What Keir Starmer's downfall should teach every CEO about vision

Britain will soon see its seventh prime minister in the space of a decade. It’s over for Keir Starmer; on 22 June, he announced his resignation, following a tumultuous leadership defined by a catastrophic decline in popularity and a series of political misjudgements.

Andy Burnham, the self-styled “King of the North”, is coming. Having comfortably won the Makerfield by-election, it’s broadly expected he will replace Starmer as prime minister in July.

Starmer’s political obituaries were already being written before his formal resignation, all alighting on a similar theme: his singular lack of vision. Even the prime minister’s closest aides complained that there has effectively been a vacuum in the heart of number 10. They didn’t know who he was or what he wanted. In politics, as in the world of business, vision – the ability to tell a story, to weave a coherent narrative – matters.

Starmer’s mistakes were many. I’ve counted 15 major U-turns, as well as disliked tax rises and the continually embarrassing appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador. Each misstep and about-face showed a lack of purpose and a tone that failed to inspire.

He entered Downing Street with a promise of change and a better future, a politics that would tread more lightly on all our lives. Within a matter of weeks, that had all dissolved as he stood in the rose garden in number 10 and warned of pain to come. The state of the public finances, he said, was far worse than realised. Tax rises were coming.

Starmer came into power offering voters a banquet of hope and instead presented them with a diet of misery.

The prime minister himself later acknowledged that he got it wrong – that he had “squeezed the hope out”. As if it were a concept entirely new to him, Starmer admitted: “We forgot people wanted something to look forward to.” The voters did not forget. The prime minister tanked in the polls and never recovered.

The Starmer vision vacuum was typified by policy retreats that showed a lack of conviction in any coherent strategy. The decision to strip millions of pensioners of winter fuel payments only to be forced to reinstate them after an extraordinary backlash; making the case for urgent welfare reform, only to back down at the last minute in the face of a mass revolt; earning the ire of rural England with an inheritance tax plan that later had to be abandoned.

As Mandelson wrote in a leaked private WhatsApp message, Starmer’s roadmap was summarised by the former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, as: “Advance/buckle/advance/buckle.”

Starmer quite simply failed to prepare for power with a strategic vision for where he wanted to take the nation. He entered number 10 without a clear plan, and it showed.

Instead of an easily communicable focus, there was a baffling array of missions, milestones, foundations, pillars and successive resets. At one point, Starmer had no fewer than 30 priorities, which were all vying for attention.

In a business context, that’s an overly complex, ever-shifting company roadmap that offers no clue as to where you’re trying to get to. Take that approach, and your staff and board will be as bewildered as UK voters have been with Starmer.

As he struggled to turn his government around, the body count went off the charts. Starmer went through three cabinet secretaries, four directors of communications, four chiefs of staff, and three heads of policy. If you’re a CEO making changes at the top table while still failing to convey a clear business strategy, there’s a lesson to heed: these hires and fires aren’t firm leadership, just short-term survival.

His delivery did not help matters. In person, Starmer can be amusing, warm and genuinely funny. But it did not translate on the public stage, where his speeches often fell flat. Some leaders – David Cameron, Tony Blair – appeared to have an extra gear for oratory when they needed it.

Starmer, however heartfelt his intentions, has never been able to hit the same rhetorical level, and this is a crucial front where he has lost the battle for conveying a vision. Unlike Nigel Farage or Zack Polanski, Starmer is not a natural communicator.

Of course, all the oratorical ability in the world is worth nothing without a coherent strategy. Nor will it save you from your own character and mistakes. In Boris Johnson’s case, what came across as charming outside government proved disastrous in power.

I still have vivid memories of Johnson’s speech to the Confederation of British Industry, where he lost his place and went on an extraordinary, rambling tangent about a recent trip to Peppa Pig World. “Hands up if you’ve been,” he asked his audience of senior business figures. “I loved it. Peppa Pig World is very much my kind of place.”

What of the coming man? Burnham is, undeniably, a better speaker than Starmer, but his vision so far has given relatively few clues about what he would actually do with power, nor the destination he’d inspire voters to follow him towards. His early speeches promulgate “business-friendly socialism” and calls to reject “40 years of neoliberalism”. At this stage, it all comes down to principles.

He campaigned in Makerfield with a pledge to change Labour. This message was clearly successful, given the by-election result left Reform in the dust. But what that change looks like if he becomes prime minister is unclear.

To succeed as prime minister, Burnham must defy the fates of those who preceded him and translate a clear vision into success at number 10. If he fails to do so, Farage’s vision will be waiting.