I don’t give Keir Starmer enough credit. It is a massive achievement to come to power with a huge majority in Parliament and then, in just 18 months, halve your support in the polls, become the most unpopular Prime Minister in British polling history, and even have members of your own Cabinet facing allegations of plotting against you.
As Starmer likes to say, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work straight away, alienating nearly 10 million pensioners by cutting their winter fuel payments. Disabled people, small business owners, Birmingham bin men, you name it, he has picked the wrong side. Starmer is the anti-populist, remarkably adept at picking policies that convert no one and alienate millions.
Before Starmer perfected his anti-Midas touch on the UK population, he had practised successfully on the Labour Party membership, whom he continues to repel.
In 2023, Starmer told unhappy Labour members: “If you don’t like the changes we’ve made, I say the door is open and you can leave”. Hundreds of thousands of members did, and party membership continues to decline.
This year, 2026, will almost certainly be the year in which Green Party of England and Wales’s membership overtakes that of the Labour Party. The Greens have now reached 190,000 members (more than Labour had during the final years of Blair).
Starmer, who inherited a party of over half a million members, now has less than half that, possibly as low as 200,000 according to one well-placed source. The party has greatly narrowed its appeal and its activist base. If even Andy Burnham – a centre-left figure who served as a minister under Blair and Brown – is now outside the tent, Labour is less a broad church and more a narrow sect.
The Greater Manchester Mayor is one of the most popular politicians in the country – the only Labour figure of any national renown who does not poll negatively. What message does it send to voters in Gorton & Denton that they are not worthy of an effective, high-profile champion?
Blocking Burnham from standing will accelerate Labour’s decline. It looks petty and factional, precisely because it is. It likely reduces the number of activists ready to go out to campaign for Labour, and risks making potential Labour voters believe they are of secondary importance to factional infighting.
Today, Starmer was sending the message that it was Labour vs Reform. But that is not necessarily true. If you want some insight into how the Gorton & Denton by-election may play out, take a look at the Caerphilly by-election last year.
There, a popular Labour candidate, the deputy council leader, was blocked from standing and I’m told many Labour members abstained from the campaign. Labour branded everything as a fight between them and Reform. The people of Caerphilly thought differently and surged behind Plaid Cymru who overturned both Labour and Reform to win a spectacular victory.
As of now, pollsters and betting markets forecast the Gorton & Denton by-election as a three-way battle between Labour, Reform and the Greens. At some point, as in Caerphilly, the anti-Reform vote will crystallise around one party. If that is the Greens, they could easily emulate Plaid’s victory.
In Wales, Plaid is now very much the leading anti-Reform party, and the SNP is filling that space in Scotland. I’d argue that a by-election win in Greater Manchester would cement the Greens as the primary anti-Reform party across England ahead of key council elections in May. Even a strong second place ahead of Labour could accelerate the trend.
Losses in all three nations would make Starmer’s position untenable. By blocking Burnham, Keir Starmer may have called time on his own leadership.
But the decline may now be much deeper. There is no credible figure in Starmer’s cabinet who can turn it around. By blocking Burnham, Starmer will not have saved his own skin, but will have buried the Labour Party. The Greens leader, Zack Polanski, could be about to do to Labour what Reform UK leader Nigel Farage did to the Tories.
Many pollsters have been saying for some time that this is the end of two-party politics and that a pluralistic age of five or six-party politics will dominate. But maybe they’re wrong and we’re instead in a short period of transition to a new two-party politics of Reform vs the Greens.
Many people thought the breakthrough of Labour in the early 20th century would herald a three-party politics: left, right and centre. Instead, the Lib Dems were diminished and two-party politics have reigned for most of the past one hundred years.
Both Reform and the Greens are on an upward but slippery climb – in part appearing strong because of the weakness of their opponents. They may have charismatic leaders who stand in stark contrast to Starmer and Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch. But beyond Farage and Polanski, their secondary spokespeople are every bit as prone to gaffes and car-crash interviews as any of the litany of underperforming Labour and Conservative frontbenchers.
As scrutiny increases and their positions consolidate, both parties will need to up their game to maintain their rapid insurgent rise. They are strong, but not yet stable.
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