It took barely a year. Labour, elected on a mandate of renewal, now looks exhausted, boxed in, and dangerously exposed. From every direction, pressure is mounting. Blue Labour on its right, Reform UK further to the right, a Tory Party preparing to regroup behind Boris Johnson or Robert Jenrick, and now a resurgent left—from Zack Polanski’s Greens to rumblings of a Corbynite realignment. Add in economic shockwaves from the Middle East and we begin to see the shape of the political future: unstable, febrile, and utterly unconvinced by Keir Starmer.
As Andrew Marr puts it, Labour governs a country it cannot control and a party it cannot command. A foreign policy made on the hoof, a domestic agenda collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, and a technocratic leadership that appears to have lost all political imagination. The Prime Minister didn’t speak to Donald Trump before the US bombed Iran. He nodded along afterward. That’s not diplomacy; it’s damage limitation. Labour’s authority is so thin, its claim to sovereignty so tattered, that we are left watching the machinery of the British state fumble blindly through a global crisis.
But the rot runs deeper. At home, the Starmer-Reeves project is faltering. Not because of the economy, but because of politics. A government that campaigned on “stability” is now engulfed in rebellion: backbench MPs opposing disability cuts, senior ministers questioning strategy, aides under fire, and the Chancellor herself blamed for humiliating U-turns that make the party look cowardly and cruel.
The £28bn green pledge? Abandoned. The two-child cap? Still standing. Winter fuel payments? Cut, then quietly restored. Farm tax exemptions? Slashed. And all the while, Labour insists it’s delivering “responsible government”—a phrase that increasingly sounds like a euphemism for managerialist retreat. The welfare reform bill (meant to showcase seriousness) now threatens to define the government’s moral bankruptcy. Labour is in danger of becoming the party that cut support for disabled people and called it….courage.
Polly Toynbee called the bill “a pyrrhic victory” even if it passes. Others suggest it won’t. The mood in Labour WhatsApp groups is mutinous. Richard Burgon has declared it a millstone. Nadia Whittome claims many Labour MPs will vote against the bill, no matter the concessions. Meg Hillier, hardly a left-wing firebrand, has led the rebellion. Starmer called them “noises off”. They may yet bring down the curtain.
The Farage Problem
While Labour twists itself into knots trying to outmanoeuvre Reform UK, Farage is already setting the agenda—on oil and gas, on the European Convention on Human Rights, on grooming gangs, crime, and demography. The rhetoric of Reform has gone mainstream. Its framing of “the nation” and “the people” is now echoed across the front benches. Starmer may mock Truss and warn of Farage’s chaos, but the deeper reality is that Labour has already ceded the ground.
Andrew Marr is right to say that Farage is not yet in power, but in some senses, he is. The danger isn’t that Reform wins a majority; it’s that its language, its instincts, its worldview become those of the political class. And Labour, instead of resisting that transformation, appears to be imitating it.
Farage calls for a “gentle British revolution”. His supporters want something far less gentle. There are no skinhead rallies, no Union Jack marches—but there is the constant low hum of demographic anxiety, Islamophobia, and ethno-nationalist fear. Labour, by vacating its moral ground and internalising tabloid framing, risks becoming complicit in that drift.
Will Hayward put it best. Imagine thirteen people trying to decide what to do with their evening. Nine want coffee—some prefer cappuccino, others a flat white, but broadly they agree. Four want to get battered on Special Brew and smash up a bar. Under first-past-the-post, the Special Brew crew win—because they’re the largest single bloc, even if most people want something completely different. That’s how Reform UK, with just 26% of the vote, is projected to win 42% of the seats.
It’s an absurd, anti-democratic system that distorts voter intention and rewards extremism. Yet Labour refuses to change it. Why? Because the broken system is the only thing propping it up. Just as the Tories once clung to first-past-the-post to hold off UKIP, Labour now relies on it to shield itself from the Greens, the Corbynite left, and the wreckage of its own contradictions. Proportional representation would level the playing field, but it would also expose how thin Labour’s real base has become.
Until Labour supports electoral reform, it cannot credibly claim to be the party of democratic renewal. It’s not protecting democracy. It’s gaming it.
Collapse from Within
It isn’t just the far right Labour has to worry about. The left is organising too. A Corbynite party polling at 10%, eating into Labour’s base, attracting the young and disillusioned. The Greens gaining in working-class cities. A re-energised Palestine solidarity movement winning independents in Muslim-majority wards. In 2025, it is entirely plausible that Labour could lose seats not only to Farage, but to Corbyn, to Polanski, and to former members of its own party.
George Eaton describes Starmer’s dilemma: lose votes to everyone, everywhere, all at once. Momentum may be in hibernation, but the political space it once filled is growing again—spurred on by Gaza, by economic injustice, by Labour’s refusal to act like a party of the working class.
On its right flank, Blue Labour intellectuals and Red Wall sentimentalists call for a renewal of national sovereignty, tougher immigration controls, and a romanticised politics of work and place. An uneasy mixture of Enoch Powell and E.P Thompson.
Meanwhile, the party leadership is paralysed. Morgan McSweeney is under fire. Reeves is seen as politically tin-eared. Starmer is viewed as too cautious even by his allies. And there is a dawning realisation among Labour MPs: the problem isn’t just the policy. It’s the politics.
The state is not fit for purpose, as one No 10 source admitted to Marr. But neither, it seems, is the government.
The Centre Cannot Hold
Labour thought it could win by offering nothing. It thought U-turns would be forgiven, that authority would flow from office, and that the public would reward quietism. But the public is not quiet. It is angry, uncertain, polarised. Starmer’s strategy (muted technocracy amid systemic crisis) is not governance. It is a man running scared.
If this government cannot tell a compelling story about what it is for, it will be defined by what it fails to stop: an insurgent right, a collapsing welfare system, an emboldened global authoritarianism, a return to race panic as state doctrine. A party without courage cannot stand against these forces. And if Labour cannot stand, it will fall.
It Could Be Done: A Red Hot Commie Summer
There is another path. Labour could stop chasing Reform voters and start building a coalition of hope: renters, workers, migrants, students, carers, the disabled, and the disillusioned. People who want a functioning NHS. A council flat. A train that runs. A planet that doesn’t burn. That’s a majority, if you choose to speak to it.
But it has to be more than just technocratic competence or warmed-over 2010s Ed Milibandism. It has to be ecosocialist. Green New Deal infrastructure, public ownership of energy and transport, massive investment in home insulation and clean power, and a jobs guarantee rooted in decarbonisation and care. If we’re rebuilding the economy, we do it red and green—together, or not at all.
Call it what it is: a red-hot commie summer. Stop hiding from the word socialism. Don’t let the right-wing media run the nation scared of it. They’ve already called Labour communist for wanting to feed children. They’ll howl regardless. So why not give them something to howl about?
Labour should stop treating the public like a risk to be managed and start treating them as agents of change. Scrap the two-child cap on benefits. Nationalise water and energy. End zero-hours contracts for good. Fund local government. Shift the tax burden from work to wealth. Stop apologising for believing in the common good.
Most of all, Labour must recognise that the crises we face are not ones of efficiency but of power. Markets are not neutral. Austerity is not inevitable. Immigration is not the problem. And the only real stability comes from justice.
That requires a politics that is bold, moral, and willing to fight. Not one that’s ashamed of its own history or terrified of tomorrow’s headline. The alternative to Starmerism isn’t just Corbynism redux. It has to be ecosocialist, insurgent, proudly working class, and serious about power.
A party that wants to govern the country must start by refusing to surrender it. A movement that wants to win must name its enemy and fight. There is still time. But not much.
