The Labour Party is less popular than smallpox - but it shouldn’t roll the dice on a new leader

Winds bashing against the trees. Gusts making leaves engage in a frivolous, frantic dance. Sheets of rain hurling towards panes and pavements. Oceans overflowing rubber dinghies and the people protesting against them.

This is not another article about the so-called ‘beast from the east’, or how January weather makes me yearn for the heat sinners have in hell. No. This is about Keir Starmer’s leadership.

Just like the gloomy weather taking January by storm, his leadership is being persistently wounded - trounced even - by wibbles and wobbles.

Near the end of 2024, his net favourability rating was -41%. Arguably, this was already bad enough. It was already veering towards the lowest lows of Liz Truss' short-lived premiership after she crashed the economy and clobbered the pound, and it was edging ever so closer to Boris Johnson's ratings during the height of the 'Partygate' crises. Yet avid Starmer supporters claimed that his leadership wasn't troubled by the very systemic problems that brought both of those leaders down. Supporters such as Andrew Marr claimed that the 'adults were back in the room'. They claimed that Keir Starmer and the Labour party just had to get on with the job of governing, and prove to the electorate that they hadn't just bought the wrong flavour of government.. Yet a whole year later, arguably a whole lot of time to jump-start the engines of 'change', that net favourability rating dropped to -54%.

That means that, on average, he isn't just disliked. It's actually more accurate to say that no one likes Starmer, than to say people like him. Arguably, it's also accurate to say that voters resent less zits or great plagues like smallpox, than the amount they dislike Keir Starmer.

Even more, if you decided to spend your day fielding in a pub or a park, pestering people about politics and ruining moods, on average, only two people out of ten would say they were 'favourable' of Starmer's leadership. Two out of ten. These aren't just low numbers. These are statistical anomalies.

But, ultimately, this downward trend hasn't been the result of some unspoken phenomenon sweeping large parts of the UK - magically turning Brits against their leader. Rather, his unpopularity has been the result of two structural failures eating away at his legitimacy, likability and leadership.

For one, Number 10 Downing Street can't communicate. Seriously. They can't communicate to save their lives. Each major announcement and press briefing spawns a hundred different problems. Each speech raises more questions than answers. Each time Keir Starmer speaks, his tenuous grasp on power slips ever further.

Take the briefings late last year that centred around Wes Streeting. Sources inside No. 10 claimed that Wes could launch a coup d'état on Starmer's leadership position. Indeed, his polling numbers had already been falling since the near end of 2024. You'd think then that perhaps Wes was making moves? Perhaps he saw Starmer vulnerable to opposition. But this was not the case. Indeed, these briefings were apparently made to protect the Prime Minister from a possible coup. Yes. You're right to think this was, and is literal insanity.

This didn't protect the Prime Minister though. This instead opened up the opportunity of a challenge, rather than preventing it. It also made the Prime Minister look weak: unable to halt the infighting within his own party, despite the fact that such infighting had not occurred. Although, this interpretation can be flipped on its side when you realise that these briefings did more to display the infighting within cabinet than not.

This is just one example that properly exemplifies the failures around communication in No. 10. Indeed, there is an abundance of examples. One after the other, these frustrations give way to doubt over the trueness of the claim that the 'adults are in the room'.

Nonetheless, this is not the only structural failure that is hampering this government. After all, I said there were two.

Indeed then, after a simple process of elimination, you may see where I am heading with this.

Starmer, the government, and the wider Labour party have failed to improve the electorate's living conditions. Under the last government's watch, incomes declined for the first time since records began. Not only that, but energy bills, food prices, rail fares (other means of calculating living standards) ballooned during their time in office. Thus, this paved the way for Starmer's headline promise during the 2024 General Election: 'change'.

'Change' to the British economy so that it works for 'working people'. 'Change' to how the government approaches issues within the public sector, ensuring that services such as the NHS, schools, and social care work for those who rely on them.

But this has not happened.

Inflation is still above the 2% target. Energy prices have not nudged. And the NHS' recent winter crisis was one of the worst on record. Although I can't sit here and say that the Labour Party - by an 'act of God' - suddenly invented a new strain of the flu that subsequently crippled the NHS, we can argue that these crises have been compounded by the government's failure to deal with pay disputes.

From the 17th of December to the 22nd of December, resident doctors (formerly known as 'junior doctors') took to the picket lines after having already been given an eye-watering 22% pay rise by the government. This act didn't speak of the union's moderation, but its tyranny, and mafia-like strategy: taking the government by its knees at the height of the winter crisis.

The government could've responded. It could've used minimum service legislation to halt the strikes. The government could've said 'enough is enough' - indicating to the BMA that there was no more lee-way, no more change to whack out of the government's pockets, and end the strike. But it didn't.

