The Machiavellian Keir Starmer

In The Prince, the notorious advice book of 1513, dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the new ruler of Florence, the erstwhile Florentine politician, Niccolò Machiavelli, admonished that “a ruler who wishes to maintain his power must be prepared to act immorally.” Rulers “maintain themselves better if they owe little to luck,” he counseled. Rulers “who have done great things are those who have set little store by keeping their word,” Machiavelli went on.

It “is much safer to be feared than loved.” Yet, “a ruler must above all guard against being despised and hated.” To “betray one’s friends, to be treacherous, merciless and irreligious,” according to Machiavelli, “power may be gained by acting in such ways, but not glory.” The people, moreover, “are fickle,” he asserted; “it is easy to persuade them about something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.” “One of the best safeguards that a ruler has against plots,” Machiavelli cautioned, “is not being hated by the people.”

The invocation of the concept of an island of strangers, echoing the Conservative and then Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech; “totalitarian discipline," which led to the suspension of four Members of Parliament—Neil Duncan Jordan, Brian Leishman, Chris Hinchliff, and Rachael Maskell—for repeated breaches of the party whips’ instruction; a major policy U-turn on the winter fuel payment, which means nine million pensioners in England and Wales with an annual income of £35,000 or less will be eligible; Prime Minister Keir Starmer is a dutifully Machiavellian prime minister. But, with just 23 percent of Britons having a positive opinion of the Labour Party leader and two-thirds of the public—67 percent—maintaining an unfavorable view of him, Prime Minister Starmer is perhaps not an entirely successful one.