In Memoriam: Britain’s Labour Party

One hundred and twenty-six years ago, the United Kingdom’s Labour Party was founded as a committee meant to represent Britain’s emerging socialist and working-class movements. At the time, Labour’s existence as a class-conscious project was a radical attempt by working people, trade unions, and sympathetic professionals to break through the country’s rigid party system and its excesses. The committee, rather than an aberration, was instead the inevitable result of a country spiraling toward crisis with no party at the helm ready to address its root causes.

This corrupt system had delivered rulings slanted toward capital and against workers. Unions were expected to compensate their employers for money lost during active strikes; wages did not often keep up with the cost of living or even the most basic goods; housing was crowded and in poor condition; and social mobility was often limited severely by class or title.

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It was, for all intents and purposes, a strained and starkly class-based society, and Labour fundamentally recognized this and represented a break from previous norms and expectations. A new paradigm was offered to the millions who had no voice in politics or industry, and people grew to adopt the vision. By the middle of the 20th century, these principles found themselves not only becoming cemented nationally, but also leading Britain into its postwar era of prosperity.

Over a century later, however, the same cannot be argued for Labour and its vision. The party’s left-socialist roots are no longer tended to, nor are its previous connections to union militancy and working-class solidarity offered as a potential solution to the country’s current woes. Instead, under the leadership of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Labour has become something of a corpse, an empty vessel carrying forth a message that has been dead and buried for well over a decade. The party’s contradictions have now finally begun to corrode its legitimacy, eating away at its voter share and base of support as an acid dissolves through metal.

And this growing reality has begun to show up electorally. On February 26, the Gorton and Denton constituency (legislative district) held an election to replace its former member in the House of Commons (Britain’s legislature). The election was a contentious one, with Labour trying to remain neck and neck with two emerging populist parties gunning for Labour’s share of voters. In the end, Labour lost the election overwhelmingly, and by the early morning of February 27, Labour’s descent into obscurity was all but confirmed. For many Britons, what was once a symbol of working-class power and change has now been laid to rest, put out of its misery by a population frustrated with decades of injustice and inaction.

Starmerism’s Technocratic Ploy

Keir Starmer’s election to Downing Street in 2024 was hailed by the media as a breathtaking and generation-defining moment for British politics. Over a decade of Tory leadership and austerity was finally being ended by a reinvigorated Labour Party with one of the largest political mandates in recent memory. Gone were the days of Jeremy Corbyn’s radicalism. Now, with adults in the room, sane and sensible governance was slated to return alongside booming growth, reduced inequality, and a safer and stronger Britain.

Almost immediately, this view of Labour collapsed. Newly appointed Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s first major speech detailed an environment of harsh choices and limited budgetary measures. Cuts to social services and other programs were pronounced as likely, and all to achieve what was labeled as “the essential precondition for business to invest with confidence and families to plan for the future.”

Winter fuel payments to seniors making less than £35,000 were cut, with party leadership citing a need to repair public finances. Taxes on wealthy earners would stay the same, as would taxes on corporations. The gargantuan amounts of wealth that had been accrued in the financial system since the bailouts of 2008 also went untaxed. Disability benefits, welfare payments, and government agencies were soon all on the chopping block as well, with billions of pounds being sucked away from vital services in the name of fiscal balancing.

The party’s left-socialist roots are no longer tended to, nor are its previous connections to union militancy and working-class solidarity offered as a potential solution to the country’s current woes.

The two-child benefit cap, until very recently, remained in place, despite the fact that scrapping the policy would result in around 300,000 children being lifted from poverty. Labour MPs who originally voted for the scrap, and against Starmer, wound up being suspended by leadership despite his eventual turnaround. International aid was also cut as billions were drawn from programs that mitigated poverty, protected women and children, and helped to ensure access to clean drinking water. According to Labour, the justification for the cuts was to ensure further increases to defense. After all, money was tight, growth was anemic, and the only solution was thus to cut and reorient public funds around a new kind of economy built on defense and solid private investment. Others were skeptical.

Cuts to welfare were meant to put people back to work and create an entrepreneurial spirit; government consolidation and the firing of tens of thousands of civil servants was intended to instill efficiency and mimic Javier Milei’s “energy but with a radical centre-left purpose”; even increases to bus fares and other small fees were all framed as necessary in order to beget greater financial security. Meanwhile, while all of this confidence-building was occurring, the actual British public, far away from Labour’s internal projections, was beginning to respond earnestly, and with much disdain.

As public anger grew, Labour’s responses only became more wishy-washy and warped. Starmer attempted to regain ground by running to the right on immigration and crime, signaling his belief that Britain was supposedly becoming an “island of strangers.” Labour also found itself responding to various scandals caused by “freebies,” or private gifts given to Labour members by donors and celebrities. Starmer himself failed to disclose a £20,000 donation that was meant to assist his son with “accommodation costs” for his school exams. He has also failed to elaborate on how he had received over £100,000 worth of gifts since 2019, more than two and a half times the average MP.

Fourteen Labour MPs, alongside Starmer, received free tickets and expensive hospitality packages for a Taylor Swift concert. Starmer’s family even got to meet privately with Swift following her taxpayer-funded police escort to the venue. Donations, tickets, and clothes flowed to Starmer and party leadership hurriedly, and while of course none of this was illegal, it didn’t exactly help buttress the party’s image as it was actively backing cuts to public services and heating assistance.

