Three figures on the left give personal assessments of the state of Starmer’s Labour

Andrew Murray, former advisor to Jeremy Corbyn and author of Is socialism possible in Britain?

Can Labour form a government? It should be a fantastic question. After thirteen years of Tory government marked by crippling austerity, real-wage stagnation, a cruelly mishandled pandemic, endless and pointless culture wars and a cost of living crisis, Labour ought to be a shoo-in.

Yet the local election results seem like accentuating the question mark. Yes, Labour has made some gains from the Tories and won control of councils from Medway in Kent to Plymouth to Stoke.

But look at the details. The Liberal Democrats and the Greens have also made significant advances at the Conservatives’ expense, speaking to a growing part of the electorate sick of the government but unconvinced by the official opposition.

As this is being written, Labour has gained a net 330 seats – but the Lib Dems have won 237 and the Greens have secured 115, more than one third as many as Labour.

And here’s the killer – the BBC projection of national share of the vote if the results are extrapolated nationwide put Labour on just 35%. That is far less than some of the excitable polling figures recorded in the last few months. Sky News have a very similar prediction.

It is nine per cent ahead of the Tories, true. But that is not a gap that, a year or more out from an actual general election, will look that discouraging for the government.

Most relevantly, that 35% is only three per cent up on the figure Labour secured in 2019, and more than five per cent down on Corbyn-led Labour’s achievement in 2017, registered against a tornado of media abuse which, of course, Starmer has been spared.

Those figures, if replicated in a general election, would doubtless leave Labour as the largest single party in the Commons.  But they would likely not allow the formation of a majority Labour government.

So a three per cent increase is all Starmer has to show for his relentless attack on the left, his authoritarian party management, his abandonment of almost every policy on which he sought election as Labour Leader, his persecution of Jeremy Corbyn and his prostration before Nato and the British state.

This lukewarm performance is scarcely surprising.  What, after all, was his last-minute message to voters on the eve of the local ballots?  It was that a Labour government would not scrap tuition fees, a policy he had once upon a time been committed to. Way to get young people to the polls, Keir.

Starmer has now denuded Labour of every positive offer other than superior managerial competence. That may have seemed a trump card up against Boris Johnson’s administration, a carnivalesque camarilla of the corrupt, or against the rolling-eyed fanaticism of Liz Truss and her Hayek-or-death punt on last-gasp neoliberalism.

Yet Rishi Sunak can play sober straight man in a suit as well as Sir Keir, who has resorted to rather desperate and, indeed, racist personalised attack ads against the Prime Minister.

That leaves Starmer rifling through the New Labour play book for ideas to borrow. He has come up with Blairism without the charisma and conviction of the original pre-1997 model. Starmer has now been relaunched as many times as Frank Sinatra retired, with nothing to show for it.

Many left-wing voters are clearly turning to the Greens and, in Scotland, it may well prove to be that reports of the SNP’s demise are at least premature. Starmerism is at very least short of wind.

For the left in Labour this should mean renewed activity to defend democracy in the Party and promote the Corbyn-era policy approach. Speaking out against Britain’s role in the Ukraine conflict would be more than helpful too. Inside or outside Labour there is no point in the left disappearing down a rabbit hole of parliamentary speculation at present. Supporting the strike wave until victory and rebuilding a mass anti-war movement are the priorities.

The Corbyn experience has underlined once more that parliamentary socialism is a dead end, its utility mainly confined to assisting in the creation of a mass movement that can really confront the system in the communities and the workplaces. 

We have learned that a left leadership in parliament without a powerful movement outside is sure to be overwhelmed. On the other hand, a mass industrial and people’s movement of the sort now developing can, if it finds a coherent political expression, at least give the ruling class a run for its money.

Terina Hine, anti-war activist and former secretary of Cities of London & Westminster CLP

Corbynism was an extraordinary moment for the whole of the left. Peo­ple shouldn’t be surprised at the depth and extent of its fallout. It frightened the ruling class and the pushback has been brutal.

It is not just the terrible attacks on democracy, but the Labour Party is being dramatically pushed to the right. Sport pundits have a better posi­tion on the refugee crisis than Labour. Starmer has already floated further NHS privatisation as a future Labour policy.

