Rome’s decline was never driven by one faction or one personality alone. Some emperors and like Trump evoking Caesarist politics, governed through spectacle, grievance and personal cults; others through sterile managerialism, bureaucratic insulation and an increasingly desperate attachment to office. Both reflected the same deeper decay: a ruling class detached from the public mood and incapable of recognising when legitimacy had begun to collapse.
That is where Keir Starmer enters the Roman parallel. Starmer represents something colder but no less dangerous: the late-imperial ruler who mistakes control of the machine for consent of the people.
If Trump evokes the theatrical populism of emperors who thrived on mass emotion and political spectacle, Starmer increasingly resembles the later Caesars whose authority technically endured while public belief in them steadily evaporated. Rome did not fall solely because of flamboyant demagogues. It also declined under rulers who mistook administrative control for genuine consent, who governed through caution and messaging while the society beneath them became restless, distrustful and exhausted.
A comparison with Nero is therefore not about literal tyranny, but about the psychology of political decline. Nero began with considerable goodwill, promise, image and carefully managed moderation. He presented himself as measured, reforming and modernising — a reassuring figure after instability. Yet gradually image overtook substance. Nevertheless, his reign, like Trump’s, descended into vanity, denial, loyalist courtiers, public alienation and eventual collapse though Trump’s ultimate reckoning remains unrealised. Economic pressures mounted, public frustration deepened, elite confidence weakened, and the emperor increasingly retreated into performance, loyalists and carefully managed appearances. The regime became consumed not with renewal, but with preserving itself.
Critics argue that Starmer now risks embodying precisely that late-imperial instinct. They now argue that his government has entered a similar phase of decay: not dramatic despotism, but managerial exhaustion, moral compromise, endless U-turns and a desperate clinging to office. Rather than recognising growing public disillusionment, the leadership appears determined to rationalise every electoral warning as temporary turbulence. Poor local election results are dismissed as mid-term protest votes rather than acknowledged as evidence of a much broader rejection taking shape. Yet the local elections revealed something far more dangerous for an incumbent government: not simple frustration with individual policies, but a hardening public mood against the Labour leadership itself.
The U-turns matter because they reveal a government without a settled political soul. Pledges are made, abandoned, repackaged, denied and reversed. From welfare to tax, winter fuel, migration, digital ID, farming, public spending and other reversals too numerous to list, the impression is not of tactical flexibility but of a leadership constantly retreating from its own positions. Labour promised stability after Conservative chaos yet increasingly resembles the same exhausted politics it replaced.
The parallels with the recent Conservative collapse are striking and should have been a warning. The Conservatives cycled through prime ministers at extraordinary speed — from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak — in a desperate attempt to convince the electorate that changing the face at the top could somehow restore legitimacy to a government the public had already tired of. Each change sold as renewal, each really an attempt to preserve the party’s grip on power. But the public had already moved beyond blaming individuals. In the end, the electorate rejected not merely the individual leaders: they had rejected the whole exhaustive governing culture surrounding them. Labour now risks repeating that mistake. Removing Starmer alone may no longer be enough if the cabinet around him is equally implicated in the political failure.
Labour now risks repeating the same cycle in reverse. Starmer’s defenders insist that “the public do not want a leadership challenge” during difficult times domestically and internationally. Yet critics point to the local elections as evidence of precisely the opposite: the electorate is signalling deep dissatisfaction with the entire direction of the government. The claim that stability alone is virtuous begins to sound less like statesmanship and more like self-preservation.
The local and devolved election results have made that brutally clear. Labour suffered heavy losses across Britain, with reports citing voters “punishing Starmer’s Labour Party” and reporting more than 80 Labour lawmakers calling for him to go. The argument from Starmer’s defenders that “the public does not want a leadership challenge” during difficult times is therefore nonsense. The electorate has already delivered its challenge. The problem is that Starmer and those around him refuse to hear it. Indeed, critics increasingly argue that changing Starmer alone would no longer be enough. The problem, they contend, is not simply one man, but an entire political apparatus that rose and advanced under his leadership.
That refusal is sustained by a cabinet and inner circle whose political futures are inseparably tied to Starmer’s rise and survival. Critics argue that he has surrounded himself with sycophants, careerists and political dependants who increasingly confuse loyalty to the leader with loyalty to the country itself. Like the courtiers surrounding Nero and Rome’s declining emperors, they protect the illusion of authority because their own positions, ambitions and influence depend upon the survival of the existing order. This inevitably breeds caution, conformity and career preservation over honesty or principle, leaving ministers unwilling to challenge leadership failures even as public dissatisfaction deepens. The result is a culture of managed narratives, defensive messaging and political sycophancy in which maintaining power overtakes confronting reality, while repeated appeals for “stability” become less a defence of the nation and more a shield for political self-preservation.
