Labour’s unpopularity has hit astonishing new depths, barely a year after Sir Keir Starmer swept to power. We were assured the grown-ups were back in charge but that illusion evaporated within days, as Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband started throwing their toys around.
Today, the economy is slowing, spending is spiralling, and the migrant crisis is raging out of control. Voters are losing it as ministers fail to do the basics.
YouGov now puts Labour’s approval rating at minus 56, matching the dying days of Rishi Sunak. A staggering 73% are dissatisfied with Starmer, with just 19% in favour.
No PM has ever recovered from such a dismal low. Perhaps the only thing Britons can agree on in these divisive times is that Starmer simply isn’t up to the job.
Labour has been here before of course. It dragged the country into its darkest post-war days during the 1970s, and voters refused to trust the party for 18 years afterwards.
When Tony Blair and Gordon Brown left the UK exposed to the global financial crash, Labour was banished for another 14. One failed Tory administration followed another, until voters decided Labour couldn’t be any worse. They were wrong.
Starmer was sold as steady and reliable. Instead, he appears detached, evasive and prone to denial. His instinct when confronted with a problem is to pretend it doesn’t exist – or simply to lie.
My bet is that Rachel Reeves will deliver the fatal blow. She’ll bring Labour to its knees by sheer ineptitude as the economy spins out of her grasp.
Every Budget tax hike Reeves imposes this autumn – and there will be plenty – will alienate voters, crush growth and leave the public finances in even deeper disarray.
It could all end in a run on the pound and IMF-style bailout, a humiliation not seen since 1976. Labour won’t survive that. When Starmer is swept from power, his could be the last Labour government we see.
Be warned: what comes next may be even worse.
The Tories have vanished from view, and voters seem to prefer it that way. That leaves Nigel Farage’s Reform as the obvious successor.
Yet Farage knows his own dilemma: he can’t attack the bloated state without hitting many of his own supporters.
On the left, Starmer’s collapse will unleash a cacophony of splinter groups. Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn’s new project, temporarily called “Your Party”, is so chaotic it can’t even decide on its name. Among the online suggestions are “People’s Front of Judea” and “Votey McVoteface”. Whatever emerges will be a bad joke.
There’s also Ed Davey’s virtue-signalling Lib Dems, the Greens, and a string of extremists on both left and right, along with a growing army Islamists and street agitators, all hoping to profit from Britain’s decline. None has any plan to balance the books or rein in the deficit.
For all its incompetence, Labour at least offered a bulwark against far-left chaos. If Starmer destroys his party, that barrier may be gone. We won’t miss Labour, but we won’t enjoy what comes after.
