Labour Crisis: Will Starmer Resign Or Be Challenged?
Chesham and Amersham has been a safe Tory seat since the constituency was created in 1974. The seat is a remain constituency, 55% of constituents voted to remain in the EU. Labour won its highest number of votes in the constituency in 2017, when it won 11,374 votes and increased its vote share by 7.9% under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
In this week’s by-election for the seat Keir Starmer won just 622 votes, lost Labour’s deposit and recorded the worst by-election defeat in the history of the Labour Party.
Why did the Labour vote collapse?
How can such a large drop in Labour’s support be explained? Starmer’s supporters claim the result was due to tactical voting. While tactical voting will have played a part in the result, the Green Party’s vote share did not collapse, so tactical voting alone cannot explain why Labour won just 1.6% of the vote.
Starmer’s supporters use a similar argument to defend Labour’s poor national polling. They claim the reason Labour is doing so badly is because the Tories are benefiting from a vaccine bounce. However, as Labour is the only party losing vote share it seems to be more of an ‘everyone but Labour bounce’ rather than an exclusively Tory bounce.
A question which arises from the claim that the result was due to tactical voting is why were the Liberal Democrats the beneficiaries of strategic voting? In 2017 Labour was in second place to the Tories and increased its vote share in the seat by 7.9%. How did the Liberal Democrats overtake Labour between 2017 and 2019?
Labour won more votes in 2017 when it supported Brexit than it did in 2019 when Starmer insisted the party try to stop Brexit. That statistic undermines the argument that the second referendum made Labour more popular in remain constituencies. Labour won 40% of the vote at the 2017 general election, it follows that most remainers must have been happy enough with Labour’s 2017 position of respecting the referendum result to vote for the party.
Starmer's strategy
Chesham and Amersham was a favourable environment for Keir Starmer to test his electoral strategy of appealing to Tory voters. Since becoming Labour leader in 2020 he has tirelessly tried to appeal to exactly the type of Tories who live in Chesham and Amersham. He also had the electoral advantage that while the constituency was a safe Tory seat, the majority of its constituents voted to remain in the EU. In theory, Starmer’s role as the champion of remain should have yielded an electoral dividend for Labour.
Despite all these factors in Starmer’s favour he won just 1.6% of the vote. If Jeremy Corbyn had won just 1.6% of the vote in a parliamentary by-election he would have been forced to immediately resign. Corbyn won 32% of the national vote and still had to resign. Starmer appears to be receiving special treatment from both the media and from the Labour MPs who hounded Corbyn out when he was performing far, far better than his successor.
Keir Starmer’s electoral strategy was tested to destruction at the Chesham and Amersham by-election and imploded when it came into contact with political reality. Following the loss of Hartlepool, the catastrophic result at Chesham and Amersham and the predicted loss of Batley and Spen, it is safe to conclude that if Labour continues to pursue Starmer’s failed strategy it will not win the next general election.
Starmer's polling
According to the polls, Starmer is now more unpopular than Labour. In one recent poll only 24% of people thought he has what it takes to be prime minister. His unpopularity is now beginning to impact on Labour’s electability. Keir Starmer appears to both depress the Labour vote and harden the Tory vote, a toxic electoral combination for Labour.
I believe the Chesham and Amersham result demonstrates the potential scale of the electoral damage Keir Starmer is capable of inflicting on the Labour party. The question Labour MPs must urgently ask themselves is whether the cost of Keir Starmer’s ambition is a price they are willing to pay with their seats.
The current consensus among political commentators is that if Starmer loses the forthcoming Batley and Spen by-election he will be forced to resign. Governments have lost just two by-elections in the last 50 years, if Starmer loses two by-elections in two months it will not be viable for him to continue as Labour leader.
His authority as leader ultimately depends on whether the party believes he can lead Labour to power. Having lost Hartlepool and recorded the worst by-election defeat in Labour’s history, if Starmer loses Batley and Spen he cannot credibly argue he will be the next prime minister of the UK. Taking into account all the available evidence, that is simply not a plausible proposition.
Will Starmer resign or will he be challenged?
Starmer may not want to stand down but if he is forced to resign it will radically change the possibilities of who his successor will be. Labour rules state that to make a challenge against a sitting leader a challenger requires nominations from 20% of Labour MPs. Candidates who meet the nominations threshold then appear on the leadership ballot alongside the incumbent, who is automatically included on the ballot.
However, if a sitting Labour leader resigns then a leadership contest is automatically triggered and the threshold for nominations drops to 10%. If that happens it will change everything. If Starmer resigns it will allow a left-wing challenger to stand in the leadership contest. If the left unites behind that left-wing challenger they will have an excellent chance of winning the contest and recapturing Labour from the right wing.
It is time for Labour to return to the principles and values the party was founded upon. It is time for Labour to return to representing the interests of the working class instead of the interests of well off, middle class liberals and centrists. They already have two parties to represent their interests, the Liberal Democrats and the Tories.
The people of the UK neither need nor deserve another right-wing party. They want the option of voting for a left-wing party, they want a political choice at the ballot box.
The most important and urgent question facing the Labour Party today is this: who is going to replace Keir Starmer as leader? I believe that question remains open. It is up to the left wing to provide the answer.
@damian_from
The problem is, in order to have the 10% threshold in place, thus ensuring the possibility of a left wing candidate on the leadership slate, Starmer has to resign...he will not resign, because he, and his ilk, do NOT want a left wing leadership candidate on the slate...they made that mistake in 2015 with Corbyn...and they're not going to do it again.
ReplyDeleteHe sounds like Mr Bean, except Mr Bean would have a better chance of winning a GE.
ReplyDeleteI left my membership of the LP when I realised that the plastic shiney one was not a democrat but a Tory.
ReplyDeleteStarmer is of course to the right within labour, he liked and backed Blair, and now he's again employing Blair's back room people, in the hope of getting voters to back him.
ReplyDeleteI decided to leave labour after the last election, to be honest I cannot see the point any more. We have a Tory party, why would you want to vote in another party which is to the right.
Resignation? No! Sacked? YES!
ReplyDelete