Today is Keir Starmer’s date with destiny. If Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield by-election, this deeply flawed prime minister’s fate will be sealed. If Burnham fails to win the seat – a distinct possibility – Starmer may cling on, but his party will be critically damaged. UPDATE: Burnham won with a massive majority.

Starmer has been a bitter disappointment as prime minister. The hopes of the morning of Friday 5 July 2024 soon turned to dust, as Labour made one disastrous mistake after another. Yet many people claim to ‘hate’ the prime minister.

Hate is a strong emotion. I’ve been dismayed by Labour’s appalling performance in government, throwing away the potential created by its landslide victory, which could have been used to transform the country. I’m frustrated by Starmer’s inability to communicate and to learn from his many mistakes. But hate? I save that emotion for people like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, whose evil invasion of Ukraine has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and Donald Trump, who has also killed thousands by attacking Iran, and who delights in spreading hatred. So why the inflated hostility to Starmer? What drove people to daub highly offensive graffiti about him on my local railway bridge? (I’m not sharing that image.)

Part of it goes with the territory. We’ve seen growing hostility towards recent prime ministers. It’s partly because they’ve made a right mess of the country, from David Cameron’s austerity programme, which almost certainly played a part in the Brexit vote in 2016, through Boris Johnson’s open door approach to immigration, to Liz Truss’s catastrophic 49 day reign. Average earnings in Britain have barely increased (allowing for inflation) since the 2008 financial crisis. The idea that ‘nothing works’ now, while overplayed, does reflect real failures of the British state, whether in health, education, transport and defence. Politicians of all hues have broken promise after promise. We’re right to be angry.

Social media has also played its malign part, allowing toxic bandwagons to develop momentum against politicians or causes. That’s how false claims that the killer of three children in Stockport in 2024 was a Muslim immigrant (he was actually born in Wales) helped provoke riots. One post by a local man spreading these false claims was viewed millions of times. The killings happened the month Starmer’s government was elected. The near universal adoption of smartphones has left many addicted to social media, and craving the dopamine rush that doom-scrolling content can provide. It’s disturbing to watch people wandering down the street like zombies, obsessively glued to a phone’s screen. While the government seeks to ban under 16s from social media, the lives of those youngsters’ parents are just as damaged by digital addiction.

In the past, watching television news bulletins would have exposed people to a more diverse range of views (although Glasgow University Media Group famously challenged the idea that broadcast news was impartial). Today, many get their ‘news’ from social media, whose algorithms create an echo chamber for reinforcing beliefs and prejudices. As Dr Anna Kembke, author of Dopamine Nation, explains, the smartphone is a ‘modern-day hypodermic needle’ as addicts seek constant stimulation from TikTok, Instagram, X and other sites designed to hook their users. Kembke says:

‘We’ve forgotten how to be alone with our thoughts. We’re forever interrupting ourselves for a quick digital hit, meaning we rarely concentrate on taxing tasks for long.’

For many, that dopamine hit may not be socially destructive: endlessly scrolling cat videos is unlikely to cause rage and anti-social behavious. But for others, it can move them through an increasingly hostile range of emotions, from annoyance through anger to hatred towards ethnic minorities, for example. By that stage, they’re not in a position to realise that Elon Musk’s comments about Britain are almost invariably deranged.

Yet I wonder whether the ‘hatred’ of Keir Starmer is rooted in his personality. We saw something similar, if far less visceral, in the reaction to John Major in the 1990s. Major was mocked as a grey, boring man, with ITV’s Spitting Image satirical show portraying him as a grey puppet, compared with his colourful predecessor, Margaret Thatcher. The Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell famously drew him wearing his underpants outside his trousers. In an age of political ‘big beasts’, Major was an unconvincing leader, unable to control his party’s warring tribes. Yet compared with Starmer he was a consummate politician, winning an election after 18 months in power, and a master of detail, unlike his more charismatic chancellor Ken Clarke, who admitted he’d never read the Maastricht Treaty that had caused so much strife amongst the Tories. And he was skilled at building relationships – including an affair with Edwina Currie, which caused amazement when this secret emerged after he left office.

Starmer’s grey personality may not have mattered if he’d been a skilled communicator, setting out with passion his vision for Britain’s future, and explaining how his government’s actions would turn that vision into reality. But when interviewed he is painfully awkward, spouting the same unconvincing soundbite regardless of what he has been asked. As he faces a torrent of abuse, you can picture him as a glasses-wearing schoolboy, mocked as ‘four eyes’ and bullied for being unconfident and unable to make friends. Theresa May was never the target of as much vitriol, but her inability to explain and persuade was equally fatal, especially after her catastrophic performance in the 2017 general election, which destroyed whatever authority she once commanded. The Guardian’s John Crace famously labelled her the Maybot, which is just as apt for the robotic Starmer. And as commentator Steve Richards put it, May ‘not only failed to tell her story, but did not even make an attempt. This was her fatal flaw – not only a failure to communicate, but an indifference to the art’. (The Prime Ministers: reflections on leadership from Wilson to Johnson, 2019)

If Andy Burnham wins Makerfield – which we mustn’t assume – and becomes prime minister, Britain will have a premier who is a more confident, natural communicator. It is far from clear whether Burnham has a vision for Britain, or a plan to to tackle the country’s problems. If he’s smart, he will learn from the mistakes of his many recent predecessors. He’s likely to have a short honeymoon, but his engaging personality may help him win friends and avoid the kind of hatred that Starmer has endured. Britain desperately needs him – anyone – to succeed as prime minister.

Time will tell.