Be careful what you wish for, they warn us. You get rid of Keir Starmer and you might get someone even worse. You might get someone even more leftwing. You might get someone even more wrong-headed. You might get Ed Miliband. You might get Angela Rayner. Yes, we might indeed. We probably would, in fact. After all, Rayner and Miliband lead in polls of Labour members, who will choose Starmer’s successor. Both are hero-worshipped on the left. Never mind that one of them got soundly thrashed in the 2015 general election, and the other had to resign after a financial scandal. As far as hardcore Labour members go, they can do no wrong. They are in the box seat.

And that prospect should, and does, fill us with alarm. Either of them as prime minister would be ruinous for the country. Both are responsible for policies – Miliband’s net-zero fantasy and Rayner’s anti-growth workers’ rights bill – that are already dragging Britain down into a dark pit of big-state economic ruin. Neither has a vision for pulling Britain out of its death spiral. Both would merely hasten our decline.

But, do you know what, however catastrophic Rayner or Miliband might be, I still think they’d be slightly less awful than Keir Starmer. Because they believe in something, however wrong-headed that thing might be. Notwithstanding Rayer’s tax issues, both she and Miliband are more honest than Starmer. It might not be saying much, but both have more integrity.

And there lies the major problem with Keir Starmer. For all his criticism of Boris Johnson, it is actually he, Starmer, who is embedding dishonesty into government.

It is he, Starmer, who ran for the Labour leadership in 2020 on a false prospectus and did exactly the same again in the 2024 general election. It is he, Starmer, who has broken promise after promise, pledge after pledge, and who believes in nothing beyond his own desire for office.

It is he, Starmer, who has made obfuscation, flip-floppery and evasion into an artform, and has so reduced our faith in politicians that our immediate reaction now is simply not to believe a word they say.

People sometimes scoff when I tell them I preferred Labour under Jeremy Corbyn – and not just because Corbyn’s Labour was always going to lose. I have rarely agreed with a single thing Corbyn says. But he was consistent over many decades. He had principles. He believed in stuff and stuck to it.

Unlike with our current Prime Minister, nobody could accuse Corbyn of prioritising power over principle, or personal ambition over probity. I admired that, even when I fervently disagreed.

We are nearing the end game for Keir Starmer’s premiership. God willing, it will all be over by the middle of next year. Yes, what follows may well be awful. But still not quite as awful as what we currently endure.

Our Prime Minister’s poll ratings are the worst in history. And that should come as no surprise. The sooner he is out of power, the sooner our faith in the integrity of our elected representatives can start to be restored. A three-year Miliband or Rayner government would be a high price to pay for the end of Keir Starmer. But it would still, just, be a price worth paying.