‘We need more than a new leader. We need a different political culture too’

It was less than a month ago that we suffered one of the worst local election results in our party’s history. We lost 36 local authorities and more than a thousand councillors. In Sheffield, only three Labour councillors were re-elected. We had led Sheffield City Council for the best part of a century – first taking control in 1926 – and experienced very possibly our worst result since.

What feels most difficult about those losses is that, in many ways, we knew they were coming. Polling had consistently pointed in the same direction and warning signs were repeatedly raised about that impending catastrophe. Yet there was no meaningful course correction from the national leadership. Beyond a series of half-hearted “resets”, Keir Starmer gave little indication that anything was fundamentally wrong. The government’s only response was to repeat that we needed to go “further and faster” to deliver change, without any real acknowledgement that the public’s understanding of change might not match its own.

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Starmer did say that, as Prime Minister, he takes direct responsibility for the poor results. He was right to do so. From hundreds of conversations I have had with voters, and the many thousands colleagues have had across the country, one theme came up repeatedly: people’s dislike of the national leadership and the sense that Keir Starmer is not up to delivering the change he promised.

We lost these elections because of Starmer. For many voters, distrust in the national party outweighed decades of work by hardworking local councillors. Unsurprisingly, I think he should stand down as leader and hope that Burnham will be the one to replace him. But I don’t believe leadership change alone will be enough to save the government or the party: we need to change the culture too.

Too often, electoral defeat is treated as separate from internal party culture. In reality the two are inseparable; it is hard to see the rise of the Greens in London as anything other than a crisis of our own making. They have risen in the polls while we have fallen, helped by a new leadership with a sharper media strategy. But the London Labour Party’s ruthless adherence to factional control and – let’s be honest – its corrosive internal culture has also played a central role in our decline in the capital.

In Lambeth, Labour lost 32 seats. The Greens are now the largest party. Their new Group Leader, Martin Abrams, had resigned as a Labour councillor last year. In Lewisham, a council Labour had led continuously since 1971, the Greens’ Liam Shrivastava now serves as the borough’s mayor. He too was previously elected as a Labour councillor. Similarly, in Southwark, James McAsh had been elected leader of his Labour Group before the leadership election was rerun on questionable grounds. He has since left the party, stood for re-election as a Green, and has now been elected leader of the council.

These are people who, under different circumstances, would have stayed in our party, fought for re-election, and – in all likelihood – would now be delivering progressive policies with us. In many parts of the country, with more supportive Groups or branches, their peers have stayed and are now leading efforts to rebuild their local parties after a difficult election. The contrast matters; we should learn from it.

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In recent months, people from all wings of the party have become more willing to criticise the relentless factionalism, selection stitch-ups and internal hostility that has characterised Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. That change in rhetoric is welcome, but it has not yet translated into a change in outcomes; it’s unsurprising that a politics which prioritises internal control over broad coalition-building has begun to produce these electoral consequences.

This is not how we win. It is certainly not how we rebuild trust. It falls so far below the standards you would expect from the party of Attlee and Wilson that it is hard to know where to start.

There are still places where a different approach can be seen, and where we had different results. I live in hope that our party can take Lambeth, Lewisham, and Southwick as cautionary tales and move away from this dysfunctional internal culture and build one that is capable of drawing on ideas, energy, and talent from across our Party.

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What we need now is a process of reflection. If we are serious about renewal then it will need to go beyond simply changing the leader. It means looking at how the party is governed and how decisions are made at every level. It means no longer treating disagreement as disloyalty and rebuilding the confidence to be a broad church once again. And it means being honest about where we have fallen short, clear about our values, and willing to trust members to shape the direction of the party from the bottom up.

That is where renewal begins.

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