Labour Implodes

And No one Knows What Happens Next

I don’t usually engage with ‘who’s in/who’s out’ discussions about British governments. Such conversations too easily reduce politics to a game show or soap opera. But I do make exceptions when a) these possibilities might help bring down a government or leader I despise and b) there is a possibility that changes in personnel will produce better political results and c) any changes in personnel reflect wider political possibilities or forces beyond the individuals concerned.

In the case of Keir Starmer, the first condition is partly met, because like many other people, I have little regard for the prime minister. There was a time when I felt differently, when I thought Starmer seemed to have some dour integrity, especially when placed alongside the likes of Boris Johnson or Liz Truss, or almost anyone in the Tory Party.

I don’t think that now. I have been shocked by how inept Starmer has been in government, by his pointless and easily avoidable mistakes, by his authoritarian and dishonest response to the Gaza catastrophe, by his clumsy courting of Trump, and by his politically ham-fisted attempts to match Reform’s toxic nationalism.

I often hear that ‘Starmer is a decent man.’ But I see a ruthless and cunning politician, who used the left to help him win the party leadership and then trashed them once he had it. I see a man who brought Peter Mandelson back into government even though he knew about his associations with a criminal-paedophile, and then blamed that decision on other people when it went south. I see a man who has effectively supported Israel’s horrific actions in Gaza, whilst also smearing those who criticized these actions as terrorists or antisemites.

I find him cold, wooden, tone-deaf, and seemingly incapable of saying anything that sounds like he actually believes it, or that he has listened to or understood any of the criticisms that have been made of him. It may be, as Bismarck once said of Napoleon III, that he is a sphinx without a riddle. Or it may be that he is an amoral political operator driven by personal ambition rather than ideological conviction. Whatever the explanation, the realities of power at this particularly dismal chapter in British national politics, have found him wanting.

This is not due to the absence of charisma. Effective political movements don’t always have to have the most personable or charismatic leaders, though it doesn’t hurt. Even if Starmer has no principles or convictions himself, his government could still be the figurehead of a progressive government if he listened to people who do have them, or if he had a broad movement that knew where it wanted to go and how to get there.

But none of this seems to be happening. And that is why, nearly two years after winning a whopping majority, however thin, Starmer’s government is floundering, and he himself appears to be almost universally loathed. Labour is bleeding votes at local and -according to the polls - at a national level, and Starmer is losing the confidence of his MPs, or at least a sizeable chunk of them. His own Health Secretary has just resigned, protesting about the ‘vacuum’ at the centre - Starmer.

He has lost the Economist and Polly Toynbee, and now his government and his party are set to begin what could be a long and damaging leadership contest that will either strengthen Starmer’s grip on power or unravel it, whilst also risking the destabilisation of the UK’s fragile economy.

Not all of this is Starmer’s fault. Politicians are not magicians. Even a government of political titans would struggle with the legacy of fourteen years of Tory austerity, rightwing populism and Brexit-driven political chaos - compounded by a pandemic and two major wars, all of which have combined to create the ‘cost of living crisis’ and exacerbate the decline in living standards that was already underway long before before Labour won.

Labour governments are few and far between, and to paraphrase Karl Marx, these were not the circumstances that any Labour leader would have chosen to make history in. Naturally, these conditions have been completely ignored by the stunningly dishonest rightwing media, supported by a more recent but equally visceral commentariat that blames Labour for everything and praises it for nothing.

There are sectors of the left that do this too, and there are whole swathes of the electorate that expect immediate answers to every grievance they may have, but without any knowledge of or interest in the political context in which every government has to operate. This is how it has always been, but in a post-Brexit Britain roiled by rightwing populism and billionaire-funded ethnonationalism, Labour’s enemies had their knives sharpened even before the party even came to power, and they have been slashing at Starmer ever since.

