A fervid summer lies ahead for Britain’s political parties. Freed from the dull procedures of Parliament by a long hazy recess, MPs and their staff can get down to the serious business of knifing factional enemies. For the past decade, the two main parties have endured summers of instability and speculation over leadership — part of the deeper destabilisation of a once unflappable political system. Even Reform is not immune, as demonstrated by Zia Yusuf’s antics last week. It is Labour’s internal disquiet, however, which spells the most trouble. All sides of the Party sense Keir Starmer’s weakness, but it is perhaps the soft-Left faction which has the best claim on Labour’s future.
Starmer is unlikely to be deposed just yet. His team is clinging to the Hamilton by-election result, where surging Reform gobbled up SNP support to allow Labour to clinch an unexpected win. This may steady the nerves of his supporters for now. But their relief will be short-lived. The much-delayed spending review is finally due tomorrow, when hapless Chancellor Rachel Reeves, who promised “no return to austerity”, will detail her return to austerity. Cuts to “unprotected” departments, outside of health, education and defence, will be harsh. And only defence is expected to see meaningful increases. A few cabinet ministers, such as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, have gamed the Treasury’s system, holding out for better deals right up until the last minute. Some tweaks to the Treasury’s investment rules have freed up funds for infrastructure projects outside of the south-east, but these will do little to address day-to-day needs. And for many, like those who lost their winter fuel payment or face the two-child benefit cap, daily life is substantially worse. That basic and correct perception is the most corrosive force eroding Labour’s public support.
Starmer has had little choice but to respond: facing plummeting popularity, backbench revolt, disquiet in the unions, and, finally, the growling of Gordon Brown. The Prime Minister’s half-promise to partially reintroduce the winter fuel payments came unprompted at PMQs, leaving the Treasury scrambling for cash. The apparent fudge appears to involve clawbacks from wealthier pensioners via tax reforms in the next fiscal year — leaving this year’s payments unfunded, details only to be revealed at the Autumn Budget. Had Reeves not spent her first six months in office berating the Tories’ for their “unfunded” spending commitments, this might be less embarrassing.
Inside Government, there is a very real sense that No. 10 is becoming directionless on the economy. Ravinder Athwal, head of economic policy, is set to leave in July. And a search for an additional “senior advisor” has so far come to naught. A vacuum is opening — and others are jostling to fill it.
One possible contender is Angela Rayner. A leak from her office, listing alternative tax rises targeting the wealthy, made its way to the front page of The Telegraph. It was possibly the result of Treasury Spads wanting to flush out the opposition, but front pages in the Tory press bewailing her “TAX RAIDS” and “PUSHBACK ON CUTS” do not exactly hurt Rayner with Labour members. Polling by LabourList of those members suggests a surge in her popularity, second only to Ed Miliband. A Cabinet hold-out, and a former trade union negotiator herself, Rayner was one of the last ministers to strike a spending deal with the Treasury, claiming more funding was needed to meet the Government’s own ambitious housing targets. The chief executive of Britain’s largest housing association has been warning of a “cliff edge” in their funding, but it is hard to see what new money could be found at this late stage — although, again, her name in the headlines doesn’t hurt.
Meanwhile, perennial king-over-the-water, Andy Burnham, has set out his stall. At a conference organised by the soft-Left faction Compass, the Manchester Mayor delivered, in his well-practised everyman style, a wish list for the Party faithful: tax hikes for the wealthy, reversal of disability benefit cuts, more funding for local authorities, a social housing programme and the introduction of proportional representation. But it’s a long road to Downing Street. Lacking a parliamentary seat, Burnham would need a speedy reshuffle.
Their roads ahead might look different, but Rayner and Burnham are converging politically. With the Corbyn insurgency dealt with — “shaking off the fleas” — and its few remaining MPs isolated and demoralised, the Party’s perma-war has shifted. The new battleground is well to Corbyn’s Right. Currently grouped uneasily around Starmer, the weary foot-soldiers of the Party’s soft-Left are keeping a beady eye on his eventual exit. Former ministers Anneliese Dodds and Louise Haigh have headed for the backbenches, while Rachael Maskell, already on the backbench, has been notably more vocal in her recent criticism of the Government.