This is where the charge against the cabinet deepens. Critics do not merely accuse Starmer of incompetence, but of moral complicity: of standing with Israel while Gaza faces devastation, mass death and an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice. The ICJ has ordered Israel to prevent acts under the Genocide Convention and ensure humanitarian assistance, while the case itself remains ongoing. For many on the left, Starmer’s government has not simply failed to oppose illegal war and mass killing; it has politically enabled them.
The proscription of Palestine Action under Yvette Cooper sharpened that sense of authoritarian drift. Cooper announced the move under the Terrorism Act 2000, making membership or support a criminal offence if passed by Parliament. The Guardian later reported that the ban followed damage to RAF Brize Norton aircraft and that the government defended it as targeting serious criminality, while opponents saw it as a dangerous attack on protest and solidarity with Palestine. To critics, this looked like the machinery of the state being used not to protect democracy, but to narrow it.
Starmer’s migration rhetoric also fed the sense that Labour had crossed a moral line. His “island of strangers” language was widely compared by critics to Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” politics, a comparison Starmer rejected. But even if one rejects a direct equivalence, the political effect was clear: a Labour prime minister borrowing the emotional grammar of the right while claiming to defend progressive government. Like Trump, he reaches for fear; unlike Trump, he dresses it in administrative respectability.
The blocking or sidelining of Andy Burnham adds another Roman layer. Burnham’s allies have warned against a rapid “coronation” of Wes Streeting and called for Labour’s NEC to ensure he can contest a seat and enter any leadership race. If Labour’s internal machinery is used to manage succession, exclude challengers or protect favoured candidates, then the party begins to resemble a court rather than a democratic movement.
Streeting’s role only adds to the sense of decay. Reports have repeatedly framed him as a possible successor, while also noting that he has not launched a formal challenge. Critics see this as the worst of both worlds: alleged disloyal manoeuvring without the courage of open confrontation. In Roman terms, it is the politics of the palace corridor — ambition without honour, intrigue without responsibility.
Rome repeatedly demonstrated how dangerous such insulated leadership circles could become. Later emperors surrounded themselves with administrators and loyalists who reinforced the illusion of stability long after legitimacy had begun to fracture. Silence was interpreted as loyalty. Obedience was mistaken for support. Yet underneath the surface, public confidence eroded until collapse accelerated with astonishing speed.
That is why the Nero comparison bites. Nero did not fall simply because he was unpopular. The striking feature of Nero’s downfall was not sudden catastrophe, but prolonged denial. The empire was visibly weakening long before he acknowledged the danger. Provincial revolts spread, elite support collapsed, the Praetorian Guard deserted him, and still the machinery of imperial authority attempted to preserve the illusion of permanence. By the end, Nero remained emperor in title while power had already disappeared in practice.
Critics argue that this is the true danger now confronting Labour. Governments often become most defensive precisely when they sense weakness approaching. They tighten internal discipline, attack dissent, repeat slogans about responsibility and stability, and insist there is no alternative leadership capable of governing. Yet history suggests that once a governing class begins arguing that it alone must remain in office “for the good of the nation,” it is often because it fears the electorate may already have reached a very different conclusion.
Unlike Trump, Starmer’s danger is not assassination or imperial violence; The Roman comparison is symbolic rather than literal. Britain is not imperial Rome and Starmer is not Nero in any direct historical sense. The danger is political death by denial. A leader clings on. A cabinet flatters him. Rivals whisper but do not strike. The party machine blocks alternatives. The public votes against the government, only to be told that now is not the time to question the leader. But the underlying lesson remains timeless: political systems decay when leaders begin confusing institutional control with genuine public consent. Once belief in a government begins to die, the structures around it may remain standing for a time, but legitimacy has already started to rot beneath the surface.
That is the warning increasingly levelled at Starmer and his cabinet — that they risk becoming a modern political court, clinging to office not because public enthusiasm remains strong, but because too many careers, ambitions and reputations are now bound to the survival of the existing regime. And history repeatedly shows that when ruling elites become more concerned with preserving themselves than renewing public trust, the end rarely arrives gradually. That is the same fatal arrogance that haunted Rome’s declining Caesars: the belief that holding office is the same as holding legitimacy. It is not. Once the people stop believing, power becomes theatre. And when a ruler is left performing authority to an audience that has already turned away, the end has usually begun.
