They cut off the engines a couple of seconds before reaching orbital speed for safety. Until they prove they can control the ship on orbit they can’t risk having a 16 floor tall 125 ton steel tower coming down in a random location. This is unrelated to any of Elon’s shenanigans.
There is nobody who knows even the slightest bit about space flight that doubts Starship can reach orbit.
SpaceX has many things to get done to make Starship the fully reusable rocket they want it to be, but picking orbital speed is just about the weakest argument against it.