The Labour party is ahead of the Tories by almost 20 points in the polls and this has given Keir Starmer and his team the confidence to talk as if a Labour victory is inevitable at the next general election. Some of his supporters are even talking about Labour winning by a landslide. A modelling system built by Ben Walker of Britain Elects and Michael Goodier and Josh Rayman of the New Statesman projects Labour winning by a majority of 198 seats.
All of these statistics beg the following question: if Labour is going to win big then why is Keir Starmer rigging the selection process for Labour’s candidates, despite promising members he would let them select their local candidates? If Labour is going to have a majority of almost 200 seats, why would Starmer be concerned about chasing fewer than 40 left wing MPs out of the party?
The answer to that question can be found by looking at election results since he became leader of the party in April 2020 and his personal approval rating.
While the national polls give a rosy picture of Labour’s position, election results and Starmer’s approval rating make for grim reading. Since Starmer became leader the Labour vote has collapsed at every single parliamentary by-election apart from one, by up to 60%. The trend of the Labour vote collapsing can also be seen in local election results. Considering the high level of anti-Tory sentiment among the public that is a shocking fact. Labour should be winning everywhere but instead its vote is collapsing. How can that be? What is the reason for the collapse?
Labour is well ahead of the Tories in the polls, so the party is popular, but can the same be said about Keir Starmer? The answer to that question is no. Starmer’s approval rating is negative and falling. Labour is popular but he is not, which means he is an electoral liability who reduces Labour’s chance of winning the next election. We could speculate on why his approval rating is negative and falling but the bottom line is that voters do not like Keir Starmer and will not turn out to vote for him.
By rigging the selection process Starmer is tacitly admitting that he knows he is a liability to the party. If he were truly confident of winning he would be relaxed about 40 left wing MPs keeping their seats and would feel no need to deselect them. His control of the process suggests he fears he will not win a majority and that he is afraid those MPs would then have leverage over him. In that scenario the left wing MPs could make demands for their votes, as the DUP did with the Tory government. Their demands could include increasing the minimum wage to £15 an hour or providing free tuition in return for their votes. As Starmer stood on those policies to become Labour leader he would be placed in an embarrassing position, it would be very difficult for him to refuse to agree to policies he had previously supported.
It is vitally important the Tories are defeated at the next general election. No risks should be taken which could prevent that from happening. As he is an electoral liability, Keir Starmer presents a risk to removing the Tories from office. For the good of his party and for the good of the UK he should consider his position and stand down to allow a more popular Labour MP to replace him in order to mitigate that risk and increase Labour’s chance of winning power.