Between Reform and a Hard Place

4.7.2025

Outflanked on both sides and increasingly out of favour, is there a route to re-election for Starmer’s Labour?

A year on from its historic election win, Labour’s chances of forming the next government already look remarkably grim. On day one of his premiership, Keir Starmer boasted a 172-seat majority that would make most prime ministers feel untouchable. Today, while he still has (most of) the seats, recent polling puts net favourability ratings for him and his party at -34 and -30 respectively.

The honeymoon period was short. Scandals around ministerial freebies and his chief of staff’s salary, coupled with successive, hugely unpopular policies to take winter fuel payments from over 10 million pensioners and maintain the two-child benefit cap, tarnished his government within weeks of it attaining power.

The subsequent decline in popularity, first precipitous, then more gradual, has continued ever since. And it’s not lost on Labour MPs that 26 of the seats secured last July, before the conflagration of public approval, were won by 1,000 votes or fewer, and that 51 came in with winning margins of just 5% or less.

This agitation is compounded by a buoyant Reform UK which, if Nigel Farage’s apparent certitude (and a good deal of polling) is to be believed, is positioning itself to seize Number 10 at the next general election.

In addition to the upsurge in popularity that pollsters have identified for Reform, the party enjoyed a potential watershed moment in May’s local and mayoral elections, claiming 667 council seats (gaining control of ten councils) and two mayoralties — as well as the parliamentary seat of Runcorn and Helsby, following a by-election after former Labour MP Mike Amesbury punched a constituent.

One month previously, a hubristic Nigel Farage had used the crisis at Scunthorpe steel plant to park his tanks on what was once Labour’s lawn. Jumping into the vacuum left by Starmer’s prevarication, he called a press conference at the ailing steelworks to demand its nationalisation — notably before the prime minister could offer a solution half as radical or far-reaching.

Of course, scaling a protest party to one that is capable of fielding 650 respectable candidates at a general election is no easy task. But it’s worth noting that Reform’s council wins give them almost 700 salaried political operators with around four years to cut their teeth in local politics before the next general election. Many who don’t stand as parliamentary candidates will likely make for useful campaigners when the time for an assault on Whitehall arises.

Meanwhile, the challenge posed to Labour from the left, though a longstanding one, has become more complex.

The success of independent candidates running primarily on pro-Palestine platforms made waves last summer, with five independents winning seats that otherwise looked destined for Labour. But for a margin of just 528 votes, Health Secretary and prominent frontbencher Wes Streeting would have lost his seat to a sixth, while Jess Phillips, a favourite of the Labour right, kept her seat from another independent challenger by fewer than 700 votes.

While the independents who made it to Parliament have formed an Independent Alliance, under the guidance of Jeremy Corbyn, the Green Party has also experienced a moment of relative ascendancy. After picking up three additional parliamentary seats of its own last summer, the party made a net gain of 43 council seats in May’s local elections — taking its total number of councillors to 859 nationwide — and continues to make inroads into traditionally conservative areas of rural England.

With an August leadership election on the horizon, party membership is reported to have surged, reinforcing polling data that suggests a moment of growing popularity for the Greens and their left-wing agenda.

A resurgent Green Party could itself create a dilemma for Labour strategists who would still appreciate the hard-left vote, even if not enough to court it. Those problems will likely be compounded by a new left-wing party, fronted by Corbyn and recently-defected Labour MP Zarah Sultana, whose launch, rumours suggest, is imminent.

At the time of writing, polling indicates that any such party — still without a logo, website, manifesto, or even a name — could command 10% of the vote at a general election, with voters largely coming from Labour and the Greens. Should it be formed with any degree of proficiency, a more visible manifestation of this idea — one that actually exists — could conceivably eat further into those vote shares before the next general election.

Of course proficiency is by no means guaranteed, but the threat is real. Especially if Labour continues to bungle so much of what it does. 

Clumsily delivered lines about migrants and strangers may alienate some of Starmer’s liberal left base, for instance, but they still lack the sufficient rigour, and perhaps even nastiness, to endear him to the anti-immigration hardliners who comprise much of Reform’s target electorate.

And last-minute, hamfisted amendments to welfare reforms may get bills passed, but they still leave a sour taste in the mouth. MPs and members of the public alike found the first incarnation of Labour’s cuts to personal independence payments vulgar. Even after Starmer’s reluctant concessions, many still consider the proposed welfare bill to be unnecessarily punitive.

Likewise, rowing back on cuts to the winter fuel allowance — presently, rumours abound that the two-child benefit cap is destined for a similar fate — will not make voters forget that Labour made those cuts in the first place; the brand is already tainted.

Living standards are falling as the cost of living rises, public services are routinely falling short of acceptable standards, and a sense of malaise and dissatisfaction is plaguing the nation. Whether voters believe the solution to these problems is economic isolationism and increasingly aggressive immigration policies, a broader and more generous welfare state, sweeping increases to public spending, or some combination thereof, there are parties on either side of Labour more synonymous with these ideas.

Moreover, if Chancellor Rachel Reeves is to meet her own fiscal rules, it seems inevitable that she’ll be required to make further spending cuts somewhere — or else be obliged to renege on manifesto pledges not to increase taxes. Having given itself so little fiscal headroom in which to operate, can Labour find the space to make progressive policies that will improve the lives of ordinary people, efface the imprints of its many missteps, and entice an electorate more emboldened by choice than ever to back it at the next election?

Crazier things have happened. And four years is a long time in any walk of life, never mind politics. But, with an increasingly disillusioned society and parties on either flank already in campaign mode, Labour must strive to meet the needs of the nation now, while there is still time for the public to feel the benefit of its endeavours.

A continuation of its first year will take the party nowhere but to the backbenches. In a crowded field, there is no more room for pessimism and perceived ineptitude; the electorate need to believe their lives can and will be better — that they are better, and that this government is to thank for it.

If they don’t, there will be no shortage of alternatives.