Dealing with Starmer and Blue Labour's reactionary nationalism cannot be done by throwing out your dummy and running away. The starting point must be the trades unions. The trades union bureaucrats are always motivated by the idea of needing Labour to have a good chance of winning an election. Only then do they see any chance of being able to get anything from it. But, everyone can see that Starmer and Blue Labour are failing even on that score. The election victory itself was an illusion, and immediately, Blue Labour's standing collapsed even further. It is in total disarray, as the events in parliament showed with the hapless and hopeless Reeves reduced to tears, as her plans for further austerity, and attacks on the poor, elderly, sick and disabled were left in tatters. But, Reeves is simply Starmer's ineffective shield, and disposable scapegoat, as he showed in parliament.
Labour's performance in the 2025 local elections, and its continued collapse in the polls shows the writing is on the wall, if it continues in this same direction. Starmer continues to drive headlong in the direction of Trump/Netanyahu/Farage, all the time driven into greater authoritarianism to guard against the inevitable response to the consequences of those policies, as with the banning of Palestine Action.
Voters, as individuals, will continue to abandon Labour, whether for the Greens, Liberals, SNP, Plaid or in some cases, for independent candidates, such as Corbyn. As I have said, before, the Blair-Rights may stage a parliamentary coup against Starmer, as they tried with Corbyn, on two occasions. They may succeed, if they, also get the backing of soft-left MP's, and reformist socialist MP's such as McDonnell, not to mention the support of the trades union bureaucracy, which must see the likelihood of Starmer driving into disaster.
The ruling class, via the media, are already front-running a challenge to Starmer. Labour Conference, still gives the trades unions, via their block vote, the opportunity to stop Starmer, and Blue Labour, in its tracks. Socialists need to concentrate their efforts inside the unions, to get model resolutions drawn up to go to conference, and, also, to demand a new leadership election. The financial problems facing the government are self-inflicted. Reeves fulminates over the need to balance the books on the backs of the poor, sick, elderly and disabled, in order to scrounge around £10 billion, but Blue Labour's continuation of Brexit, means that its losing £40 billion a year, in lost tax revenues, as a result of lower growth. It made growth the centre of its agenda, but with no realistic means of achieving it, whereas, rejoining the EU would immediately boost growth substantially.
Socialists could strike together with Blair-Right, conservative social-democrats, and Labourite soft-Lefts, to remove Starmer, but, we must insist on marching separately to that goal. Our politics are not their politics, our final destination not theirs. We have no sizeable presence in parliament, and so we cannot put forward our own candidate for Leader. That is a job for the next election, which requires, also, a political struggle to deselect existing MP's, and put in their place socialists, as candidates for the next election. Rather than seeking to compete with Reform for the votes of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and lumpen proletariat, who have never been Labour voters, we need to present a positive socialist programme based on internationalism, and solidarity, in the first instance, unity with workers inside the EU, an end to support for genocide, and imperialist war. Rather than allocating billions to arms spending, which will undermine capital accumulation even further, we need billions spent on rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, to boost productivity, and capital accumulation.
The central theme, however, must be, Starmer and Blue Labour must go.
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