Keir Starmer has survived the local elections, but commands little authority in his party or the country, writes Ros Taylor. Paralysed by the fear of a far-right government, his party has been too afraid to replace him.
Should Keir Starmer be replaced by another Labour MP? Most of the party now thinks so, even if they cannot say so publicly. But by whom? And would his replacement have the authority to lead the country without calling a general election – an election the far right has a strong chance of winning?
This is the dilemma the Labour party faces as it watches its support bleed away. In May’s local elections, Nigel Farage’s Reform party won 1,453 council seats. Labour lost about the same number. This does not mean former Labour supporters have turned en masse to the far right – most of their votes have gone to the Greens and the Lib Dems – but under Britain’s first past the post system, it has allowed Reform to break through and become the biggest party. The same could happen in a general election, unless enough people can be persuaded to vote tactically to keep out the far right.
With five parties in the mix (plus the nationalist SNP and Plaid Cymru in Scotland and Wales), it is entirely possible that Reform could win a working majority in the House of Commons on around a quarter of the popular vote. How could the Labour party willingly call an election that ushered in a far-right government which three-quarters of the country oppose? The idea is anathema. A recent book about what Reform might do in power has helped concentrate their minds. But experience suggests that any prime minister who has not won a general election in their own right will struggle to command authority. On the other hand, how can Starmer recover from his dire ratings?
To make matters worse for Labour, the party has now lost control of Wales and has failed to regain support in Scotland. It was Labour that created the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. Now the separatist parties have won most votes in both. Already the Scottish National Party leader, John Swinney, has said he will ask for another independence referendum so that Scotland is “Farage-proofed”.
Local authorities in crisis
Britain is now a polarised nation. A quarter of voters back the far right and the Greens, which have positioned themselves well to the left of the Labour party under their new leader Zack Polanski, are picking up around one in six votes. As a result, many of Britain’s new councillors are inexperienced and must tackle overwhelmed, debt-laden council budgets. For all their promises of radical change, they are legally obliged to provide things like social care, special educational needs support and emergency housing, all of which have become much more expensive in the past decade. Hardly anything is left over to improve parks and keep libraries and swimming pools open.
Local authorities have so little money that a third of them expect to apply for emergency bailouts by central government during the next three years. Their budgets were cut substantially during the ‘austerity’ years of the 2010s, when the government sought to reduce the deficit from the financial crisis. They cannot raise much money through raising council tax – bills are rising by an average of 4.9 percent this year, which is almost the maximum amount they can increase without a local referendum.
Seven councils are in such financial difficulty that they have permission to raise taxes even more. Services are constantly cut in an effort to pay for social care and temporary accommodation for the homeless, whose numbers have more than doubled since 2011. For many years governments have talked about the need to reform social care, which would take some of the pressure off the NHS, but none has followed through: the task is regarded as too big, too expensive and of too little immediate interest to most voters, who prefer not to think about the possibility of their own physical and mental decline.
A failing country and a colourless PM
The sense that Britain is stagnating, in debt and afflicted by inflation is one reason for the government’s unpopularity. Another is Keir Starmer himself, who is cautious, uncharismatic and unable to set out a clear path for his government. He has few supporters in the press and now that Britons are increasingly abandoning TV, radio and print news for social media, struggles to influence the news agenda.
One of the reasons why many Britons do not understand why councils have so little money is that local newspapers have closed or turned to online clickbait to try to survive. WhatsApp and Facebook groups are where most people now find out about what is happening in their neighbourhoods. In these spaces, frustration and the ‘others’ using public funds – such as asylum seekers dispersed across the country to reduce the burden on individual councils – become the targets of resentment and anger. Reform has thrived on this animosity. Just before the elections, it announced that if it won the general election it would open migrant detention centres in areas that voted for the Green party.
Meanwhile, as Labour has tried to contain this anger by cutting legal immigration and worked – unsuccessfully – to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, it has alienated some of its core supporters. These are the voters who are seeking a left-wing alternative in the form of the Green party. It represents yet another dilemma for the party. Should it bear down further on immigration so that Nigel Farage can no longer claim too many people are coming to Britain? The numbers have already fallen, but Britons do not seem to have noticed. Or should it try to win back Green voters by relaxing the immigration rules, getting closer to the EU and raising taxes again?
This struggle to reconcile the different impulses of the Labour party has strangled Starmer. He has backtracked and compromised too often to win the respect of the country or his party. Voters compare him to a jellyfish or a doormat. But Labour MPs cannot agree on who should succeed him. The most plausible candidate, Andy Burnham, is not an MP and would have to enter Parliament through a by-election that Reform or the Greens could win. The health secretary, Wes Streeting, is a good communicator but loathed on the left of the party. Angela Rayner is not respected on the right of the party and not popular among the public, and Labour has never been able to elect a female leader. Ed Miliband, probably the most effective of the cabinet ministers, lost a general election in 2015 and reportedly doesn’t want to be PM. Starmer insists he will stay but dozens of MPs have now called on him to go, despite a slight improvement in his popularity after he refused to join the US in bombing Iran. The rest wait in an agony of indecision for something to force their hand. Waiting for Godot has never looked so timely.
The views and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung European Union | Global Dialogue.