Like Rome’s declining Caesars, they often discover too late that power can vanish long before those holding it are prepared to let it go.
That is where Keir Starmer enters the Roman parallel. Starmer represents something colder but no less dangerous: the late-imperial ruler who mistakes control of the machine for consent of the people.
If Trump evokes the theatrical populism of emperors who thrived on mass emotion and political spectacle, Starmer increasingly resembles the later Caesars whose authority technically endured while public belief in them steadily evaporated. Rome did not fall solely because of flamboyant demagogues. It also declined under rulers who mistook administrative control for genuine consent, who governed through caution and messaging while the society beneath them became restless, distrustful and exhausted.
A comparison with Nero is therefore not about literal tyranny, but about the psychology of political decline. Nero began with considerable goodwill, promise, image and carefully managed moderation. He presented himself as measured, reforming and modernising — a reassuring figure after instability. Yet gradually image overtook substance. Nevertheless, his reign, like Trump’s, descended into vanity, denial, loyalist courtiers, public alienation and eventual collapse though Trump’s ultimate reckoning remains unrealised. Economic pressures mounted, public frustration deepened, elite confidence weakened, and the emperor increasingly retreated into performance, loyalists and carefully managed appearances. The regime became consumed not with renewal, but with preserving itself.
Critics argue that Starmer now risks embodying precisely that late-imperial instinct. They now argue that his government has entered a similar phase of decay: not dramatic despotism, but managerial exhaustion, moral compromise, endless U-turns and a desperate clinging to office. Rather than recognising growing public disillusionment, the leadership appears determined to rationalise every electoral warning as temporary turbulence. Poor local election results are dismissed as mid-term protest votes rather than acknowledged as evidence of a much broader rejection taking shape. Yet the local elections revealed something far more dangerous for an incumbent government: not simple frustration with individual policies, but a hardening public mood against the Labour leadership itself.
The U-turns matter because they reveal a government without a settled political soul. Pledges are made, abandoned, repackaged, denied and reversed. From welfare to tax, winter fuel, migration, digital ID, farming, public spending and other reversals too numerous to list, the impression is not of tactical flexibility but of a leadership constantly retreating from its own positions. Labour promised stability after Conservative chaos yet increasingly resembles the same exhausted politics it replaced.
The parallels with the recent Conservative collapse are striking and should have been a warning. The Conservatives cycled through prime ministers at extraordinary speed — from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss to Rishi Sunak — in a desperate attempt to convince the electorate that changing the face at the top could somehow restore legitimacy to a government the public had already tired of. Each change sold as renewal, each really an attempt to preserve the party’s grip on power. But the public had already moved beyond blaming individuals. In the end, the electorate rejected not merely the individual leaders: they had rejected the whole exhaustive governing culture surrounding them. Labour now risks repeating that mistake. Removing Starmer alone may no longer be enough if the cabinet around him is equally implicated in the political failure.
Labour now risks repeating the same cycle in reverse. Starmer’s defenders insist that “the public do not want a leadership challenge” during difficult times domestically and internationally. Yet critics point to the local elections as evidence of precisely the opposite: the electorate is signalling deep dissatisfaction with the entire direction of the government. The claim that stability alone is virtuous begins to sound less like statesmanship and more like self-preservation.
The local and devolved election results have made that brutally clear. Labour suffered heavy losses across Britain, with reports citing voters “punishing Starmer’s Labour Party” and reporting more than 80 Labour lawmakers calling for him to go. The argument from Starmer’s defenders that “the public does not want a leadership challenge” during difficult times is therefore nonsense. The electorate has already delivered its challenge. The problem is that Starmer and those around him refuse to hear it. Indeed, critics increasingly argue that changing Starmer alone would no longer be enough. The problem, they contend, is not simply one man, but an entire political apparatus that rose and advanced under his leadership.
That refusal is sustained by a cabinet and inner circle whose political futures are inseparably tied to Starmer’s rise and survival. Critics argue that he has surrounded himself with sycophants, careerists and political dependants who increasingly confuse loyalty to the leader with loyalty to the country itself. Like the courtiers surrounding Nero and Rome’s declining emperors, they protect the illusion of authority because their own positions, ambitions and influence depend upon the survival of the existing order. This inevitably breeds caution, conformity and career preservation over honesty or principle, leaving ministers unwilling to challenge leadership failures even as public dissatisfaction deepens. The result is a culture of managed narratives, defensive messaging and political sycophancy in which maintaining power overtakes confronting reality, while repeated appeals for “stability” become less a defence of the nation and more a shield for political self-preservation.