In its totality, Starmer’s premiership has been littered with half-hearted attempts at reform, painful cuts, and limitless devotion to technocratic intervention. Ensuring public finances and wonk-filled budgets has supplanted any commitment to expanded programs or labor power. Local councils have been left to fend for themselves, with many having to resort to closing libraries, ending youth programs, and cutting local public services just to barely cover their losses. Reforms to the National Health Service meant to expand efficiency have so far had marginal results, with past austerity measures still causing lagging programs despite technical changes and cuts.

More than anything, Starmer’s faith in technocratic policymaking has led to a government that is devoted to putting out a house fire with a glass of water. Change is granular, gradual, and often unnoticeable, and has thus failed to address the true scale of the crisis at hand. Decades of austerity, stagnation, and lopsided growth have delivered a Britain struggling from a myriad of structural problems that are boiling to the surface. There is no simple or wonky quick fix to this problem.

Growth has not come despite sound budgets; government services haven’t witnessed precipitous increases in productivity despite cuts and consolidation; and workers haven’t seen stable employment or higher wages despite new incentives to work and leave welfare. Tweaks to the system have all fallen flat because the system is no longer capable of sustaining itself. No external shock or master of technocracy will resuscitate a system unable to equitably grow or solve its own contradictions. Substantial paradigm shifts, the likes of which helped Britain emerge from both depression and war, are necessary, but Labour seemingly has no appetite for this. The party is essentially stuck, caught trying to maintain a sinking ship that is causing it to eschew all previously held principles and commitments.

Through shifts to the right, overt left-bashing, and overtures to technocratic performance politics, Starmer has attempted to construct a political project devoted to delegitimizing his two closest opponents and maintaining his party’s hold on the center. To Starmer’s left stands the Greens, an eco-populist party that has gained massively in the polls over the last year under its new leader, Zack Polanski. Economically and socially, it is left-wing, and the party has found a growing share of support among Britain’s young and urban professionals. To Starmer’s right stands Reform UK, a right-wing party led by one of Britain’s most outspoken politicians, Nigel Farage. Farage’s message and personality are already well known, and have likely helped shift segments of the population to hard-right positions on immigration, economics, and culture.

Under Starmer’s direction, Labour has framed the Greens as the party of legal drugs and crime, and Reform as the party of hard-right radicalism and instability. Labour from this standpoint is the only party that can prevent radicalism from taking over Britain. For Starmer, his last-ditch effort has been fighting to ensure that Labour is seen as the party of sensible fiscal policy and pragmatic moderation. So far, the message effectiveness has indeed been lacking.

Ultimately, the Labour Party has been converted into a technical machine dishing out half measures and tepid reforms that fail to solve structural problems. Politically, the party finds itself facing apocalyptic conditions from both the left and right. And after last week’s by-election result, it’s not unreasonable to assume that things will only get worse.

The Party Is Dead

The Gorton and Denton by-election cemented a shift in British politics that has been slowly emerging over the past year. Labour’s vote share in the election fell 25.3 percent, one of the largest declines since World War II. The seat, which in 2024 was won easily by Labour, has been considered a safe and sound seat for years. But despite these perceptions, and despite segments of Labour leadership holding out hope for some kind of last-minute surge, the results all but destroyed the party’s ability to hide under the covers any further. There is, in fact, a new alternative.

Labour came in third behind Reform and the victorious Greens. The Greens candidate, Hannah Spencer, a plumber by trade, ran an unapologetic left-populist campaign that drew on her local working-class roots. She did not pivot, nor did she run to the right on social and cultural issues. She instead ran against big business, the wealthy, and working-class alienation. She talked about the pains felt in her community, about feelings of marginalization and resentment. Most crucially, she talked about the importance of small-l labor, and how hard work should be able to deliver the basic necessities of life.

Ten years ago, Spencer would have been a Labour candidate, but today this is no longer the case. The Greens ran to Labour’s left and benefited. Reform has run further right and has all but destroyed the Tories and gobbled up the conservative bloc. Britain’s party system is fragmenting in real time, and Labour is now left trying to patch up an order that is no longer viable. Status quo maintenance and the tranquilizing drug of gradualism have killed Labour’s appeal and political purpose. Starmer, in less than two years, has killed the Labour Party and its status as a political vehicle for change.

The implications of this election are substantial. The Greens will gain more momentum and likely garner more of Britain’s left bloc. Reform, after achieving one of its strongest by-election showings, will also gain. As for Starmer, his premiership is going to face growing calls of dissent. MPs in formerly safe seats are going to see blood in the water as their direct political interests are endangered. Expect growing calls by party regulars to shift leftward.

Even today, Starmer has already tried to mitigate the situation by accusing the Greens of embracing a “divisive, sectarian” kind of politics that is both extreme and dangerous. Both he and Labour leadership are seemingly doubling down on framing the Greens as radicals who will be unable to replicate their victories nationally. Punching left is not likely to work, and as last week’s election has already shown, Labour’s rhetoric is increasingly failing to match reality. Labour lost a seat they have held for almost a century, and the final result wasn’t even close. If replicated across the country, as it likely will be by Greens leader Polanski, the results will not be in Labour’s favor.