A VOICE FROM THE STREET

15th September 2026
 
Extra, extra, read all about it!

Did Sunak and Starmer Want to Govern — or Merely to Be Prime Minister?


By David Selves


There is an important difference between wanting to become Prime Minister and wanting to do the job of Prime Minister. The first is an ambition. The second is a vocation, an endurance test and, occasionally, a form of punishment.

Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer unquestionably wanted the position. Both worked remarkably hard to reach Downing Street. Yet the manner in which each departed raises a more uncomfortable question: once they had secured the greatest office in British politics, did either of them truly know what he wanted to do with it?

Or, having reached the summit, did they discover that the summit was cold, lonely and surprisingly short of oxygen?

Sunak’s final great decision was to call the General Election in July 2024. We now know that David Cameron pleaded with him not to do it. Sunak’s own senior campaign advisers had already warned that he should wait until the autumn, when falling inflation, lower interest rates and a greater sense of economic recovery might have improved the Conservative position. Sunak ignored them all.

Cameron, demonstrating the flexibility required of the modern statesman, publicly endorsed a decision he had privately opposed. That is perhaps politics rather than hypocrisy, although the dividing line has become increasingly difficult to locate.

Sunak went to the Palace, returned to Downing Street and announced the election in torrential rain, apparently unaware that an umbrella might be useful. It became a perfect visual metaphor for the campaign that followed: an intelligent man voluntarily standing in a downpour while everybody around him wondered why he had chosen to do it.

The Conservatives suffered their worst defeat in modern history.

Sunak had promised that, even if defeated, he would remain in Parliament for the full term. So far, he has done so. That should be acknowledged. In an age when political promises frequently come with a shorter shelf life than supermarket sushi, keeping one ought not to pass without notice. He made that commitment during the 2024 campaign.

Starmer’s departure was more abrupt and, in some ways, more revealing.

On 19 June 2026, faced with the possibility of a leadership challenge from Andy Burnham, Starmer said he would stand and fight. He suggested that he would not walk away. Three days later, he announced his resignation.

Having also indicated that he intended to remain in Parliament, he then resigned his Holborn and St Pancras seat at the beginning of September. Sunak, having lost an election catastrophically, stayed. Starmer, having won one overwhelmingly only two years earlier, was gone from Parliament within weeks of leaving Downing Street.

That contrast matters—not because former Prime Ministers must remain MPs indefinitely, but because it tells us something about the increasingly provisional nature of political promises. “I shall fight on” now appears to mean “unless tomorrow proves particularly unpleasant.” “I shall serve for the whole Parliament” may mean “subject to offers, circumstances and a sudden desire to concentrate on international affairs.”
Were Sunak and Starmer overwhelmed by the office? More provocatively, were they relieved to escape it?
We cannot know what either man felt in private. Relief is rarely included in a resignation speech. Departing Prime Ministers invariably tell us that it has been the honour of their lives, even when their faces suggest that the removal van cannot arrive quickly enough.

Yet there is evidence worth examining.

Both men possessed substantial experience outside party politics. Sunak worked in international finance and investment before entering Parliament. Starmer had a distinguished legal career and ran the Crown Prosecution Service as Director of Public Prosecutions. These were not professional politicians who had progressed directly from university politics to becoming researchers, special advisers and safe-seat MPs.

That ought to have been an advantage.

Sunak understood markets, capital and business. Starmer understood institutions, evidence, administration and the law. Neither was a fool. Indeed, part of the tragedy is that both were clearly intelligent, diligent and serious.

But neither was politically seasoned.

Both entered the Commons in 2015. Sunak became Prime Minister in 2022, after only seven years as an MP. Starmer arrived in Downing Street in 2024, nine years after first being elected. By contemporary standards, this may seem respectable. By the standards of earlier generations, it was an express lift to the top floor.

Consider Jim Callaghan.

When I asked Callaghan after his retirement what had been his greatest problem as Prime Minister, he gave an extraordinarily revealing answer. He said that the people he needed around him had not experienced what he had experienced on his journey to that position and therefore did not understand what he needed from them.

Callaghan entered Parliament in 1945 and did not become Prime Minister until 1976. He had spent more than three decades learning the machinery, personalities, jealousies and limitations of government. He remains the only person to have held all four Great Offices of State: Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister. His parliamentary career lasted from 1945 until 1987.

Callaghan’s point was not simply that experience makes a person wiser. It was that government depends upon a shared understanding that cannot be acquired from briefing papers.

