Lindsey German on Labour’s electoral nosedive and what it means for the movement  

How bad did the election results have to be before Keir Starmer resigned? Worse than the loss of 44 Labour councillors in Newcastle? Or the wipeout of Labour members in the Welsh Senedd? Or the collapse to Reform in the former mining areas of Barnsley and Wakefield? Or the rout of Labour across much of inner London to the Greens, including the latter winning three boroughs outright and sending several more into no overall control?

Starmer’s response has been to say he ‘will not walk away’ – yet that is clearly what voters want him to do. Everywhere, reports from canvassers are the same: whatever the other issues motivating them, intense dislike of the prime minister was high on the agenda. At present his cabinet are publicly rallying round: he will do a big speech on Monday, promising a reset. Already he has announced the appointment of former prime minister Gordon Brown and former interim leader Harriet Harman as advisers. I can’t imagine what good he thinks this will do him.

The simple truth is this: Labour cannot begin to regain votes until Starmer goes. And the longer he stays the more he will strengthen Reform. It is a mark of the inability of Labour politicians to think clearly outside their own narrow factional interests that this truth has not already forced Starmer out. Instead leading cabinet figures and allies of supposed prince over the water Andy Burnham are putting their own interests before the urgent need to get rid of Starmer and they will pay a price. For this result will mark the end of Labour in many areas once regarded as its heartlands. The history of Scotland in the last decade demonstrates that there is no automatic likelihood of the party bouncing back.

And why should it? Labour, founded to represent the trade unions in the electoral field, has been on a long march away from the working class it is meant to stand for. It has presided over governments of privatisers who have seen a working class fall in living standards and done little to change anything. It has seen students forced to pay higher fees and get into debt and done nothing about it. It has allowed employers and landlords free rein, only acting to make the most minimal changes to protect workers. Its ‘solution’ to the housing crisis is to allow developers to build unaffordable houses while doing virtually no council house building. It has also echoed the far right in scapegoating migrants, waving the flag and promising far more money on ‘defence’.

The result? Reform’s right-wing populism has won in many places especially in the old industrial areas where secure and relatively well-paid jobs have been replaced by the opposite, as workers are forced to accept ever worse conditions in companies owned by billionaires. And those repulsed by Reform’s politics are also alienated by Labour’s mimicking of them, so look for alternatives to the left. The Greens and Plaid Cymru have been the big winners from this trend.

One reason that Labour politicians are so incapable of movement in the face of this is that there needs to be fundamental change in its policies – but that isn’t going to happen, because it would mean dismantling decades of New Labour policies. So the decline of Labour and Labourism will continue, surely accelerated by these results, but with its adherents unable to comprehend how and why it has happened. 

The takeaway both for the Labour right and the mainstream media is to see Reform as the biggest threat to the government. At one level this is correct. Reform won the highest number of council seats, taking from both Labour and from the Tories in counties like Essex and Suffolk. The threat of it forming the next government is very real, and its supporters and the far right generally will be boosted by the results. But it is only part of the story. Labour votes are going more to the left than to the right. It is the collapse of both main parties that is fuelling Reform. The collapse of Labour is also creating left alternatives.

The main winner from this was the Greens. Zack Polanski has managed to build a much bigger, more left and high-profile party which reaped rewards across the board. It achieved a national surge which gave it the edge over the various left independents standing. Despite a really vicious campaign accusing Polanski of antisemitism, particularly from Labour’s right, the Greens made a big dent in Labour’s vote.

They were also helped by the failure of Your Party. Less than a year ago it had 800,000 potential sign-ups – shrinking to around 50,000 members. It stood hardly any candidates, backed a series of independent candidates, most of whom would have got the votes they did without such backing, and had no national profile, unlike the Greens. At least some of the Green membership and vote, it seems to me, is because of this failure. Overall, while there were good votes for groups like the Newham Independents, and for Tower Hamlets party Aspire, the left independents seem to have achieved less than in previous years. The actual YP candidates received extremely low votes.

In my ward in Hackney, there was a deal between one Green and two socialist independents to vote for each other and for the Green candidate for Mayor. The result was that the two socialists got less than half the vote of the winning Green, who now serves alongside two Labour councillors – some of the few still elected in the borough. Undoubtedly whatever the exact reasons, the high Green national profile played some role here. In addition, in many places the Greens insisted on putting up ‘paper candidates’ against left socialists, damaging any unity of the left.

While the election was a big success for the Greens, I feel that its actions in local government will, if the past is anything to go by, be insufficient to match the very real demands for change that so many people want and which motivated the vote for them. On a wider level it has not been key to the Palestine movement in most places, and studiously avoids a relationship with the anti-war movement. Replacing one electoral party with another to the left of it is a step forward but not enough to achieve the change needed.

From these elections the tasks for socialists should be clear:

1. Do everything to defeat Reform and stop its advance. That means in the first instance supporting this week’s Nakba demo which is also a protest against the Tommy Robinson march and the far right.
2. Demand Starmer goes and the Labour government implements policies to help working-class people over housing, the cost of living, poverty, and public spending.
3. Stop the warmongering and support for Israel endemic in this government, and its funding of militarism and war. The international anti-war conference in London on 20 June is a key date for challenging this agenda.
4. Build movements and organisation that can ensure whoever is in government or running local councils, we can force real change.

This week: I will be speaking in Manchester on Monday night at Friends House to mobilise for the Nakba march, where we are getting good reports of coaches being booked for next weekend. On Saturday I will be on the march – join it if you can.