“The weary foot-soldiers of the Party’s soft-Left are keeping a beady eye on Starmer’s eventual exit.”
“Soft-Left” is the Party’s default option, a broad centre-left space where most of the Party’s 300,000 remaining members feel most comfortable. But ideologically it is hard to define: a slightly fuzzy blur of good intentions on public spending and foreign policy. By contrast, New Labour was an intensely intellectual and strategic project, and the hard-Left of Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell certainly had its intellectuals, if without the same ruthless grasp of strategy. Even the Party’s Old Right at least has a clear set of principles: America First, Britain Second. Blue Labour has “faith, flag, family” and the Trump-supporting antics of academic provocateur Lord Glasman. And the soft-Left? It has some niche nostalgia — an enthusiasm for Eighties Eurocommunist journal, Marxism Today — but not always much clarity.
This vagueness has made its existence frustrating. After splitting with the Bennite hard-Left in the mid-Eighties to support Neil Kinnock, much of the movement then hitched itself onto New Labour, which was in the ascendant from the mid-Nineties. But whatever successes early New Labour delivered, from constitutional reform to a turnaround in the NHS and schools, were overshadowed by Iraq. The soft-Left hero Robin Cook resigned as foreign secretary over it. The 2008 financial crisis shattered the remaining economic case for Blairism.
Dealing with the legacy of New Labour has become a generation-defining problem for the Party, and for its soft-Left faction in particular. Mostly rejecting Corbynism, it rallied behind Starmer’s 2020 leadership bid, seduced by his Corbyn-lite promises. But by the time he arrived in No. 10, Starmer had discarded every plank of that platform, leaving only Reevesian penny-pinching and his own authoritarian tendencies. Labour’s most optimistic vision offers little more than the right to die more quickly, either at your own hand or in a future war with Russia. It’s a long way from Things Can Only Get Better.
The soft-Left senses that this could be its moment. At the Compass conference, there was a certain spring in the attendees’ step. And a few days later, the journal Renewal, which has long attempted to give some intellectual heft to the soft-Left project, relaunched in the sweaty backroom of a Clerkenwell pub. Labour MPs including Anneliese Dodds, Left-leaning journalists, and wonks were in attendance. After 40 years of disappointment, tagging along with leaders who promised much and delivered little, the mood was cautious. But luckily for them, all other factions are scattered or have been discredited.
It may, however, already be too late. The two-party system is on its last legs, with Reform today as the primary beneficiary of this collapse. Britain’s position in the world is still out of kilter post-Brexit. Discontent in the country runs deep, far deeper than a little more public spending can resolve. As Trump and all successful populists understand, electoral success requires enemies: the sort of zero-sum, dog-eat-dog politics the soft-Left will not speak to. When the chips are down, they are just too nice.
But, more immediately, it is difficult to depose a Labour leader. The plotters of 2016’s “chicken coup” against Corbyn found this out the hard way. Starmer himself has made it more difficult: a leadership challenger now requires 20% of a much-enlarged Parliamentary Labour Party to trigger a contest. The members, for their part, are doggedly loyal to their leaders, as Corbyn’s comfortable second leadership victory demonstrated. And Starmer will leave only if offered something better — some juicy international job offer like Nato Secretary-General — or if his inner circle quietly shows him the door.
Chatter inside the Party suggests this won’t happen before the May 2026 local elections — and these threaten to be brutal. If Reform could smash through Labour’s seats across the North, a motley crew of Left-wing independents and Greens could pose a similar risk for inner-city strongholds up for election next year, such as Hackney. There are rumours that Sadiq Khan is privately warning about this. And so, Labour’s soft-Left will be forced into the hardest decision it has faced in four decades: to continue searching for a crumbling centre-ground, or move decisively with the harsher and more polarised times.
