Starmer's power is propped up on borrowed votes. Here's why I won't be lending mine next time…

Independent

17-05-2025

When Labour is in power, it's customary for the left wing to spend much of its time grousing about how badly it's doing, whereas those on the right have remained staunchly silent about criticism of its leadership, no matter how outwardly deranged.
Where then, to start on Keir Starmer 's Labour, which in its much-touted plans to be the Grown-Ups coming to clear up the British Playroom after the Big Argument, now seems more determined to cosplay as Nigel Farage than to take advantage of its massive majority and put some actual Labour policies in place.
As with many people staggered by the Conservatives' plunge into self-destruction, I did what I could to avoid them getting into power again. I lent my vote to Labour. Unlike many people, my vote made little difference. My constituency, previously Streatham, was Conservative for 74 years until turning resolutely Labour in 1992.
Where Labour should not be complacent is that my vote, as with those of many who embraced tactical voting came from fear. The prospect of another five years of political sleaze made me feel quite unwell. However, I had also hoped that things could only get better, as I dimly remembered from school.
As was the case in 1997 a 2024 vote for Labour was a vote for hope. Yet all I have seen since Labour came to power is shocking. A government whose only inspiration for the British public is repeated epithets about the Conservatives' 14 years in power and the ensuing black hole.
I had hoped for bold steps towards helping the roots of Britain's problems: reinvigorating youth clubs and SureStart centres so young people didn't turn to gangs and online influencers for connection, and supporting parents so future generations felt confident in affording to have children. I'd certainly hoped for appreciation of the workers from abroad who keep our health and care sectors running because successive governments are apparently too miserly to pay their workers properly.
Instead, splendid: three more prisons to be built rather than anything positive to reduce poverty, increase opportunity and reduce reoffending. Well done Labour! This isn't quite "40 new hospitals" territory, but it feels awfully close. A conversation around immigration that is now in its fourth day of focusing on Starmer's inflammatory language and apparent denigration of every migrant in the UK, rather than finding solutions.
Labour has been by no means alone in its inaction on Israel's enforced famine of Gaza, but for a generation raised on Blue Peter coverage of Bosnia and genocide in Rwanda, its silence has said volumes. And it's not just the very young that Labour is alienating, it's millennials and Gen X. Recent decisions on PIP, and disability benefits more widely, have seemed incomprehensible if not downright cruel. Labour seems to be chasing some mythical voter who doesn't exist, rather than listening to those it has.
There is the odd flicker of the positivity and capability so many of us hoped for: its trade deals with the US and India, Ukraine, and how Starmer has stepped up to lead the Coalition of the Willing and support Ukraine. Wes Streeting's immediate deal with the junior doctors was impressive, but his capitulation to the vocal minority on trans healthcare simply baffling. There is arguably little more British than letting people be who they are. And by also denigrating migrants, LGBT+ people, and women – who will inevitably have to pick up the slack when care companies cannot afford to pay for British workers and hike prices accordingly – this feels like a very un-British Labour Party.
Most shamingly of all is the news that the UK's reputation as Europe's leading country on LGBT+ human rights is gone. In 2015, we were top with 86 per cent. This week, we have dropped to 46 per cent – in no small part thanks to baffling white noise nonsense around loos and trans people, which successive polls show Britain at large doesn't care about in the slightest. Nigel Farage and his policy-free pot-stirring – rightly called out by the otherwise ghastly Rupert Lowe, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day – are not where the UK should be heading. Labour has four years until the next general election. Why on earth isn't it promoting forward-thinking policies and communicating to the public with even a modicum of skill? Why isn't it at least trying to make a positive difference to the country's lives, rather than dealing in the populist fear wafting across the ocean from the USA.
As the local elections showed, Reform voters won't be won over by mystifying attempts to out-light blue the light blue. Reform continues to lead Labour in the polls, by five points this week, and eight points last week. A new poll by Survation finds voting intention for Reform at 30 per cent. Meanwhile, those who held their nose for Labour previously are joining the floods heading to the Lib Dems and the Greens.
Reform voters do not want Labour. And there are other parties for Labour votes to join, however much Starmer and his team refuse to believe it. In 2025, the Conservative Party is almost annihilated. Unless the government looks to its voters, whether lifelong or borrowed, by 2029 Labour may join it in the wreckage.