This is where the charge against the cabinet deepens. Critics do not merely accuse Starmer of incompetence, but of moral complicity: of standing with Israel while Gaza faces devastation, mass death and an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice. The ICJ has ordered Israel to prevent acts under the Genocide Convention and ensure humanitarian assistance, while the case itself remains ongoing. For many on the left, Starmer’s government has not simply failed to oppose illegal war and mass killing; it has politically enabled them.
The proscription of Palestine Action under Yvette Cooper sharpened that sense of authoritarian drift. Cooper announced the move under the Terrorism Act 2000, making membership or support a criminal offence if passed by Parliament. The Guardian later reported that the ban followed damage to RAF Brize Norton aircraft and that the government defended it as targeting serious criminality, while opponents saw it as a dangerous attack on protest and solidarity with Palestine. To critics, this looked like the machinery of the state being used not to protect democracy, but to narrow it.
Starmer’s migration rhetoric also fed the sense that Labour had crossed a moral line. His “island of strangers” language was widely compared by critics to Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” politics, a comparison Starmer rejected. But even if one rejects a direct equivalence, the political effect was clear: a Labour prime minister borrowing the emotional grammar of the right while claiming to defend progressive government. Like Trump, he reaches for fear; unlike Trump, he dresses it in administrative respectability.
The blocking or sidelining of Andy Burnham adds another Roman layer. Burnham’s allies have warned against a rapid “coronation” of Wes Streeting and called for Labour’s NEC to ensure he can contest a seat and enter any leadership race. If Labour’s internal machinery is used to manage succession, exclude challengers or protect favoured candidates, then the party begins to resemble a court rather than a democratic movement.
Streeting’s role only adds to the sense of decay. Reports have repeatedly framed him as a possible successor, while also noting that he has not launched a formal challenge. Critics see this as the worst of both worlds: alleged disloyal manoeuvring without the courage of open confrontation. In Roman terms, it is the politics of the palace corridor — ambition without honour, intrigue without responsibility.
Rome repeatedly demonstrated how dangerous such insulated leadership circles could become. Later emperors surrounded themselves with administrators and loyalists who reinforced the illusion of stability long after legitimacy had begun to fracture. Silence was interpreted as loyalty. Obedience was mistaken for support. Yet underneath the surface, public confidence eroded until collapse accelerated with astonishing speed.
That is why the Nero comparison bites. Nero did not fall simply because he was unpopular. The striking feature of Nero’s downfall was not sudden catastrophe, but prolonged denial. The empire was visibly weakening long before he acknowledged the danger. Provincial revolts spread, elite support collapsed, the Praetorian Guard deserted him, and still the machinery of imperial authority attempted to preserve the illusion of permanence. By the end, Nero remained emperor in title while power had already disappeared in practice.
Critics argue that this is the true danger now confronting Labour. Governments often become most defensive precisely when they sense weakness approaching. They tighten internal discipline, attack dissent, repeat slogans about responsibility and stability, and insist there is no alternative leadership capable of governing. Yet history suggests that once a governing class begins arguing that it alone must remain in office “for the good of the nation,” it is often because it fears the electorate may already have reached a very different conclusion.
Unlike Trump, Starmer’s danger is not assassination or imperial violence; The Roman comparison is symbolic rather than literal. Britain is not imperial Rome and Starmer is not Nero in any direct historical sense. The danger is political death by denial. A leader clings on. A cabinet flatters him. Rivals whisper but do not strike. The party machine blocks alternatives. The public votes against the government, only to be told that now is not the time to question the leader. But the underlying lesson remains timeless: political systems decay when leaders begin confusing institutional control with genuine public consent. Once belief in a government begins to die, the structures around it may remain standing for a time, but legitimacy has already started to rot beneath the surface.
That is the warning increasingly levelled at Starmer and his cabinet — that they risk becoming a modern political court, clinging to office not because public enthusiasm remains strong, but because too many careers, ambitions and reputations are now bound to the survival of the existing regime. And history repeatedly shows that when ruling elites become more concerned with preserving themselves than renewing public trust, the end rarely arrives gradually. That is the same fatal arrogance that haunted Rome’s declining Caesars: the belief that holding office is the same as holding legitimacy. It is not. Once the people stop believing, power becomes theatre. And when a ruler is left performing authority to an audience that has already turned away, the end has usually begun.
Like Rome’s declining Caesars, they often discover too late that power can vanish long before those holding it are prepared to let it go.
⏩ Cam Ogie is a Gaelic games enthusiast.
