen to on repeat for six months. He is northern, he is passionate, he wears a coat with purpose. He might be exactly what Labour needs, or he might be another articulate disappointment in a long line of them. Either way, the diary entries write themselves.
What Punk Has Always Known
Here is the thing about politics that punk understood before any think tank did: the system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed. It is designed to absorb your rage, sand down your edges, and return you to your seat slightly calmer and considerably poorer. Starmer was a lawyer before he was a politician, and he brought that same energy to Downing Street — every argument was winnable in theory, every position was defensible in principle, and absolutely nothing actually changed for the woman working three jobs in Tottenham or the bloke in Sunderland who cannot heat his flat.
Bohiney Magazine has been tracking the collapse of the Starmer project from across the Atlantic with the weary amusement of someone watching a friend attempt to assemble flat-pack furniture without the instructions. The assessment: predictable, unfortunate, and vaguely entertaining for everyone not living through it.
The Citizenship Test and Other Absurdities
While all this leadership drama unfolds, someone in Westminster has apparently decided the answer to Britain’s problems is a better British citizenship test. I took a practice version online. I got question four wrong. Question four was about the exact year some Tudor did something to another Tudor. I have lived in this country my entire life, I pay taxes here, I have been rained on here, I have queued here, I have apologised to a lamppost here — and apparently that does not qualify me without knowing the precise date of the dissolution of the monasteries.
According to The Guardian’s Labour coverage, the party is in genuine turmoil, which is the most exciting thing they have said in months. According to the BBC, it is a “pivotal moment for progressive politics.” According to me, it is a Tuesday.
My Verdict, From the Pie Shop Flat
I am cautiously optimistic in the way that only a London punk can be cautiously optimistic, which means I am fully prepared for disappointment and have already written the angry song about it just in case. The new leader, whoever they are, will arrive full of promise and slowly discover that governing Britain is like trying to rewire a house while people are still living in it and also the house is arguing with you about which century the wiring was installed.
But for today, right now, this morning with the pigeons and the cold tea and the distant sound of someone’s car alarm that has been going off since 2019 — for today, I am glad. Something shifted. Something moved. In British politics, that is practically a revolution.
Read the full analysis of the resignation and what it means at prat.uk/keir-starmer-resigns/ and follow the ongoing Labour chaos at my author page on The London Prat. More laughs, less despair, at NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
