Sir Keir Starmer promised change at the general election. He has not changed the country to the satisfaction of the electorate but he has certainly changed the fortunes of the Labour Party.
Labour has gone from its loveless landslide to having no political heartland in the UK to call its own.
Overnight, Labour lost control all over the map – in Oxford, Tameside, Tamworth, Exeter, Hartlepool, Wandsworth and Redditch. Reform UK surged in terms of seats but only took control of a handful of councils. More trouncing for Labour will be counted out later today, hardest of all at the hands of the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales.
Starmer’s future as Labour leader and prime minister will hang in the balance this weekend. Only two months ago, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, a former Labour leader and close friend, advised Starmer and the country to walk away from the precipice of getting rid of him. In the run-up to today’s anticipated disaster, Miliband reportedly counselled his friend to set a timetable for his departure from No 10.
Overnight on my Times Radio results programme, Labour MPs described the crisis as “existential”, “soul-destroying” and “sheer horror” for both their party and its leader. They split into two camps: those who thought he could not survive and those advocating “a period of reflection”, which sounded as if it would end up in the same place anyway.
As his local party suffered heavy losses in the council election, the MP for Kingston upon Hull, Karl Turner, claimed the main problem he encountered “on the doorstep” was that voters “just can’t stand Starmer” – a conclusion which is reflected in the Prime Minister’s record unpopularity in poll ratings.
More loyal MPs don’t deny a problem; they just claim that the prime minister’s personality simply doesn’t come up during canvassing.
Neither Starmer nor his government were on the ballot this week in what were supposed to be local elections for councils to run local services. Successive prime ministers of all parties have so centralised control from Westminster and Whitehall that voters can hardly be blamed for treating local elections as glorified opinion polls.
Starmer has run up an impressive charge sheet to be judged on. He and Chancellor Rachel Reeves imposed a straitjacket on themselves not to raise the main taxes. The acceptance of freebies from a Labour peer. Numerous U-turns mainly on welfare spending. Appointing Lord Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. An extraordinarily extended list of sacked personal aides – culminating in the scapegoating of Foreign Office chief Olly Robbins. Above all, Starmer simply fails to inspire the nation or to lead it effectively.
It seems an obvious conclusion that Labour should change its leader, and its problems would go away. Obvious but wrong. More than half of Labour MPs were first elected in 2024 and have little experience of the flow of Westminster. While they were waiting to get there, they had supped full on the bloodshed of the Conservatives’ five prime ministers in a single administration but failed to notice that such a butcher’s bill did not ultimately improve the Tories’ fortunes.
Ordinary folk dislike Starmer but they would dislike the instability of replacing him more. Even if it could be done without a months-long contest, it would still take months for the new man or woman to get a grip on government.
Neither former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner nor Health Secretary Wes Streeting seem confident enough to spark a challenge now. And there is a growing mood that if there is to be a contest to replace Starmer, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham should be in it.
But even if Starmer and Labour’s National Executive Committee changed their minds and let Burnham fight a by-election, assuming he could find a seat, there is nothing in last night’s results to say he would be elected. Labour took a pasting on his potential home turf of Merseyside and Greater Manchester.
Starmer or his rivals could well destroy the Labour Party in the next few days – they have a poor leader who has led them into an electoral catastrophe, but without him, things could always get worse.
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