Peter Kellner / Sep 2025
Photo: Shutterstock
Labour will lose the next general election.
Of course, that’s not certain, though it looks fairly likely. My point is that this is the assumption that Keir Starmer and his new-look Cabinet should make, as they work out how to recover from their torrid first year. They should act as if they have only one term to promote their values. They should not let polls and focus groups push them in directions that, in their hearts, they don’t want to go. They should be straight with voters. In short, they should be true to themselves.
Then – and only then – will they have a chance of winning a second term.
What does this mean? Here is my list. (Other suppliers are available.)
BREAK THE PROMISE NOT TO RAISE INCOME TAX, NATIONAL INSURANCE OR VAT. We all know that Rachel Reeves will raise taxes in her November Budget. However much she proclaims that the headline rates have not changed, voters will think she has broken her promise to keep taxes down. Her choice is a narrowly-defined commitment to last year’s manifesto that voters no longer believe she has kept, or an honest recognition that the world has changed that carries some credibility. The real mistake was to make the promise in the first place. Time to put it right.
END THE TWO-CHILD CAP ON CHILD BENEFIT AND REVERSE THE CUTS TO INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT. Fundamental to Labour’s moral purpose is to help those who most need our support at hope and abroad. Yes, that means higher taxes and times are tough. But it is in such times that any party reveals its true priorities. At home, Labour would be taking the single biggest step to reducing child poverty; abroad, Donald Trump’s decision to close down US AID makes it all the more important to support development, especially in Africa. Between them, Trump and Starmer risk handing more and more of the global south to China. Stepping up development assistance is a strategic as well as moral imperative.
REVERSE THE ECONOMIC DAMAGE DONE BY BREXIT. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that the cost to our economy is four per cent of gross domestic product. That’s £100 billion a year – money that could help the both government finances and take-home pay. The steps that have been taken so far to improve relations with the EU are welcome but offset only a small fraction of Brexit’s cost. We need a deal that either takes the UK back into the Single Market and Customs Union, or a fresh agreement with a new name that achieves the same outcome.
IMPLEMENT A SMART, PRACTICAL AND POSITIVE STRATEGY ON IMMIGRATION. Stopping the boats and keeping out the people we don’t want is plainly vital – but the larger truth is that the UK is one of a number of countries that face a demographic time bomb, with fewer and fewer workers supporting more and more pensioners. We need a steady flow of workers from abroad. Unless the wider anti-immigration arguments are countered, we shall keep them out and end up with another huge blow to our economy. AgaIn, the moral and strategic arguments for a progressive approach are aligned.
I can predict the kind of response this would receive from some of those around Reeves and Starmer. It’s nonsense. However much we would like to do these things, the money just isn’t there. Well-heeled metropolitan do-gooders are out of touch. It’s the kind of left-wing rubbish that Starmer has rightly cast aside.
Here’s the thing. There are Labour Party members who are unhappy with Starmer’s record who have spent much of their life fighting the left. Who opposed Tony Benn and Militant in the 1980s.
Who think Jeremy Corbyn should have never been allowed to join the party, let alone lead it. Who voted in leadership elections for David Miliband in 2010 and Liz Kendall in 2015. Who want to mobilise competitive markets for the public good, not try to thwart them.
Me for a start.
And no, I’m not advocating a candidate for the party’s deputy leadership who will stand up to Starmer. The issue goes deeper than that. It concerns a vital feature of Labour’s post-war development: the implicit coalition between two strands of progressive politics that the party has relied on to win elections. The big question for the next four years is not so much who succeeds Angela Rayner as whether that coalition can be revived.
Delving into Labour’s history, consider how Britain ended capital punishment.. Sydney Silverman was the Labour MP who started campaigning for abolition in 1948 and kept going. At the time, Gallup found that by 65-25 per cent voters wanted to keep the death penalty. Public opinion was even stronger in 1965, when Silverman’s bill to end capital punishment finally passed into law.
There is no reason to suppose that Silverman’s constituents in Nelson and Colne differed greatly from the rest of the country. Yet they kept returning him to Parliament, from 1935 until his death in 1968. The reason is not hard to fathom. He was a hard-working, principled MP, standing for a Labour Party that fought for working people. His constituents had their views about capital punishment, but these did not determine their vote.
Here is a thought experiment. Imagine Doctor Who transporting Starmer and his aides back to 1964 when, like last year, Labour returned to power after more than a decade in opposition. They wonder what to do about capital punishment. Obviously, they commission polls and focus groups to help them decide. They discover that many of their core supporters want murderers to be hanged and have strong feelings on the matter. So they refuse to back Silverman, and don’t allow time for his bill.
Let’s broaden this out, for the Sixties saw a variety of progressive reforms. Had today’s system of policy-by-focus-groups been in operation, then would not only would we have kept the death penalty, we might also have failed to legalise abortion, outlaw racial discrimination, insist on equal pay for women, or start down the road to gay rights. (In the case of women’s pay, legislation meant facing down male-dominated trade unionists, a story that the movie Made in Dagenham told so well.)
Labour achieved all these things, not because they were popular, but because they were right. But they were also smart politics. They appealed to that part of Labour’s coalition that believed in liberal values and were committed to gender, racial and sexual equality. Labour brought together those voters whose main reason for supporting it were instrumental – a better life for people like them – with those whose primary motivation was moral – rooting out injustice at home and abroad. Had Labour neglected the wider liberal agenda in the sixties, it would have lost votes, not gained them.
That is one of the mistakes Starmer’s government is making. It is squeamish about immigration and Europe, and in a mess about tax. And for relatively small savings it is not only punishing developing countries but offending progressives who find cutting aid morally disgraceful.
Tony Blair’s government got the balance right. He implemented both instrumental and moral reforms, from the minimum wage and Sure Start to overseas aid and same sex partnerships. Blair became the first Labour leader to win three elections in a row.
In the past few days, much has been made of the return of the Blairites to Downing Street and the Cabinet. That’s only the start of a plan for recovery. The challenge is not just about personnel but about purpose. In a recent Substack, Peter Hyman, one of the shrewdest members of Blair’s team in its early years, called for Starmer to set “an ambitious long-term agenda” with a “compelling narrative”. Quite right. However, such an agenda and such a narrative won’t come from a deputy leadership battle over whether to tack to the left.
Nor will it come from slavishly obeying focus groups.
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