Labour’s collapsing prospects across Britain show its problems go far beyond the useless leadership of Keir Starmer, argue David Jamieson.
Sixteen years since Labour last won a UK general election, the party is in its worst and most protracted decline since the second world war. That decline is, by all evidence, accelerating.
Keir Starmer has drifted from one punishing defeat to another in Hartlepool, Scotland, and local elections up and down the country in May and most recently in Chesham and Amersham, where they took just 1.6% of the vote, 622 votes – their worst by-election result in modern electoral history according to leading psephologist John Curtice.
Next, Starmer faces what could be his final defeat in Batley and Spen. The West Yorkshire seat has changed hands over the years, but it is ready for desertion by traditional Labour voters. Alienation among Muslims – representing around 20% of the local electorate – is acute. This is due to a wide range of factors, from Starmer’s high-profile ditching of Kashmir and Palestine as campaigning issues, to his acceptance of Islamophobia in his party, and a whole series of local issues.
Reports from the ground indicate that Labour’s effort is haemorrhaging support to, among others, George Galloway’s campaign, basing itself in local grievances.
Labour’s crisis has then not one but many dynamics all feeding the other, with the party losing various constituencies, among which we could list:
- Old working class strongholds in parts of the English north and Midlands
- Younger, urban voters who were energised by the Corbyn project
- Ethnic, racial and religious minority communities
- Scotland
- More established middle class voters with liberal instincts who feel ignored
They are not losing all these groups at the same rate (and some of these categories are complex, containing sub-categories who may be declining or holding-up). So the Labour vote may increasingly resemble its existing profile – young, urban and educated. But even in these prevailing trends, support is unenthusiastic. This, plus a dreadful candidate and weak campaign, may explain how the Tories cut Labour close for the London mayoralty in May.
A ‘Progressive Alliance’ touted by some (again) in the aftermath of recent defeats would likely represent an acceleration of this unwinding of the Labour base. In the 2019 general election and 2021 local elections, much was made of wins in southern and more middle class seats like Worthing. The growth of votes for parties like the Liberal Democrats and the Greens would mean even these marginal gains are under threat.
The swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats in Chesham and Amersham was a massive 25 points. People are free to call this a ‘Progressive Alliance’ if they wish – it could be more accurately described as the continuing decomposition of Labour’s electoral base.
John Bercow, the former speaker of the House of Commons, defected from the Conservatives to Labour after the defeat in Chesham and Amersham, in an apparent attempt to break the sequence of bad news. But these sorts of stunts largely reflect the total confusion and incomprehension at the top of the Labour party. Bercow, a hero to liberal Remainers, is hardly what Starmer needs going into a key by-election in Batley and Spen, a seat that voted 60% Leave.
Activists and media personalities desperate to save Starmer’s leadership in the by-election have made sure to circulate pictures of Galloway side-by-side with Nigel Farage. This only works as a smear if you think, as only a minority of dedicated liberal professionals do, that Brexit was an act of radical evil. This obviously doesn’t ride in a Leave constituency.
But this is not to say that Labour now has some ‘hard choices’ to make. This is what media talk of ‘Labour’s predicament’ tends to imply.
What would these choices conceivably be? The disastrous decision to insult majority opinion in the country by backing a second vote on Brexit means that a huge amount of probably unfixable damage has already been done. This act of self-attack in 2019 didn’t begin the disintegration of Labourism, but it was the blow that struck every existing fissure and weakness.
Some on the left propose a meaningful policy platform. This certainly couldn’t be worse than the total desert of Starmer’s politics – if his vague nods to British identity and pointless claims to competence could even be described as politics. But there is little reason to think that manifesto promises, which will naturally carry little weight in the country, can resist the forces of history which are clearly unleashed.
Labour is facing an ‘organic crisis’ – not limited to contingent factors or a particular, short-lived historical conjuncture, but embracing a long history of pent-up energies and a total disorganisation in its historic voting bloc. The assumption must now be that Labour is joining the continental trend towards the death of the old social democratic parties. This will likely be a long and tortured process, and leftwing activists will spot many false dawns. But now more than ever, the future of socialist politics will manifest outside of the party.
