The Labour Party is having a very tough time. After devastating by-election defeats in Chesham and Amersham and especially Hartepool, a former Labour stronghold, as well as managing to secure only a narrow victory in Batley and Spen, a seat which was once comfortably in Labourite hands, the daggers in the Labour Party are beginning to be unsheathed. These daggers are not just coming from the left-wing of the Labour Party, the wing that Starmer has had considerable trouble in keeping in line since his suspension of former Labour leader and left-wing figure Jeremy Corbyn. The Blairite right, too, are preparing for a comeback of their own, if the news about some Blairite figures attempting to convince former Prime Minister Tony Blair to come back into politics is to be believed.
But is the problem of the Labour Party solely to do with Starmer? Or does it run deeper? No matter how deep the Labour Party’s problems lie, it is obvious that Labour is one of the latest victims in the situation of Pasokification, the phenomenon wherein Europe’s social democratic and left-of-centre parties have experienced significant declines in their voting share in the aftermath of the Great Recession, their places taken by parties further on the left (such as Spain) or even those on the radical right (such as what was seen in France or Germany). In many of these parties, the decision to shift their ideological direction in favour of the expanding middle class over their already existing bases in the working and industrial classes — embracing more market-based solutions in place of state interventionism and social democratic economics — is a large factor in why this Pasokification has occured.
Has this happened to the Labour Party? In a sense, yes. Since 2019 and perhaps even earlier, the Labour heartlands in the north of England has been under constant assault from the Conservatives. The 2019 General Election saw the collapse of Labour’s ‘red wall’ — the continuous line of Labour constituencies in the north between Liverpool and Leeds — with most of their sixty losses being from this area. Since then, the Conservatives have only grown their strength in the North, as shown during their victories in the 2021 local elections and their victory in Hartlepool. Polling has also demonstrated that Labour’s support base has fractured in the north of England, with the Conservatives becoming the most popular party in the North East and Wales, both formerly firm Labour territories. In this aspect, Labour’s chances in a future General Election appear to be rather grim.
Labour’s left-wing, the faction most opposed to Keir Starmer’s leadership, cite him as the cause. Labour’s support is collapsing because he has no political platform, they say. It is because of him, they claim, that Labour are losing their old strongholds to the Conservatives. With the former point, they are not entirely wrong; Starmer has no significant platform of his own, in comparison to Corbyn, who had developed a dedicated platform to (re)introduce left social democracy to the United Kingdom. And how could you lead a political party to power if you have no ideology? Their latter point, however, is more questionable. Would Rebecca Long-Bailey, the leadership candidate that was widely seen as ‘continuity Corbyn’, be able to defend Hartlepool successfully? Would she have been able to lead Labour to victory in this year’s local elections? Would the result at Batley and Spen have changed had she been the leader in charge? When attacking Starmer, the Corbynite left tend to forget that it was under their watch that Labour had suffered the greatest defeat since the 1935 General Election, losing tens of seats and handing the Conservatives their strongest majority in Parliament since the days of Margaret Thatcher, allowing Boris Johnson and his barely conservative Conservatives to essentially reconstruct society in their own image.
So what could be the solution to Labour’s decline? Well, re-embracing their social democratic economic platform is an absolute must; not only is it popular amongst the British population, it would also be necessary so that the United Kingdom can move on from a decade of austerity and stagnant living standards. They must, also, broadly adopt a socially progressive agenda as well. After all, Labour is meant to be the party of the workers, no matter their sexual orientation, religion, or origin. At the same time, however, Labour must make sure that they remember who they are meant to represent. As the party of the British workers, Labour must also adopt a platform which is patriotic and pro-British. A major gripe that many have with the Labour Party is that they are seen as a political movement that is anti-British; prioritising the interests of others before British citizens. Without degenerating into innane ‘flag-shagging’, Labour must show the population that they are patriotic through their policies, displaying that they are fighting for all of the British workers and for their social and economic justice.
The last point might be a hard pill to swallow for many Labourites. Whilst it is a noble and correct endeavour to advocate for increased rights for sexual and ethnic minorities, they must not forget that in economic matters, it is ultimately the interests of the classes that comes first. If full social and economic justice is to be achieved, it must be done through the advancement of the entirety of the working and middle classes, not through the liberation of certain groups in those classes. If not, then the current system will continue with all its flaws, no matter how many other discriminated groups are emancipated. And this current system cannot continue.
Why? Because after eleven years of austerity, living standards have completely stagnated. Whilst wages have theoretically risen, net housing income has remained almost the same since the Great Recession, which had ended twelve years ago. As well as this, despite the fanfare, the recent increase of the minimum wage is not enough; the current minimum wage of £8.91 is still considerably lower than the recommended minimum living wage of £9.50 (£10.85 in London). Prior to the Conservative victory in the 2010 election, the number of food banks was in the double figures at the very most, and were basically non-existent prior to the recession. Now, there is approximately 2,100. And that doesn’t include the impact of privatisation of the NHS and public services, or the rise in income inequality. The Conservatives had aimed to ‘regenerate’ this country; instead, they have only furthered its decline.
If Labour is to survive as a significant political party and avoid their seemingly inevitable decline, then they must adopt a solid agenda of societal reconstruction and change. Whilst Starmer had promised to do that in his pledges before becoming leader of the Labour Party, it has not shown in his policies. Provided that he even stays on as leader after the pyrrhic victory in the Batley and Spen election, he must not go back to the days of Blairism and instead continue the work that Corbyn had started, just without his baggage. Starmer (or whoever succeeds him if he steps down) should make a Labour party that wishes to reconstruct society for the better; a Labour party which is both proudly patriotic and socialist in orientation. If not, the Labour Party risks going the way of the Liberals, becoming a moribund political movement as the Conservatives successfully continue winning elections. The old, great Labour Prime Ministers — Attlee or Wilson, for example— were not afraid to be patriotic, economically transformative, and pro-worker. So what’s stopping the modern day Labour Party from following in their footsteps?
