The Labour leadership is trying to engineer the coronation of a new deputy leader. That is the last thing the party needs as it faces an existential crisis.
Labour won the election in 2024 on just 33.7 per cent of the vote – a beneficiary of the deep disdain for the Tories at the time. Now Labour is polling at just 20 per cent – and the Government is even more unpopular than Rishi Sunak’s was at the time of the last election.
This is more than simply a torrid first year in Government. The party has lost the support of more than a third of the low base it had in the election. At the local elections in May, Labour lost two thirds of the seats it was defending. Members are leaving in their thousands, to the point where Labour’s executive has reportedly stopped receiving membership figure reports.
The messy and uncomfortable departure of Angela Rayner heralded an opportunity for party members and affiliated trade unions to have an avenue for influence. But in closing nominations by Thursday, this week, the Labour leadership is putting its head in the sand – hiding from a much-needed debate about the party’s direction, its culture and its policies.
Such a debate might be painful in the short term, but it is necessary. A tricky Budget in November is unlikely to make Labour more popular – and the party is already bracing itself for huge losses at next May’s elections for English councils and the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments.
Instead, though, Labour’s NEC is set to give MPs only until Thursday to make nominations for deputy leader, making it difficult for anyone but the leadership’s chosen candidate to organise the 80 nominations needed – and removing any formal opportunity for party members to influence MPs’ choice of nomination.
Rearranging the deckchairs in the Cabinet or trying another round of “blame the staff in Downing Street” doesn’t change the reality: Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are deeply unpopular because of a succession of self-inflicted mistakes for which only they are responsible. Advisers advise, politicians decide.
The frustration over these repeated failures has led to a group of centre-left figures forming a new group called Mainstream, led by Andy Burnham and backed by the think-tank Compass. Burnham has emphasised the need for “a more inclusive, less factional way of running the party”.
The attempts to close down the time allowed for debate, with a restricted timetable for the deputy leadership election – with the whole process over in seven weeks – only highlights the truth of Burnham’s words.
There are half a dozen MPs who were elected as Labour candidates but are currently without the party whip after rebelling – they will be locked out of this debate. Burnham is right to raise questions about factionalism within the party and his plea for a return to a more pluralist politics is correct, but the debate must be about more than internal arguments. It is the policies that have been Labour’s self-inflicted Achilles heel.
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Starmer likes to talk of a reset. But no one in the real world gives a toss whether it’s David Lammy or Yvette Cooper as Foreign Secretary, let alone who is in the ever-changing cast of advisers in No 10.
What people do care about is whether the government is cutting pensioners’ winter fuel payments or people’s disability benefits. Many lifelong Labour voters are deeply exercised by Gaza and the erosion of the right to protest. The failure to address the cost of living crisis by scrapping the two-child limit, bringing in rent controls or capping bills is a critical issue for millions of households. It’s the policies that need a reset, not the personnel.
How to respond to the rise of Reform and the toxification of the debate around asylum and immigration is another huge strategic question for Labour. The current strategy of trying to out-tough Nigel Farage is alienating Labour’s liberal and left support base, while failing to win over right-wing voters.
And the situation is only going to get worse, because voters have got somewhere else to go. A bolder and more dynamic Green Party under Zack Polanski is a huge threat to Labour’s vote, as – if it gets its act together – is the new party being launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.
This deputy leadership election is arguably the most significant in the party’s history – more seismic, even, than the knife-edge battle between Denis Healey and Tony Benn in 1981.
In June, Labour MPs won a significant victory when they forced the leadership to reverse their proposed cuts to personal independence payments.
Now, they have to use their power to ensure the party grassroots get a real choice – and a real debate about its future. There may not be one without it.
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