Labour’s foreign-policy positions have almost always been bad, but there has never been a time before when MPs are simply not allowed to be allowed to be anti-war.

People need to realise that the Cor­byn moment has gone and the Labour apparatus is ensuring it can never return. Labour’s commitment to run­ning capitalism is being reasserted.

Meanwhile we are in the midst of a social crisis defined by food banks, corporate super-profits and the re-emergence of fascist groups. We have to accept that a political pro­ject solely focussed on parliamentary change is not going to be up to the task.

We cannot continue to focus on internal Labour battles. The left needs to look outwards, to push for extend­ing the strikes, building mass resist­ance on the ground, and committing to the anti-war movement.

Corbynism tapped into the fact that large numbers of people are to the left of anything in the mainstream. That remains true, but 2023 isn’t 2016. What we need now is a general­ised movement against the Tories.

If Jeremy Corbyn stands as an independent, we should back him, but that should be framed in a wider strat­egy that recognises the primacy of a militant working class striking for the first time in decades. That has never been Labour’s role.

There is an urgency to the current situation and the stakes are very high. ‘Vote Labour – because we are not as bad as the Tories’ simply doesn’t cut it, we need a fighting left that can channel working people’s anger.

Mona Kamal, Labour Councillor in Kensington and Chelsea

Starmer is signalling to the establishment that he is a safe pair of hands ready to serve in their interests even if this means standing counter to the demands and wishes of both members of the party and of the wider electorate who are actually hungry for more radical policies. A prime example of this is the reneging on election pledges to renationalise public services despite a majority of the UK public supporting public ownership of key utilities like energy and water. Likewise there is overwhelming support for the renationalisation of the NHS and yet Starmer has signalled that his party in power will enable even more private sector involvement albeit at a slower pace.

He promised wealth redistribution through increased corporation tax which he has now said he will not pursue. This is a measure crucial to addressing the soaring inequality and record profiteering as millions experience hardship but the priority for the Labour leadership is to reassure big business and their shareholders that they will never again need to fear the threat of Jeremy Corbyn’s radicalism, as popular as it was.

 One of the real problems with this approach is that it plays into the cynicism that many rightly have about politicians. He has already scrapped his promises on migrants’ rights, on rights at work and on and public ownership. If he cannot be trusted by his own membership why then would he have the trust of the wider electorate?

What is especially frustrating is that he could be using his considerable lead in the opinion polls to propose radical alternatives which we know have popular support and would clearly be in the interests of ordinary working people in the midst of a cost of living crisis. Instead he is doubling down on the culture wars, and trying to outdo the racism of the Tories with an even more reactionary stance on immigration. 

People in the party are feeling very alienated by the leadership. In my constituency of Kensington and Chelsea basic democratic norms have been abandoned with London region imposing longlists for candidates and the local party not being adequately consulted.

Starmer has been particularly backward on the issue of Palestine. Time and time again the membership of the party in recent years has stood solidly with the Palestinian people. Starmer’s refusal to recognise Amnesty International’s findings on Israeli apartheid and instead doubling down with his announcement of “support for Zionism without qualifications” isn’t just a betrayal of Palestinians – it shows a readiness to disregard the human rights of certain groups if it will benefit his career. 

Even in the context of unprecedented escalation by an extreme far right Israeli government which enacts deadly violence, land theft and racist discrimination against Palestinian communities, Starmer has demonstrated that he has zero tolerance for any criticism of Israel even when such criticism is in accordance with international law. This situation has also been enabled by the party’s adoption of the IHRA definition and unwillingness to make the argument that criticism of apartheid in Israel or defence of the rights of Palestinians does not equal anti-Semitism (some allegations of which have indeed been levelled in bad faith for political purposes). 

I joined Labour as an affiliate member to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in 2015 and joined fully when he became leader like so many others. As a Councillor my priority is serving the community that elected me but my political values and ideals align with those of Jeremy Corbyn not those of the party’s current leadership. His treatment by Starmer has been malicious and anti-democratic and Starmer himself is taking Labour backwards to a time when all they offered was a pale imitation of the Conservatives.

Note: A previous version of this article contained incorrect text attributed to Mona Kamal