‘I don't feel sorry for a failed politician who's f**ked it up. I'm afraid not’
Karl Turner, MP and Andy Burnham supporter, tells The News Agents why he feels sorry for Keir Starmer as a family man, but won’t miss his leadership as Prime Minister.
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“Thank you very much. Tatty-bye. Farewell, it's been an absolute pleasure and a treat, now let us move on.”
MP and Andy Burnham ally Karl Turner isn't holding back about Keir Starmer's resignation.
The elected official for MP for Kingston upon Hull East tells The News Agents that while he feels sorry for Starmer as a husband, father and all-round family man, he won't miss his leadership.
“I don't feel sorry for a failed politician who's fucked it up. I'm afraid not," he adds.
The News Agents have praised Starmer as leader of the opposition – and the Labour Party more widely – but criticised his time as Prime Minister. But for Turner, the faults he found in the former PM began long before he entered Downing Street.
"Keir Starmer is not very good, that is the real truth," he tells Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel.
"He struggled from the very outset, even in opposition. He struggled with the management of the party."
This, he says, was due to his unwillingness to engage on a personal level with members of the Labour Party.
"He had a certain few, a few of his close people, and I was included in that to an extent, and there would be a few of us, probably half a dozen had his mobile number, and that would be it, really.
"He would begrudge going into the tea room."
Turner says his opinion on Starmer soured when the government attempted to end jury trials in certain court cases.
Read more:
Did Keir Starmer have everything wrong from day one?
Reform’s Makerfield failure: Why Burnham’s win is such bad news for Nigel Farage
‘Starmer only knew what he believed in if someone else wrote it down’
Despite this, he says the level of hatred directed towards Starmer is unwarranted.
"What people spoke about with me regularly was the fact that Starmer kept changing his mind," Turner says.
"He was making promises before he was the leader of the party, and with the advent of social media, with clips being constantly used alongside those of him saying the exact opposite, almost once he was in number 10 Downing Street."
Turner describes Starmer as a man who “flip-flops”, but insists that is not his experience of Andy Burnham, despite evidence that he has done exactly the same on issues such as pension payments to WASPI women.
He defends Burnham saying his stance changes were made during a by-election campaign, not during one to be the leader of the country.
"I think the biggest frustration for me with Keir Starmer is you genuinely did not know what he believed in," Turner continues.
"He wouldn't be able to verbalise the stuff that was in his head, but he could read it if somebody had written it down."
‘Why would you stick with a crap leader?’
Turner now backs a Burnham 'coronation', with no leadership challenge, despite admitting to being part of calls during the Tory government for there to be one as they rattled through their Prime Ministers in the tail-end of their time in power.
"If the leader's utterly crap, is costing you votes and actually you've got no chance whatsoever of winning, why on earth are you going to stick with them?" Turner asks.
"But I accept the arguments that it's hypocritical, because when we were in opposition and it happened regularly, we were all on the bandwagon saying, 'Come on, let's be going to the country'. I get that, but you don't have to constitutionally."
"I think Burnham will govern well, and the essential difference with Andy Burnham, is that he is normal, he can speak human and he's charismatic."
He believes the newly elected Makerfield MP will "build" on the manifesto drawn up by Labour in the 2024 campaign, and attempt to replicate positive changes he introduced as Mayor of Greater Manchester nationally.