“We are presented with existential questions about what the Labour Party is, who we are for, and what values a Labour government should govern with.”
By Apsana Begum MP
This has been a bruising week for the Labour Party, to say the least. None more so than for the hard-working and committed councillors who have lost their seats, for reasons that have nothing to do with the years of service that they have given their communities.
There should be no doubt about it: the largest portion of blame for these results lies with Keir Starmer. His unpopularity was the driving force behind the fact that turnout figures in these local elections were the highest in decades in many areas.
We should not forget, though, that the current leadership’s representatives in the Labour bureaucracy, including in its National Executive Committee (NEC), have a lot to answer for. The great irony of the purges, suspensions, and clampdowns on party democracy over recent years is that so many candidates who were deselected did stand in these local elections, but for the Green Party or as independents and more. Among them, many ended up winning back their previous seats, having been deselected for reasons including speaking out against Winter Fuel Payment cuts or organising letters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Many have now turned their back for good, and the Labour Party now faces an existential crisis.
There is no doubt that Keir Starmer can no longer remain the Prime Minister. As debates about the Prime Minister’s successor rage on, the internal dynamics of the Labour Party are lurching – but only from one side of the Labour right to the other. For those on the socialist left of the Party, the Party’s current rules on nominations – adopted as part of factional attacks on the left – mean that there are currently no options for a successor.
This is yet another moment to acknowledge the brutal disenfranchisement of members and activists who have espoused socialist values within the Party. MPs have been suspended, candidates have been blocked, and members have been expelled for entirely factional reasons and without due process – to serve the interests of a right-wing electoral project that has been proven to be a failure. As someone targeted in a trigger process that was mired by allegations of misogynistic intimidation, rule-breaking, allegations of fraud and even bribery and drove me to ill health, I know this all too well.
We know from experience that there are many in the Labour Party who even now insist on learning all the wrong lessons from our difficulties. There are vocal members of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) who are already calling for the government to respond to these losses with a further shift to the right in policy. These local election results, where Labour’s progressive voting constituencies have been lost to the Green Party and independents, have already shown us what happens when you do.
These arguments are deliberately ignorant of the evidence in front of us. Polling has shown that the so-called “hero voters”, whom the Prime Minister’s former Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, built Starmer’s political strategy around, are unlikely to return to Labour. Not only are the progressive defectors more numerous – with 2024 Labour voters over four times as likely to be defecting to the Greens, Lib Dems, SNP or Plaid than to Reform – but they are also likely to consider voting Labour in the future. That is, of course, if the Party shows any signs of even wanting them back. There needs to be an offer and a reason for them to vote Labour – other than simply smearing the alternatives.
These election results also show again that pitching right in response to far-right electoral threats only serves to benefit far-right parties themselves. The prospect of the Labour Party holding onto a majority in 2029 is increasingly looking distant, and the Labour Party’s main pitch to voters now is to argue that it is the best-placed party to prevent a Reform government.
Labour cannot claim to be the preventative solution to the threat of a historic far-right government if it is parroting Farage’s talking points and implementing his preferred policies. The Gorton and Denton by-election reminds us that voters will not be intimidated into voting Labour at a time when the Labour Party treats its progressive, young, and ethnically diverse constituencies with utter disdain.
This Labour’s positions and actions – from complicity in the genocide in Gaza, restricting the right to protests, curtailing juries, and the performative cruelty in welfare and immigration reform – have sent a repeated message to working-class people that this Party is not for them.
Along with this, the Renters Rights Act and the Employment Rights Act have shown the potential to change the situation drastically for millions of people in our country, but their full potential has been deprioritised by even more rhetoric and policy pitching to the right on areas such as foreign policy and immigration. Keir Starmer hasn’t had credit for those things – because he hasn’t even claimed them as leader of the Labour Party.
Instead, socialist policies that this Labour Government have been forced to adopt have been driven by Labour members, activists, and people at the grassroots – against the designs of the government. Just last year, the largest backbench Labour MP rebellion prevented the cuts to Personal Independent Payments (PIP) from proceeding, after millions of people in the country pressured and lobbied MPs and campaigned to oppose them. Costly, poor decision-making around PIP, around the Winter Fuel Payments, and so much else could have been avoided if No. 10 didn’t treat its backbenchers and grassroots as adversaries.
These local election results are showing that Reform UK have won a lot of local government seats and taken over councils, but they are able to do so on narrow margins when Labour’s vote share is cut by voters swapping to other progressive parties.
The biggest question for where Labour goes from here is not simply ‘who takes over next’. We are presented with existential questions about what the Labour Party is, who we are for, and what values a Labour government should govern with.
Until these questions are resolved, Labour will keep haemorrhaging support.
- Apsana Begum is the Member of Parliament for Poplar and Limehouse – you can follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram and TikTok.
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