A Prime Minister must know which minister can be trusted, which official is concealing a difficulty, which apparent rebellion is serious and which is theatre. He must distinguish the crisis that will disappear by lunchtime from the one that will destroy the government by Friday. He must understand Parliament not as an organisational chart but as a living collection of ambitions, grievances, friendships and ancient vendettas.

Neither finance nor the law necessarily teaches that.

Sunak approached government as though the correct answer could be found through sufficient analysis. His five pledges were presented almost as management targets. Inflation would be halved. Debt would fall. Waiting lists would shrink. Boats would be stopped.

But politics is not an investment spreadsheet. A government cannot be managed merely by selecting the correct cells and waiting for the totals to improve.

When the pledges faltered, Sunak appeared increasingly trapped by them. Calling the election early may have been less a strategic gamble than an attempt to bring an intolerable period of waiting to an end. Perhaps he hoped the campaign would transform the political weather. Perhaps he believed an autumn election could only make the defeat worse. Or perhaps, consciously or otherwise, he simply wanted the uncertainty finished.

Starmer’s difficulty was different. He approached politics rather like a prosecuting lawyer: eliminate the vulnerabilities, control the evidence, avoid unnecessary commitments and construct a case that the electorate could safely accept.

That method was effective in opposition. It helped Labour win a huge Commons majority. But a prosecution ends with a verdict. Government begins with one.

Once in Downing Street, Starmer often appeared to possess methods without a compelling destination. His emphasis on missions, milestones and delivery concealed a deeper uncertainty: what was the government fundamentally for?

“Change” is an effective campaign word, but it is not a governing philosophy. Change what? For whom? At what cost? In which direction?

Both Sunak and Starmer therefore suffered from versions of the same problem. Sunak knew what he believed economically but could not convert it into political authority. Starmer knew how to obtain political authority but appeared uncertain what he truly believed once he had it.

Perhaps both wanted the job partly for the sake of having achieved it. That is not an unusual human failing. Many people desire promotion before discovering that they preferred the work they did previously. The difficulty is that most disappointed executives can quietly update their LinkedIn profiles. A disillusioned Prime Minister takes the country with him.

Modern politics may make this problem worse. Parties increasingly select leaders for their immediate usefulness. Can this person win the next contest? Can he calm the markets? Can he defeat the other party? Can he survive tonight’s news?

Sunak was chosen after the Truss disaster because he appeared competent and economically literate. Starmer was chosen after the Corbyn defeat because he appeared respectable, disciplined and electable. Each was selected as the answer to his party’s previous catastrophe.

But being the opposite of your predecessor is not the same as having a governing purpose of your own.
Sunak was not Truss. Starmer was not Corbyn. Both propositions were true. Neither was an adequate programme for government.

There is another uncomfortable lesson in Callaghan’s observation. Perhaps Sunak and Starmer were not only inexperienced themselves; perhaps they also lacked enough people around them who understood political power from long experience.

Prime ministers are now surrounded by advisers, strategists, communications specialists, polling experts and policy units. They receive endless data but perhaps insufficient wisdom. They are told how an announcement will play with a target demographic but not always whether the announcement makes sense. They are protected from dissent until dissent bursts through the door.

Cameron apparently told Sunak to wait. Sunak did not listen. Starmer said he would fight but evidently concluded, within days, that he could not. In both cases, the final decision suggests a leader whose political judgment had become detached from the realities around him.

Were they relieved when it ended?

Sunak’s demeanour after leaving Downing Street often appeared lighter than it had during his premiership. Starmer’s swift departure from both Number 10 and Parliament suggests that he felt little desire to remain amid the wreckage and fight another campaign from the back benches.

That does not prove cowardice or insincerity. It may simply demonstrate that both men finally recognised something the rest of the country had already begun to suspect: the office did not suit them, and they no longer suited the office.

Callaghan had spent thirty-one years preparing to become Prime Minister and still found that those around him could not understand what he needed. Sunak and Starmer reached Number 10 after fewer than ten years in Parliament. They had impressive careers, considerable ability and plenty of ambition.

What they lacked may have been the long, bruising political apprenticeship that teaches not merely how to obtain power, but how to use it—and how to endure possessing it.

The real question, therefore, is not whether Sunak and Starmer were failures, nor whether they were good men overwhelmed by impossible circumstances. It is whether our political system now confuses intelligence with judgment, presentation with leadership and winning the office with being ready to hold it.

Sunak ignored the advice to wait and led his party into disaster. Starmer promised to stand and fight, then departed almost before the echoes of the promise had died away.

Perhaps both desperately wanted to become Prime Minister. Or was it the Peter Principle at work? People in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

But wanting to be Prime Minister and wanting to remain Prime Minister when the applause stops are two very different ambitions.

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