Starmer is toast. To stop Farage now, Britain's left-wing forces must unite

The architects of New Labour have eviscerated the Labour Party twice, once when former Prime Minister Tony Blair took Britain into the Iraq War in 2003, and now under the leadership of Keir Starmer.

Unlike other Labour crises - such as the short-lived rebellion of the Gang of Four who defected in 1981 to create the Social Democratic Party, or the Brexit vote in 2016 - New Labour remained uniquely toxic to Labour’s brand. 

This is because it gained power through party purges. New Labour did not just define itself against the unions, the left and progressives in general; it ousted anyone who lay in its path, irrespective of ideology. The ends justified the means, however dirty. 

At a high point in his campaign to stamp his authority over the party, ostensibly over the issue of antisemitism, Starmer said: “If you don’t like the changes that we’ve made, I say the door is open, and you can leave.” 

More than 200,000 members of the party which Corbyn assembled did just that. From a peak of 532,046 members at the end of 2019, Labour was left with 333,235 in 2024, and the haemorrhage of support continued even faster after that.

Then, as now, New Labour took pride in not being able to place a cigarette paper between itself and Washington, whether this was in the form of Blair’s discovery that he used the same toothpaste as former US President George W Bush, or in former ambassador Peter Mandelson leaning over President Donald Trump’s shoulder at his desk. 

Then, as now, it was a foreign war that triggered the crash in authority at home. With Blair, it was his decision to join the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. With Starmer, it was the UK’s rock-solid support for an Israel that was committing genocide in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Lebanon. 

The party looked like a bombed-out shell, stunned, abandoned. No one knew what it stood for

Neither Iraq nor Gaza were the full reason for the creeping collapse of Blair’s or Starmer’s authority at home. 

In a reset speech on Monday, whose reset value ended as soon as he finished speaking, Starmer boasted that he had got the “big political decisions” right. But as Corbyn posted, they were all the wrong ones. 

The government chose to deepen the hole in domestic finances. It chose to ditch the Green New Deal. It chose not to bring water into public ownership. It chose to keep children in poverty until it was forced to scrap the two-child benefit cap. It chose to scapegoat migrants and refugees in an attempt to distract from its own failures.

Starmer’s initial refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza or to allow any Labour Party official to attend protests, and his support for Israel’s restriction of water and electricity to Gaza, were microcosms of every other policy that was going wrong.

A personal rejection

Each time New Labour crashed, it left devastation in its wake. The party looked like a bombed-out shell, stunned, abandoned. No one knew what it stood for. The party had not just eviscerated its voters; it had lost its identity. 

The recent council elections, in which Labour’s heartland and the Red Wall vanished, were local in name only. This was really a national ballot on one issue: “Do you want Starmer to lead Britain for another three years?” The answer was a deafening no.

The good news is that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland now have leftist progressive parties that are pro-Palestine at the helm. The bad news is that in England, Reform is all but set to form the next UK government. It can be stopped only by a broad coalition of the left - and it is equally clear that no one on the right of the party can do that anymore. 

As noted by Britain’s leading pollster, John Curtice, Reform advanced only in areas that voted Leave in the Brexit referendum. The collapse in the Labour vote and the defections to the Greens were mostly down to Starmer himself.

This mirrors what happened to the Democrats under former presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Trump did not gain supporters as quickly as Harris shed them. 

In the once-solid Labour London Borough of Haringey, Labour campaigners could not get past the hatred of the prime minister on the doorsteps. 

The Greens did not campaign in many wards. They did not have to. Without even knowing who their local Green candidates were, Haringey voted Green instinctively. It was anyone but Starmer.

That Starmer should have inspired such a degree of personal animosity is in itself something of a political achievement. No politician actively courts hatred. But Robocop Starmer seemed to revel in it. 

Starmer was not simply Blair without the patter or the charm, an unsuccessful reincarnation of a project two decades after it originally died. Starmer added an extraordinary brew of vindictiveness, authoritarianism and intolerance to the Blair project. In this sense, the effects of Starmerism will persist long after he is just a bad memory.

This will become evident in how the same powers Starmer introduced to redefine terrorism and police demonstrations are used with Nigel Farage at the helm of a Reform UK government. 

Conspiracy theories

For a Muslim in Birmingham, it makes little difference whether you are the target of the lies of former Tory minister Michael Gove about an “Islamist conspiracy” to take over schools in Birmingham - so-called the Trojan Horse affair - or whether you are the target of Labour and Reform lying about “family voting”, as happened in the Gorton and Denton by-election in February.

“Family voting” refers to the illegal practice of voters conferring, colluding or directing one another on how to vote at the polling station. Everyone from Labour to Farage to former Tory minister Robert Jenrick claimed this had happened after Green candidate Hannah Spencer won. 

A Greater Manchester police investigation found no evidence for the claims. But the truth did not matter. What mattered was planting the idea in the minds of millions of people who will one day vote for Reform. 

Farage, who makes Starmer look amateurish, was quick to put it into words: Muslims made for suspect voters. 

“This is deeply concerning and raises serious questions about the integrity of the democratic process in predominantly Muslim areas,” Farage said. 

