Unless Labour changes, and does so quickly, it will be consigned to the history books. Thats is about more than changing one face at the top and bringing back former leaders, the party needs a dramatic shift in policy and strategy too.
The results from Thursday’s elections have sent Labour tailspinning into existential crisis. It’s hard to see where a Labour heartland lies anymore. The party has been routed in Wales by Plaid Cymru, beaten in towns like Barnsley and Gateshead by Reform while the Greens have inflicted major losses in cities like Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, London and Norwich. Having lost Scotland more than a decade ago, Labour is a party without any obvious base or a home.
Labour is no longer the choice of progressive voters in Wales, – unthinkable until yesterday – Scotland or even England now, where the BBC projections put the Greens one point above Labour. And it is led by a deeply unpopular Prime Minister.
It’s membership and activist base has collapsed, with some sources claiming it has sunk to around 200,000 (down from over half a million when Starmer took over). That matters as any party needs members to get out its vote, advocate for it and fund it.
Both the Greens and Reform look to have overtaken in terms of membership, and much of Labour’s activist base is disillusioned and demoralised by a party that is failing to deliver. In contrast, the Greens, Plaid and Reform are parties on the up – attracting new supporters and members.
Several Labour MPs have called for Starmer to go – and this ranges well beyond the MPs who have been persistent rebels against the Labour leader. MPs like Clive Betts and Debbie Abrahams both nominated Starmer to be leader in 2020, and several MPs newly elected in 2024 like Beccy Cooper and Abtisam Mohamed were thought to be loyalists.
Wes Streeting has been tipped to replace Starmer but at the moment, it remains to be seen if he has the required support (Photo: Leon Neal/Getty)The problem is that there is no obvious replacement. The names most put forward, Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner, also poll badly with the public and are tainted by association not only with Starmer, but with Peter Mandelson (Streeting) and tax dodging (Rayner) in the public’s mind. One of the UK’s only popular politicians – Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham – is illegible to stand as he’s not an MP, and the successes of the Greens and Reform in the north west make it less obvious he could now win a by-election.
Changing the leader is necessary but not sufficient. Yes, Keir Starmer lacks the charisma of a Tony Blair or Boris Johnson, but his shortcomings in message delivery and robotic lack of bonhomie are not why Labour got the electoral beating it got this week. Will the return of Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman make a difference? It remains to be seen, but some MPs are furious.
The crux of the issue, is fundamentally about the scale of Labour’s policies being insufficient to meet the times we’re in. In 1945, Winston Churchill had just led Britain to victory in war and was a hugely charismatic figure. But he didn’t have the programme to win the peace. Labour leader Clement Attlee was (like Starmer) often derided as dull and managerial – yet he won a landslide victory with a programme of radical change.
That Labour Government established a social contract. Good unionised jobs in newly nationalised and regulated industries, council housing, and a welfare state if you were ill or unemployed. Taxes were higher, but they paid for a state that had your back. You might call it ‘securonomics’ – Rachel Reeves’ soundbite without a programme.
‘Change’ was Labour’s one-word slogan that propelled them to power, but the policy cupboard was bare. It was a cynical electoral strategy not a comprehensive policy programme. And that left a newly elected government scrabbling around in office – and targeting pensioners (cuts to winter fuel allowance) and disabled people (attempting to cut personal independence payments).
Reform swept to huge gains across the country (Photo: Yui Mok/PA)The party has also alienated its base with its pandering to Reform on migration – from Starmer’s “island of strangers” speech to Shabana Mahmood’s new citizenship proposals. Labour supporters want a party that challenges the dangerous, demonising rhetoric of Reform and the Tories. The public know too that it stinks from a party led by a man who pledged in 2020, “we welcome migrants, we don’t scapegoat them. So we have to make the case for the benefits of migration.”
Labour has had some good policies. The Employment Rights Act and the Renters Rights Act will – when fully enacted – make things better for workers and renters. And they remain untethered from a wider narrative of how to build a fairer society.
On the Today programme this morning, Baroness Mattinson – Starmer’s former Director of Strategy – pointed out wages have risen faster under this Labour government. It’s true, but energy bills, mortgage costs, rents, water bills, petrol prices, the weekly food shop, and the cost of a holiday have all gone up too.
People can see energy corporations, supermarkets and banks posting record profits, water companies hiking prices while dumping raw sewage into our rivers and seas. It’s one rule for them and another for the rest of us.
Add in a sprinkling of sleaze, cronyism and freebie scandals and that’s a recipe for cynicism, anger and resentment. That is the experience of a working class that used to feel represented by Labour.
Starmer’s former advisor and ambassador Peter Mandelson once said not to worry about losing working class vote, who “will always vote Labour because they have nowhere else to go”.
Yesterday, working class people graffitied “yes, we do” beneath that epitaph.
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