If the polls are to be believed, a bruising set of local election results are on the way for Sir Keir Starmer and his government. Following multiple policy U-turns, the hiring and subsequent sacking of Peter Mandelson and anaemic economic growth, the Prime Minister’s critics argue that these elections will deliver a verdict on his leadership and the “change” he promised the nation.
But if voters do send that message, is it really time to get rid of Sir Keir? Replacing a PM is far from simple, and while it can sound like a fresh start, you only need to look back to the latter years of the Conservative government to see the chaos and panic a leadership change can cause.
So, should Labour replace the PM after the local elections? Our columnist Ian Dunt, political editor Hugo Gye and Spiked’s chief political writer Brendan O’Neill offer their perspectives.
The funniest thing about the psychodrama devouring Labour is that no one outside of SW1 gives a fig about it.
Sir Keir, his spads, the sulking frontbench and centrist dads with podcasts to churn out can think about little else. Their every waking hour is consumed by thoughts of which faction will prevail. After the electoral bloodletting of 7 May, they wonder, who will hold the party chalice?
Will Starmer and his ever-shrinking clique cling on? Will Burnham-Rayner barge in? Perhaps we have the Second Coming of Ed Miliband to look forward to.
The way they talk, you’d think it was a rerun of the War of the Roses rather than a catfight between the knackered heirs to the fast-fading red rose of Labour. But no one normal cares. In the world beyond Westminster, the great Labour tussle elicits a shrug of the shoulders, if that.
Why? Because working-class Brits know Labour is a busted flush. Who cares who is at the helm of the ship if the ship is going down? What people want is change. Something different. They don’t want a made over Labour Party – they want Reform UK.
Poll after poll shows that Nigel Farage’s Reform has made deep inroads with working-class voters. The people Labour was founded to represent are abandoning it in their millions and taking a punt on a cocky new party.
Among Labour types who only meet a working-class person when one comes round to fix the plumbing, the typical explanation is that the poor dears of Labour’s old heartlands have fallen for Farage’s demagogic tricks. He’s hypnotised them with promises of an immigration crackdown and lower taxes, they moan with staggering paternalism.
Such condescending drivel won’t wash. These communities have simply clocked that Labour doesn’t like them anymore. Labour views them as “gammon”. As Europhobic fools whose vote for Brexit plunged Britain into mayhem. As a “problematic” blob to be managed rather than represented.
Labour turned on its voters long before they turned on Labour.
The party’s great moral error is to think it has a “Keir Starmer problem”. And that a bit of Burnham spit ‘n’ polish, or a dash of Rayner swagger, will improve things.
They are mistaking a historical crisis for a personnel problem. It is not merely Starmer’s government that is withering – it’s Labour itself. We are witnessing one of the most extraordinary realignments in the political history of these isles.
It feels like an unspoken, unbloody revolt. Working people around the country have decided, through reason and deduction, that Reform should be the vessel of their moral hopes, not Labour. It is as radical a transformation as the founding of the Labour Party was 126 years ago.
No fresh face at the top of Labour – do they have any? – can overturn the epoch-shaking decision of working-class Britons that a whole new political machine is called for. They feel that Reform takes them seriously.
Consider the question of national sovereignty. To the Oxbridge set who work in Westminster, live in leafy suburbs and summer at Lake Como, borders are at best an irrelevance, at worst an inconvenience.
But to the working classes they really matter. They feel strongly that porous borders are bad for both the security and pride of the nation. They know that their very Britishness — a thing they truly cherish — will become a joke if Britain can’t even define and control its own boundaries.
As the chattering classes obsess morning, noon and night over the failed vetting of Peter Mandelson, ordinary people are worried about the arrival of unvetted men into the UK every week. You can call them racist, if you like. But that is to wilfully misunderstand their desire for social stability.
And it is to make the very mistake Labour made: to think you can sneer at people and still count on their votes. Those days are over. The working classes have rebelled. Quietly, politely and firmly.
As Labour once more fixates on its own navel, its old voters look to a new, Farage-hued future. Labour wants to change its top brass — but these voters want to change the world.