And that is why the country now finds itself in a ludicrous situation, in which the sixth prime minister in ten years years may be on his way out, while the party most associated with the Brexit disaster is the one that is currently poised to form the next government.

This is the political equivalent of a swirling whirlpool, but Labour has not even begun to find a way out of it. The local elections have confirmed what has been obvious for some time: that voters are no longer members of ‘communities of sentiment’ with any residual loyalty to any political party. They want ‘change’ even though it is not always clear what kind of change they want or how they expect to get it, and they want it quickly. They will often vote out of anger and disgust rather than affection or admiration.

Once again, any left-of-centre party would struggle to respond to this cascade of disasters and political failures. But the problem that Labour has is that it has so far not offered any compelling vision of what this country could become, or articulate any notion of the common good that it is willing to fight for, and that can rouse the population to get behind it.

Reform, on the other hand, has done all these things, and because it is not in government it can do them easily. Of course, no one should mistake their flag-waving, post-woke dystopia brutally purged of immigrants for anything approaching the common good. But at least you know what Farage and his grifters claim to believe in, and what kind of country they want, however hateful and disgusting it is.

At a time when politics is more than ever driven by emotions - and some pretty dark ones at that - these things matter. This is what ‘cutting through’ means. The left can do this. Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York understands this very well. During his campaign Mamdani offered concrete policies within a broad vision of the city and society he wanted to see, whilst also reaching out beyond the left’s normal comfort zone He roused voters, including voters who would normally never vote for a self-proclaimed democratic socialist and supporter of the Palestinians.

Mamdani made it clear which people he intended to support, without alienating those people who did not support him. He extolled immigrants and the working people of the city with passion and conviction, and he has continued to do that since he took office.

For the last two weeks, Mamdani has been celebrating his administration’s achievements, with the same humour, skill, passion and empathy. With Mamdani, you are never in doubt what he believes or which people he supports or where he wants to go. All these qualities are absent from Starmer’s tepid, technocratic government that seems barely to articulate the good things it has done, let alone weave them into an overall vision of where it wants to take the country.

I recognise that being mayor is not the same as running a country. But Mamdani is mayor in a city in Trump’s America - a city that also happens to be the citadel of capitalism. He won despite opposition from his own party. And yet there he is, fighting for the people he said he would fight for, bringing communities along with him, while at the same time making it clear that he understands the importance of everyday ‘pothole politics’ as much as he understands the broader political context in which he operates.

Last month he told what CNN called a ‘raucous rally’ of his supporters:

As I said on that freezing January afternoon [in his election victory speech] to more than 8 ½ million New Yorkers, ‘We will make no apology for what we believe. I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.’ Tonight, I want to talk about what we’ve done. Not to congratulate ourselves, but as a reminder of what is possible. With what we’ve accomplished in 14 weeks, imagine what we can do together in four years.

It is impossible to imagine Starmer or any member of his cabinet even having a ‘raucous rally’, let alone addressing it in these terms. Once again, I recognize the dangers of comparing apples with oranges, but if the Starmer government was able to talk like this, it might not be in the situation it is in now.

On Monday this week I found myself in the car listening to four Labour politicians being interviewed on the Today show. They were, in order of appearance: Patrick Hurley, MP for Southport; Tonia Antoniazzi, MP for Gower, Baroness Margaret Hodge, and Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister.

The first two represented the two opposite positions in the ‘should he stay or should he go’ debate, which is presumably why the producers had them on the programme. Hurley argued that the UK was in a vulnerable position financially and politically, and that stability was required to avoid a Truss-style meltdown in the bond markets, with all the rising costs that such an outcome entailed. Apart from the stability argument, it was noticeable that he made no particular case in support of Starmer.

Antoniazzi argued that Starmer was ‘not cutting through on the doorstep’, whereas Farage was, and that therefore Labour needed to find a leader who could do the same. She did not say what, apart from better communicative skills, a successor to Starmer might bring to the doorstep. Whereas Hurley sounded sober and careful, Antoniazzi sounded distinctly panicky.

