Starmer should not be the man responsible for Labour’s failures. This disaster was written by the committee Owen Jones
yourStarmer’s team can smell the presence of a political grim reaper. Every Friday, the Prime Minister’s Office Director, Morgan McSweeney, holds a 30-minute call to Labor staff called ‘Looking Ahead’. Among other things, the session goes through the big events that occurred in the previous week, as well as what is likely to happen in the coming days. For a long time, the call widely featured the latest opinion polls: for example, voters’ opinion of Labour’s policies, as well as the popularity of the party’s leading figures. But as the numbers went from dire to catastrophic, the poll was quietly dropped from the call.
What was not absent from the agenda were the results of the council by-elections. Since the general elections in July The Labor Party lost 22 seats. Vigilant call handlers point out that the picture is bleaker than the headline figures suggest, because even in cases where Labor retains its seats, the party’s share of the vote is steadily falling by a fifth. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is on the rise, with the Greens posing a growing threat to Labour’s left flank.
Just five months into office, Starmer has the worst net approval rating of any prime minister – minus 34 – in the US. History of Ipsos pollswhich dates back to the seventies. He scores 12 points less than the doomed Rishi Sunak at the same point in his term. Labor polls are now in the mid-20s, with both the Conservatives and Reform leading in their wake. There is now a national conversation seriously considering the prospect of Farage becoming Prime Minister. All this less than half a year after the most disastrous government defeat in the history of British democracy.
Why did this terrible mistake happen? Starmer’s natural allies are particularly desperate. There is no shortage of explanations offered. Ousted former chief of staff Sue Gray has been accused of failing to prepare Labour’s senior team for government, and of postponing policy decisions. Government ministers have ended up doing their own thing, overseeing powerful fiefdoms, over which Starmer appears to have little influence. The Prime Minister himself seems to prefer flying around the world, playing the role of would-be statesman. He handed all economic responsibility to his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, who set up her own formidable separate operation in No. 11, with Matt Pound – the former national organizer of Labour First, the faction which Specialization She attacks the left – as its political secretary.
Anyone who has worked with Starmer before arrives at the same diagnosis: he lacks policy. One senior Labor figure told me that when the party lost the by-election in Hartlepool in May 2021, the Labor leader faced a major crisis of self-confidence. This led him to outsource his political operation to what John Cruddas, a former Labor MP and adviser to Tony Blair, described as “the most right-wing and illiberal faction in the party” – Labour’s right. New Labor’s founders were outsized figures: their heirs were often one-dimensional hirelings who learned their trade in the bleakest recesses of student politics.
And when Starmer’s leadership is officially classified as “in crisis” – a moment that is fast approaching – this faction will not be without excuses. They will blame Starmer for not being a “true believer”, and instead defend an arrogant Blairite like the health secretary, Wes Streeting. Ask them why their prince above water almost lost his seat to 23-year-old British-Palestinian prodigy Layan Mohammed in July’s general election, and you’re met with an expression that screams “it doesn’t count.” Only political pressure from the right is considered legitimate.
But Starmer should not be the man of the fall. Here’s the basic truth: the ideas of the Labor Right have long been exhausted. As for Britain, which suffers from a permanent crisis that emerged after the 2008 financial crisis, it has no solutions. This is why Corbynism emerged in the first place. They then spent years in political exile to come up with anything, any concrete vision for a Britain that had long been characterized by low growth, stagnant living standards and poor productivity. But they didn’t do that. When they secured a gift-wrapped election victory from a bottomless Conservative Party, they rose to power and quickly made themselves known for kicking pensioners and taking freebies from rich donors.
The only ministers with actual ideas belong to the so-called “soft left”. One was Louise Hay, the departing Transport Secretary, after a long-dormant saga involving missing work phones was revived a decade ago, leading to her resignation. From the ‘coach revolution’ to public ownership of railways – and we expect the latter to be diluted – Hay has at least had energy. Then there is Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, who is scorned by Starmer’s Blairite gang, and where Stretching launches pointed attacks on his colleague. We’ll see how long he lives.
Disillusionment in Britain is fueled by a broken economic model: crumbling public services, crumbling infrastructure, and a failure to develop disposable income. It is destined to fall under this government. Al-Farajia offers an answer: It is the migrants’ fault! A coherent economic agenda that addresses the country’s problems could provide an alternative to the threat posed by reform. But Starmer’s allies oppose this ideologically, so they appear determined instead to compete with the populist right on immigrant bashing. Center-right and center-left parties have tried this approach in Europe, and it’s ruined it! – It has only succeeded in strengthening the insurgent right, by pushing political dialogue into exactly the area where they thrive.
Our intellectually bankrupt rulers risk handing Britain into the hands of hard-right demagoguery. Then it drops to the left to channel the disappointment into a more positive direction. So far no response. The Green Party surged in July, but failed to put up headline-grabbing battles or build momentum in dozens of seats where it finished second in July. The seven Labor MPs who were suspended over their opposition to the poverty-breeding child benefit cap have not accepted that they have no future in the party, and have not redirected their energy elsewhere. If Jeremy Corbyn and his four fellow independent MPs set up a new party, he will need to reach an arrangement with the Green Party. Whatever happens, the left needs to present a clear and coherent vision, and struggle to define the political agenda in the face of a hostile media. If that fails, start the countdown until Farage is smiling in front of platform 10.