Keir Starmer Gets His Ass Handed to Him
Britain's center left was badly bruised in yesterday's elections.
Who could have seen it coming? The historic center-left party of government triumphantly elected to replace their discredited center-right rivals—who were in office for over a decade—ends up combusting once in charge of the levers of power. Weakened by the rise of an insurgent left and a nationalist right, the center-left party under the helm of a weak leader ends up bleeding voters election after election, only to stare down the barrel of political extinction.
You’d be forgiven if you thought I was describing Labour’s first two years in office under Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Last night, the country went to the polls in elections to choose local councillors in England and representatives for regional parliaments in Wales and Scotland. And the results for Labour were apocalyptic. The party is set to lose the Senedd, Wales’ parliament, for the first time since it was established in 1999. It is also on track to lose well over 1,000 councillors in England—around half the seats it was defending.
And yet, in painting the portrait of an embattled left-of-center government, I had in mind the demise of the once-dominant Socialist Party of France under President François Hollande. Elected in 2012 to replace the very unpopular Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande came into office with a strong mandate. But his even more unpopular tenure ushered in the rise of La France Insoumise on the far left, the National Rally on the far right, and Emmanuel Macron in the center. Ultimately, Hollande’s presidency led the Socialists into complete political marginalization in a mere five years. To this day, the party remains a shadow of its former self.
Like so many of their continental brethren, the French Socialists discovered that, despite their glorious history, they too are mortals. The British center left, no longer coddled by the electoral comfort of being in opposition, are now brutally coming to grips with that same reality. Labour won a triumphant victory in parliamentary elections in 2024. But Britain’s entrenched structural problems, the difficult tradeoffs the country faces, and Starmer’s hapless leadership sunk Labour to Conservative levels of unpopularity in a mere three months. Last night, the electorate sanctioned them for it.
As the Romans used to say: there is but one step from the Capitol to the Tarpeian rock.
What explains Labour’s spectacular fall? Focus groups highlight the party’s poor leadership, resentment about Britain’s flailing economy, and Starmer’s timid legislative agenda. The prime minister’s decision to appoint the Epstein-tainted Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States—the center of a major scandal in recent weeks—has been damning. Raising taxes by £26 billion in the last budget, despite manifesto promises not to do so, further hurt Starmer’s credibility.
Then there’s immigration. The flow of illegal immigrants crossing the channel in small boats continues, with 2025 having the second highest annual figure on record. The British electorate, more than any other electorate in the world, considers immigration the most important issue the country faces. And even when some metrics trend in the right direction (net migration has decreased substantially over recent years), the damage done by the surge of refugees arriving under Boris Johnson’s premiership in 2021 and 2022—since dubbed the “Boriswave”—continues to inform Britons’ voting habits.
As a result, Labour is bleeding seats in all directions. But so are the Conservatives, leading to a fragmented political landscape much more in line with continental standards.
The so-called “Red Wall” towns—historic working-class Labour heartlands that voted for Brexit in 2016 and swung for Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019—are now turning to Nigel Farage’s right-populist Reform party. Every single council seat up for grabs in the northern city of Hartlepool, for example, has now backed Farage. Across England, around one in three seats up for grabs has been plucked by Reform.
The rise of hard left alternatives has also hurt Labour. Both the Green Party, led by controversial eco-populist Zack Polanski, and so-called “Muslim independents” (or “Gaza independents”) are making serious inroads in left-wing bastions. For these voters, Starmer is resented for not pushing hard enough against Israel’s military interventions in Gaza and Lebanon.
Finally, voters are flocking to the Liberal Democrats as a centrist alternative—and the party is competing with Labour to win the most seats in England after Reform.
The full extent of the gains these alternatives make will crystallize throughout the rest of today. But it’s clear that the results represent a threshold in British politics, pulling it firmly in line with the fragmented political systems in the rest of Europe.
Labour’s 2024 victory, winning a historic 411 seats in Parliament, seems far removed now. But even back then it was clear the party was in danger.
The median majority in each constituency during that election was the lowest since the 1950s—despite the population growing massively since then. In other words, it would only have taken some 100,000 to 200,000 Labour voters deciding not to turn up in key constituencies for the party to have missed out on a majority.
Given that yesterday’s local elections suggest millions of voters are turning their backs on Labour, we can expect the party’s performance in the next general election to be dire.
Across the channel it was the French Socialists’ strong, albeit dwindling, local presence that allowed the party to remain relevant to millions of their countrymen even as they held only a handful of parliamentary seats. Labour has no such comfort. Britain’s electorate was clearly motivated more by national than local issues in this election, which could seriously hamper the ability of the center left to rebuild.
Hollande, meanwhile, benefitted from the power of the French constitution that allowed him to limp through five years as president. Starmer, as prime minister, does not have that luxury. He’s been dodging coups left and right over the last couple of months, and has been aided so far by the amateurishness of Labour’s aspiring Brutuses. But last night’s grueling defeat could lead to his replacement within weeks.
It’s going to take exceptional leadership to turn things around. Otherwise, like so many of its sister parties on the continent, Labour might well become a backbencher of British politics.
François Valentin is a senior consultant at London Politica.
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When writing about a British politician it’s “arse” (not “ass”).
I understand that in some Nordic and Scandinavian countries the liberals are smart enough seeing the immigration problem is going to cook their political goose and allow the right back into power, so they are flipping and flopping to adopt tough on immigration policies that make the Trump immigration enforcement actions look soft and kind. So why are UK, German and French liberals so EUTarded to not do the same? They can see that immigration is cooking their political goose, yet they just double down on their open borders and "Islam is a peaceful religion" narrative while crime continues to explode in their countries.