Then came Hodge, who casually threw out the line that ‘the Greens are an antisemitic party’ even though she was not even asked about the Greens. This was too much even for the presenter, who pointed out that the Greens don’t characterise themselves as antisemitic. Indeed they don’t, because they aren’t. And the fact that Hodge would toss out this disgraceful lie so readily, is a testament to how fundamentally base and unscrupulous the Labour right can be.

Finally, there was Darren Jones, who resisted Nick Robinson’s attempts to draw him out as to whether or not Starmer might be considering his position, with a wall of blather, that an increasingly frustrated Robinson could not even get a fingernail on. It was the kind of interview that makes such interviews pointless, and which reminded me why so many people hate politicians, and why they hate this government in particular.

Jones spoke the way Starmer and so many British politicians speak - cold, bland, evasive and with just a faint air of condescending surprise that he should even have to answer such questions in the first place. As a defence of his boss, it was sterling work, but it was not the language or tone that will win Labour any votes.

It nevertheless raises the question of who will - a question that has become even more pressing since this month’s local elections. On one hand, it is ridiculous that a party with a 165 working majority should even be thinking about changing its leader simply because it has done badly in local elections. Governments often get a kicking in council elections, and they don’t necessarily change leader. But these results confirm a wider sense that Labour’s grip on power is melting away, and the nervous response to these results reflects the unease of a party that knows how easily its majority could be wiped out.

Waiting for Reform

And the calls for Starmer to step down are another sign that his authority is melting away too, and that the UK like Robert Shaw in Jaws, is sliding into the open mouth of the Reform shark. It is an incredible and almost incomprehensible thing, that will no doubt occupy political historians for years to come, as to how a racist grifter like Nigel Farage has been instrumental in the rise and fall of so many prime ministers, without once ever taking any responsibility for the damage his political delusions have inflicted on the country.

And it is equally incredible that Starmer’s Labour, even after crushing the Corbynite left, has spent more energy in fighting and humiliating the left than it has on fighting the most dangerous threat to the country since Mosley’s Blackshirts. If this movement is to be defeated, it will require all hands on deck, and a willingness to form at the very least tactical alliances that can keep Farage and his movement as far away from power as possible.

Even Starmer now says that he is fighting a battle for the ‘soul of this country.’ To fight that battle, you have a soul to begin with. You cannot make a Powellite speech about an ‘island of strangers’ and then ‘regret’ that speech without saying why you made it in the first place or why you regret.

Some MPs, like Clive Lewis, clearly understand the urgency required, but it remains to be seen whether a leadership challenge can transform Labour into the party it needs to be and the government it needs to be, in order to see off the extreme-right threat and help steer the country towards a better future. It would be mistake to think that this can be done, simply by finding a more personable new leader with better communication skills.

If Starmer is part of the problem, a more charismatic leader may not be part of the solution, even if he is the ‘King of the North’. Tories pick leaders quickly and throw them away as soon as they become dispensable, but Labour’s leadership process is long and messy. In the short-term, it will certainly make it more difficult for the government to govern. In the long-term, it may end up with the leader it already has. Of course, it is also possible that this contest revitalizes the government, and helps give it the urgency that it lacks, and the moral compass that it also seems to lack.

But if this leadership ‘contest’ becomes a clash of egos, ambitions and factions, it may well intensify the suspicion and disgust that much of the electorate already feels towards politicians, and to these politicians in particular. Whoever wins will find themselves facing the same conditions and the same obstacles as their predecessor.

Whoever that person is, we can only hope that he or she has the ability to make their party better than it has been so far. And that is why, whatever I think of Starmer, I don’t want this government to fall- the likely alternatives are too grim. But I do want it to be better in so many ways. Otherwise, the Starmer years may well be the Labour Party’s last gasp, and he and his party will bear responsibility for the nightmare that may follow.