4 hours ago
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Sir Keir Starmer promised change – and, in a way, he has delivered it. Gone are the days of bold, expansive pledges; in their place are cautious, measurable goals: 6,500 new teachers, 40,000 extra NHS appointments a week. Yet voters, oddly ungrateful, remain unmoved. Perhaps it is because these modest gains barely scratch the surface of national decline. The government has touched lives, just not in the ways it promised. Cuts to winter fuel payments for pensioners and proposed reductions in disability benefits have landed with jarring force. Sir Keir’s managerial style may promise stability, but voters expected transformation. The result: disillusionment with a government delivering change – but not the change voters thought they had chosen.
Labour’s poor local election showing could be shrugged off as low turnout in the shires. The party won the West of England mayoralty on less than 8% of the electorate. But the hammer-blow for Labour was the Runcorn and Helsby byelection. Reform UK, the hard-right party led by Nigel Farage, beat Labour by six votes. The swing towards Mr Farage closely mirrors the Tory collapse, suggesting that almost all the lost Conservative support in the seat shifted to Reform. Meanwhile, Labour’s base in the north-west largely stayed home. The result was a tight two-way race – driven by a rightward realignment and a lack of enthusiasm for Labour. Reform fed on Tory collapse and Labour’s weakened hold.
Should this trend continue, it could see an earthquake in British politics. Reform isn’t attracting many Labour voters, who are much more likely to switch their ballots to the Greens and Liberal Democrats. Instead, Mr Farage is winning the battle on the right of politics. If the Tory slide continues with a fifth of its 2024 vote going to Mr Farage, and a 10th of Labour support evaporates, his party would win more than 30 seats. That would hand the hard right a parliamentary foothold unseen in modern British history: a chilling prospect.
It should be obvious by now: Sir Keir’s triangulation strategy won’t win key seats if Tory voters keep defecting to Reform and Labour keeps bleeding support. He already faces a rebellion over benefit cuts and growing unease over his chancellor’s fiscal straitjacket. In Cardiff, the first minister, Eluned Morgan, isn’t waiting to be swept away in next year’s Senedd elections. Her bold “red Welsh way” – social justice coupled with control over Welsh resources – clearly tacked left to shore up her base. With the Scottish National party polling well, it’s only a matter of time before Scottish Labour pushes back against London too.
Mr Farage is also wrapping Thatcherism in nationalisation to woo Reform-curious Labour voters who are populist on economics, conservative on culture and hostile to elites. Sir Keir doesn’t need a rebrand. He needs a rethink – and a bold, democratic coalition for renewal, with equality as well as efficiency at its heart. Reform UK, which has no coherent programme and until recently no ground game, could hold the balance of power in a fractured Commons. If Labour drifts complacently to the centre while the Conservatives eat themselves, Reform will not just inherit the ruins of the right – it will weaponise them. Britain’s first-past-the-post system, designed to keep extremism at bay, may end up amplifying it. The irony is bitter: a vote for “stability and moderation” in 2024 could be the prelude to democratic instability in 2029.
