“Nobody is moving me from here,” said Keir Starmer, tying himself with a double sailor’s knot to the chair in his Downing Street office after one of the worst electoral results in Labour’s history (if not the worst), with the loss of power in Wales, half of the councillors he defended in the English local elections, and total abdication in Scotland. He admits the disaster but believes he can fix it with a couple of paracetamols, a colonoscopy, and a visit to the hygienist for a dental cleaning. Uncomfortable interventions but routine and nothing anyone dies from.
The British prime minister had marked May 8 months ago in his calendar as “tsunami day,” when the results of the regional and local elections would be announced, and the hecatomb did not catch him by surprise. His plan is to take advantage of his rivals’ indecision for the throne (none wants to be the first to strike), give one of those speeches full of vague promises and clichés that feed the electorate’s cynicism on Monday, and present his program for the new legislature in Parliament on Wednesday. And for the storm to subside in a few weeks.
With the Labour ship at the mercy of the waves and taking on water everywhere, the question is whether Captain Starmer will achieve his wish to finish the voyage (either by bringing it safely to port or crashing against the rocks), or if the mutinous sailors who keep shouting (a good part of the Labour parliamentary group and union leaders) manage to have someone tie him to the mainmast and another take the helm. It’s not easy, but behind the scenes party barons are trying to persuade the prime minister to set himself an expiration date (as Tony Blair did under pressure from Gordon Brown), and announce that he will step down before the next general elections allowing an orderly succession process.
That the process would be orderly is largely a chimera, because Nigel Farage (far-right), the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats, and the Greens would demand general elections the moment Starmer said he was leaving so that the new leader of the country would have the legitimacy of the polls. On the other hand, Wes Streeting (Health Minister) and Angela Rayner (former deputy prime minister) are interested in the succession war taking place before Andy Burnham (the Mayor of Manchester) has a seat in the Commons and can challenge them for the throne.
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As soon as the vote count began in Wales, Labour admitted defeat and an apocalyptic result, which will leave it in third place, behind the far-right (Reform) and the nationalists (Plaid Cymru), who will likely lead the government. Things have not gone much better for Starmer in Scotland, with the SNP proclaiming a clear victory that will bring it closer to an absolute majority in Holyrood. Given that Sinn Fein is in charge in Belfast, three of the four countries that make up the United Kingdom will have nationalist executives, in a clear rejection of Jacobin centralism.
In the English local elections with more than half of the districts declared, Labour is on track to lose about half of the councillors it defended, mainly to Reform (which has captured around 26% of the votes), but also to the Greens (who have won their first mayoralty in the London borough of Hackney). Working-class towns in the north of the country like Hartlepool or Blackburn have for the first time in history fallen into the arms of the far-right. They are the same voters who believed in Brexit and were seduced by Boris Johnson.
Starmer tries to overcome his health crisis with cosmetic surgery and a root canal treatment. But doctors do not agree on the nature of his illness. Some diagnose heart failure (he has gone too far to the right on issues like immigration), others a pancreatic disease (lack of vision and ideology), some recommend he see an oncologist to see if the chronic loss of working-class voters is due to a benign or malignant tumor. But the prime minister ignores them, making it clear that he will only leave Downing Street in a straitjacket.
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