By Tom Fowdy
Only short of two years ago did Keir Starmer's Labour Party romp its way to power with a 174-seat majority in the 2024 General Election. It was a result not achieved since Tony Blair back in 1997, and it reflected genuine discontent with 14 years of Conservative government, which had brought the country to its knees. The Boris-Rishi-Liz trio had been an unquestionable disaster, and it was time for change. Yet Starmer's resounding victory came with none of the euphoria and optimism which had defined the beginning of the Tony Blair era nearly 30 years prior, for this outcome was rooted so firmly in a rejection of the Conservatives, as opposed to any sort of charismatic, optimistic, and compelling appeal espoused by Starmer.
And thus, nearly two years later, Keir Starmer has somehow found himself in an even worse position than those who preceded him. He is one of the most unpopular Prime Ministers in modern history, one who has alienated both the left and right simultaneously, and now sits 3rdin most opinion polls. The local and regional elections saw Labour wiped out in councils across the country, as well as in the Welsh Assembly, as Reform UK surged in the party's former northern heartlands and Plaid Cymru captured the Senedd. The results have immediately produced a backlash against him in his parliamentary party with over 80 MPs calling for him to quit, as well as two Ministers resigning. Starmer himself has stubbornly vowed to stay on, even if he faces a potential leadership challenge.
It's worth questioning how he got here from a starting position of overwhelming strength. One might have assumed his initial victory, like Blair's, might have produced a new "era" of Labour dominance, yet that hasn't happened and the collapse happened at a catastrophic pace. Starmer on a personal level, is not a bad or contemptible person at all, and undoubtedly lacks the "charlatan" persona which is often applied to characters such as Boris Johnson or Donald Trump, but therein lies his weakness too. Starmer has positioned himself as a pragmatist who seeks a middle ground, but this has been coupled with the fact is a poor political operator who does not seem to radiate any true "brand" as to what he truly is, or stands for, which in turn inhibits him from attaining any kind of "mass" appeal, movement and core baseline support. He does not appear to stand for anything, he just "is."
Of course, Starmer's somewhat awkward political positioning is also the symptom of a broader political fracture that has emerged in the Labour Party, that has become glaringly apparent in recent years. That is, Labour is now attempting to appease irreconcilable groups of voters who have very different outlooks for Britain, which has in turn resulted in the party being cornered from both the left and the right. First, concerning the left, Starmer built his leadership in Labour on effectively purging the "Corbynite" faction that had taken over the party and led it to their 2019 defeat. Jeremy Corbyn had transformed Labour into a left-leaning, populist movement, which was very popular with young people and metropolitan groups, became toxic to the rest of the electorate for a plethora of reasons.
Starmer reversed this on the logic he could facilitate a broader appeal by making Labour more "centrist," and for a while, that worked by default precisely because the previous government was less popular. It has already been pointed out many times that Starmer in 2024 got fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2017, having won big by default simply because the Conservative vote collapsed. Once in office, the left quickly turned hostile to Starmer first through his decisions to attack the welfare state, infamously cutting the fuel winter payments and curbing a range of benefits. Then, of course, the Israel issue becomes a double-edged sword, with advocates of Palestine seeing the Labour Party under Starmer complicit in genocide. Both of these manifested into a new populist opposition emerging to the left of Labour in the form of Zack Polanski's Green Party, that has gained ground in metropolitan areas and amongst Muslim communities.
Next, and connected to the above, Keir Starmer has faced the continuing collapse of traditional support in the party's former industrial heartlands, who have deviated from their historic support of Labour through issues of national identity and immigration becoming wedge issues, especially the controversial "small boats". The riots of 2024 radicalised these regions and led to a surge in support for Reform UK. Starmer has tried to counter this by exerting tougher rhetoric and policies on illegal immigration, but this is not taken seriously by these demographics, and worse still, alienates the left even further. This means Keir Starmer has been trying to paper together an increasingly broken coalition by "trying to be all things to everyone" and thus "nothing to anyone concurrently."
Thus, Keir Starmer now finds himself in an unprecedented position of having a massive majority, which he should be using to reshape the country, yet finding the walls closing in on him as some in his party call for him to leave and voters increasingly reject him. Historically, party leaders with massive majorities, such as Blair and Thatcher, had political space to set the country's agenda and direction for a generation, but that was when Britain was far less divided than now. We are living in unprecedented times, an era where voters no longer collude around the centre, but are polarised and divided. There is a demand for left, there is a demand for right, but there is no demand for an uninspiring middleman Keir Starmer, trying to balance irreconcilable divides like this.
We are about to see now if he is capable of seizing a political opportunity in order to salvage himself, just like Thatcher did with the Falklands war, but for some reason, I doubt it, and that's exactly what you'd expect from a Prime Minister who follows sentiment than shaping it. Will he survive? Only time will tell.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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