Comment | 'Politics' old certainties have melted away'
Less than two years after entering Downing Street with a commanding majority of 165, Keir Starmer's leadership is facing another crisis, perhaps the final one. In many ways, it fits a now‑familiar pattern. The speed of political decay has become a defining feature of post‑Brexit Britain: in the past decade alone, the UK has cycled through five prime ministers, with a sixth now on the skids. The stability once associated with the Westminster model feels like a relic of another era.
The causes of this increased short-termism are complex, but low economic growth, weak employment, rising living costs, and unforced errors, exemplified by the handling of the Mandelson affair, have accelerated the discontent with the government. A deeper uncertainty about what the government is trying to achieve has not helped public understanding of why improvements in their living standards have not been forthcoming. The revolving door of Downing Street advisers and senior civil servants under Starmer reflects a project that is struggling to communicate coherence and a sense of direction. Polling captures the consequences of this drift. Labour’s vote share has effectively halved since the general election in opinion polls and in the local elections, falling from an already historically low 34 per cent share of the national vote to form a majority government.
Farage's Reform UK and Zac Polanski's Green Party have redrawn the electoral map, fracturing the political landscape in ways that leave Labour and Conservatives alike exposed on both their extremes. While Reform challenges the working-class elements of both Labour and Conservative traditional voting coalitions, the Green Party made significant gains in progressive and diverse urban areas, capitalising on disillusionment with the government from the left. This demonstrates that class still matters in British politics, as does the lingering ghost of Brexit and how it realigned voting patterns and party competition.
Newcastle-under-Lyme's results in part mirror this national pattern of splintering. Turnout was generally stronger than average for a local election - normally a sign of enthusiasm for change - but the beneficiaries were not Labour. The Reform wave that swept through county council elections last year has not receded. Ward after ward that once reliably backed Labour or the Conservatives fell to Reform candidates. In previously bankable seats, Reform was triumphant.
At the count, Reform activists began the evening cautiously but grew visibly energised as the gains accumulated. The Conservatives, though sharply down, were relieved to hold on to seats beyond their strongholds, like the Westlands ward. Labour, however, suffered the most severe losses. Their remaining councillors are now concentrated almost exclusively in heavily student areas, while largely working‑class communities such as Cross Heath, Knutton, Wolstanton, and Bradwell delivered clear victories for Reform.
But in Newcastle-under-Lyme, the trend to multi-party politics did not materialise for the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. While the Greens came close in Keele to unseating Labour, the gains experienced elsewhere eluded them here. Newcastle’s elections were defined by a dramatic realignment on the right and a collapse of Labour’s traditional coalition.
Within Labour, the national leadership question looms large. At the time of writing, junior members of the government and a growing number of MPs are calling for Starmer to set out a timetable for his departure. In his relaunch speech on Monday, Starmer set out elements of Wednesday’s King’s Speech, which is being trailed as a reset moment for the government. But recent Westminster history offers few recent examples of successful relaunches after such deep damage.
The central dilemma remains unresolved: is there a successor who could reverse Labour’s fortunes? Indeed, is prime ministerial or radical policy change even possible in a world where bond markets, the arbiters of financial trustworthiness and lending, remain jittery about whether the British state is still regarded as a reliable borrower?
The old certainties in electoral politics have melted away, and the shape of the new political settlement has yet to form. But can Reform and the Greens translate these results and the lingering dissatisfaction with politics into Westminster election results? Time will tell.