Wes Streeting, the health secretary who nearly lost his seat in Ilford North in the last election, used the same tactics to discredit the Redbridge Independents in the local elections. To talk about foreign policy in local elections was deemed by Streeting, now a right-wing challenger to Starmer, as “sectarian”.

Streeting’s seat is in Redbridge, an ethnically diverse borough with more than 47 percent of the population identifying as Asian or Asian British, and where more than 30 percent are Muslim.

In March, Streeting sent a letter to residents accusing the Redbridge Independents, a local party backed by Your Party, of being “a divisive political party that aims to only represent some of us, more focused on foreign conflicts than on fixing potholes”.

In fact, 95 percent of the local party’s platform was focused on local issues. Being of and from the community they served, they proved to be much better at listening to their community than Labour was. 

Labour ultimately retained control of Redbridge with a sharply reduced majority. It lost 11 seats, with the independents picking up five additional seats. It seems Streeting’s campaign only made the independents more popular.

Green Party leader Zack Polanski was similarly accused of being an antisemite, a liar and a hypocrite in the run-up to the most successful elections his party has ever had.

In the name of fighting antisemitism, four national newspapers published cartoons of the Jewish leader that were deeply antisemitic, after Polanski criticised how police had handled a mentally ill man who had just stabbed three people, a Muslim and two Jews. 

The Greens were accused of engaging in “sectarian politics” and being in bed with “Islamists”. This was the same playbook that doomed Corbyn, but this time around, it did not work. The more they were attacked, the more the Greens grew in popularity.

The long shadow of Israel

Nowhere have all the worst elements of Starmer’s reign as premier been concentrated more than in the combined issues of antisemitism and Britain’s relationship with Israel.

To chart Britain’s relationship with Israel during this genocide is to see just how far Labour, a liberal Zionist party, has strayed into the territory of Likud, which follows the maximalist ideology of Zeev Jabotinski.

Under Starmer, Britain recognised the state of Palestine, but it was clear this was gesture politics only. On all the issues that mattered to Israel, Starmer enabled the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Starmer’s government recognised “the right of British dual nationals” to serve not only in the Israeli army, but in Gaza. More than 2,000 of them did - despite the fact that in January 2024, the International Court of Justice put all member states on notice of the serious risk that genocide was being committed by Israel in Gaza. 

Under Starmer, Britain also sent at least 518 spy flights in 15 months over Gaza. The government insisted these were “solely to locate hostages”, but the surveillance sorties continued during and after the ceasefire.

In addition, the government green-lit $169m in military goods to Israel after a partial arms embargo - more in three months than all that was approved under the Tories between 2020 and 2023.

David Lammy, the former foreign secretary, told parliament that “much of what we send is defensive in nature”, such as helmets or goggles, and “not what we describe routinely as arms”.

In opposition, Labour opposed a bill brought by Gove in 2024 banning public bodies from divesting in Israel. But this did not stop Steve Reed, the communities secretary, from warning Labour-administered councils that they could be sued for boycotting Israeli businesses.

Antisemitism

Closely aligned with Starmer’s handling of Israel has been his disastrous handling of antisemitism. 

As everyone knows, but no one acknowledges, Israel’s wars of choice are the main driver of antisemitism in Britain and Europe. Previous spikes in antisemitism in July/August 2014 and May 2021 closely match the timing of Israeli bombardments of Gaza.

The shockwaves that are convulsing Starmer’s authority are doing the same to the people who cast themselves as leaders of British Jews.

New voices are making themselves heard with increasing urgency. Rabbi Charley Baginsky and Rabbi Josh Levy, co-leaders of Progressive Judaism - a newly formed movement representing around a third of synagogues in the UK - have said that Israel’s trajectory could pose an “existential threat” not just to the country, but to Judaism itself.

It's very clear what Labour now has to do. Its most urgent duty is not to itself, but to the country - a notion Starmer so often invokes to save his own skin

“We’ve often talked about the direction of Israel being an existential threat not to Jews per se, but to Judaism,” Baginsky told the Guardian. “What happens when the direction of the government within Israel takes Israel down a line that makes it incompatible with our Jewish values? That’s a huge worry.”

This is the same warning that Lord Michael Levy gave in 2023, that Israel was tearing British Jewry apart. 

Like Starmer, the Board of Deputies of British Jews has lost its grip on a new generation of British Jews who take pole position in demonstrations on Palestine. 

They are revolted, as we all are, by the unalloyed political partisanship of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis in extolling the Israeli army’s “outstanding” performance in Gaza, which incidentally includes his own son. 

Each year, Israel celebrates Jerusalem Day, marking the day in 1967 when Jerusalem was united. Each year, the main event is the March of Flags, when Israeli settlers assault Palestinians in the Old City and chant “Death to the Arabs”. 

The path ahead

It’s very clear what Labour now has to do. Its most urgent duty is not to itself, but to the country - a notion Starmer so often invokes to save his own skin. 

Its most immediate task is to stop Farage from becoming the next prime minister. As was the case in France, British politics is now so fractured that this can only be accomplished by a coalition of left-wing forces.

That can only be achieved by a new Labour leader who can talk to and work with, as opposed to demonise, other progressive forces on the left, such as the Greens, the Independents, Your Party, the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru. 

Every day that Starmer clings to office is a day when the smile on Farage’s face widens.