Starmergeddon

The internal conversation that Labour has been having in mutters and whispers is now bursting forth into a fully public row. Whether that will mean anything changes is yet to be seen.

That row inevitably involves questions about the leadership. As it stands, calls for Starmer to go immediately have not come from anyone unexpected. But the calls for significant change – and talk of a timetable and a way back for Andy Burnham – have been more widespread.

Meanwhile, support has been muted.

The PM may be on a last warning from the PLP, or it may be that they go further than that and demand a timetable for his departure. The next few hours and days will tell, as the devastation of these results sinks in and we see how strong feelings are.

Change.

That word into which Labour members and Labour voters put so much faith. The word that it is clear the electorate do not feel we have lived up to. It is the word on the lips of the PLP and the promise that the PM has made once again.

READ MORE: Which Labour MPs are calling for Starmer to go – and who is still backing PM?

Starmer is promising to change. But is another reset possible? Would it stick, and would it be trusted to stick after so much chopping and changing since coming to power? This was not what I think we meant when we campaigned on that one-word manifesto.

When losses are this bad, everything has to be on the table. We have to look at what has gone wrong in Westminster, Holyrood and the Senedd. We have to look at what is going wrong in town halls. We have to look at what is wrong with what we’re doing, what we’re saying and how we’re saying it. We have to look at how we are campaigning and how that campaigning is being organised.

We need to ask ourselves how we can do all of this better. This is obviously going to be a question that is asked of Keir Starmer – and we already know that several MPs are asking it. But it is also a question Labour must be asking itself.

If Labour is going to signal a change in direction, we need to be clear about what that is and what that means. Often this is framed as whether we should be trying to win votes from Reform or from the Greens.

This is the wrong framing.

If we simply ask voters with vastly different views what should happen, we will continue to lack any sense of coherence. We can no longer run a government by unfocused focus groups. We must stop being the cartoon leader saying, “There go the people. I must follow them.” If this ever worked, it clearly isn’t working now. Voters don’t believe we mean it because they know we don’t really. We struggle to sell a vision that isn’t coherently ours because it is not based on any true north star.

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We invoke the phrase “Labour values” constantly. But we rarely think deeply about what this means. All too often – like the phrase attributed to Herbert Morrison, “socialism is what a Labour government does” – this seems to make those values appear too flexible, too porous, too easy to bend to whatever it is we think the electorate wants.

Let’s go back to the values of economic fairness, community empowerment and thinking about what it will take for all the people of the UK to have an equal chance at a healthy, happy and prosperous life. Let’s work out what that means now that our dark satanic mills are, in fact, data centres. Let’s work out what that means in a world of globalised capital – including investment in our debt and why that matters in terms of how much or how little we can borrow.

Different parts of the Labour family might disagree over policies. And we should not be afraid of that. But we do have to agree on what we do agree on: why we are one party, what that means for what we want to do in government, and how we can come together to make a passionate, heartfelt case for it.

It is not – yet – too late. But if we are to truly make this change, it cannot come a minute too soon.

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