This made the government look weak. Most people didn't suddenly get a 22% pay rise last year - but junior doctors did - yet they wanted more?

It broke its promise to the electorate to end strikes. After the pay rise, one could've seen hope from fellow Starmerites - that the 'adults were back in the room' - and that governments were done betraying the electorate's trust. Arguably, you'd have probably been sensible to do so, because a 22% pay rise is, after all, a 22% pay rise. But the government's generosity gave way to further bargaining.

This theme - of failure - is a recurring theme of this government. But it's not the only one.

After all, it has amassed a great big catalogue of u-turns over the past year-and-a-half.

For one, it 'u-turned' on the two-child benefit cap. It also 'u-turned' on the plans to change taxes agricultural land. And it didn't go ahead with Digital ID plans because, you guessed it, the government 'u-turned'.

Although u-turns can be a good thing, showing the flexibility of the government's legislative agenda, a successive bunch of them are not. They are a sign of inadequacy, of weakness. It doesn't help then that the government hasn't 'changed' much of anything at all, except its positions.

Yet.

Let's be clear: I didn't vote for Starmer at the last election despite the fact he was my sitting MP. I told all the people within my social circle to 'go another way' - to quote: 'vote for anything other than him and what he stands for'.

To this day, I stand by that.

I don't believe 'Starmerism' works. If you want to halt extreme radicalism and populism from the likes of individuals such as Nigel Farage, why would you do so by presiding other incredible inaction, or even worse, chasing them.

But I share a belief with Starmerites.

The Labour Party cannot change leader now.

We were told the 'adults were back in the room'. Although inaction can show that, and although communication failures can make the government seem inadequate and irresponsible, this is arguably not the most important reason for which to accuse the 'adults' of having 'left the room'.

Under the Conservative's long-tenure, we didn't have Prime Ministers. We had caretakers. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak. Most of these figures got the boot from their own party, rather than the electorate.

This is, ultimately, what is so important. The one unique selling point Labour clearly, and unequivocally had during the election, was the stability of its own programme. Sure, as I've mentioned, combative briefings look bad.

But you know what looks worse? A Prime Minister being defeated by a literal lettuce.

That is why claims of Andy Burnham seeking the top job are so damaging.

Love him or loathe him, if he were to seek a leadership contest, he would be doing greater damage to the Labour Party than any u-turn, policy failure, or communication inadequacy could ever cause. Ever.

Sure, the 'King of the North', as he's called, has done a rather good job during his tenure. Manchester has single-handedly carried UK growth, having the highest economic growth rate out of any major UK city. The birthplace of Oasis and The Smiths is now the UK's economic miracle. But that doesn't just mean the mayor of it should be - or should be trying to be leading the country.

If he stood in for Labour at the Gorton and Denton by-election, which will occur during the next eight-to-ten weeks (given that its MP has stood down on 'medical grounds'), all hell would break loose.

Seriously. Could you imagine what would unfold? The man that has been involved in two leadership elections, and has actively said he wants the top job, wouldn't just be campaigning for a seat. He'd be out for blood! And this would all be occurring like a car-crash in slow-motion, with eight to ten weeks reserved for the slurs, insults, and an abundance of media questions like: "Do you want the top job, Andy?"; "What do you say to Starmer now that you're campaigning for his job?"; "When will you be launching your leadership bid?".

Don't forget that No. 10's briefings already drew the lines in which a contest could be fought, which is why I couldn't imagine Streeting, or other figureheads of the Blue Labour movement, standing idle by either.

This is why the 'King of the North' needs to settle with the jewels of Manchester, and the mayoralty that he holds. He needs to continue progressing with his agenda of 'Business Socialism'. Because otherwise, with a brutal contest such as this, Labour wouldn't just have an unpopular leader, but it would be an unpopular party, paving the way for a Parliament subject to Reform-rule.

But it also can't be complacent. The government needs to just get things right, as ignorant as that sounds. Yes, u-turns can look good, but the electorate doesn't give moral credit for backtracking on an idea that was already unpopular as it was. The government also needs to challenge the underlying problems that we are currently facing - rather than putting out fires such as the endless BMA strikes.

But most importantly, it needs to tell a story, a vision. Labour won in 1945 because it told a bold vision: a cradle-to-grave healthcare system, post-war recovery. Labour won in 1997 because it told a vision: "New Labour, New Britain". Thus, if Labour wants a popular leader, it ought not to look for a new one, but shape the current one into a figurehead. It needs to tell its vision for the years to come - the result of concrete policy not wavering to public pressure, and the result of proper communication.