Okay, May 7th 2026 was not the best day in Labour’s history.
Losing 1,430 councillors1, 2 out of 19 seats in Plymouth, 2 out of 17 in Southampton2, 9 out of 57 in Hackney, 3rd in Birmingham3, 3rd in Manchester4, 5th in Newcastle5. I could be adding examples for days without mentioning Scotland or Wales. There were some glimmers of hope, only losing five seats in Oxford, only one in Barnet, gaining one in Merton but they are like candles in the abyss.
Any Labour politician or activist will look at a 17% national equivalent vote and know that something has to change. Sir Keir Starmer is obviously under pressure and his tin-eared reaction so far makes it tempting to throw him overboard. But that doesn’t fix the problem.
Starmer should stay not because he is good, but because Labour’s problem is deeper than him. Changing the salesman won’t fix a product nobody understands, trusts, or wants. Starmer is the correct leader for this Labour Government, managerial, cautious, negative, emotionally unavailable, obsessed with risk, unable to say what Labour is for except “delivery” and “stability”. Replacing him with someone warmer or cleverer might improve the packaging, but it could also let Labour dodge the harder question: what are we selling?
Labour lost different places in different directions because different voters went looking for the missing bits of Labour elsewhere. Greens in Manchester, Hackney, Waltham Forest, Norwich, Hastings, Southwark: voters looking for moral urgency, housing, climate, civil liberties, Gaza, an actual progressive offer. Plaid in Wales: voters looking for rooted social democracy and national voice. Reform in Dudley, Hartlepool, Tameside, Newcastle, Essex/Suffolk: voters who feel abandoned. Lib Dems in Stockport, Portsmouth, Surrey and Sutton: voters looking for local competence and anti-chaos liberalism.
Replacing Starmer now would let the party pretend this is a personality problem. It would create the illusion of renewal without forcing a reckoning. A new leader could produce a short polling bounce, a few warmer speeches or a different accent. But unless the product changes, Labour would still be selling austerity with regret, triangulation without purpose, and patience without hope.
So what do we do about the product? It can’t be simply to spend more and tax less, it has to be realistic, but here’s three areas to work on:
Patriotism:
Labour should reclaim patriotism as seriousness about the national interest. Not flag-waving. Not culture-war nostalgia. Not mistaking obedience to Washington for strength. A patriotic government asks a simple question: what is in Britain’s best interest?
On Iran, that meant not treating Donald Trump’s demand for support as an instruction. Badenoch’s Conservatives and Reform would have heard “jump” and asked “how high?” Polanski’s Greens would have said no almost by reflex, too suspicious of NATO to be trusted with hard choices. Labour did the right thing: looked at the facts, judged Britain’s interests, and refused to be bounced into someone else’s war. We did the right thing, supported by two-thirds of the public and then Starmer seemed apologetic for it. Don’t. Be proud.
The same applies to Chagos. The only strategic reason Britain holds the islands is Diego Garcia. Securing the long-term future of that base while ending an indefensible colonial hangover is not anti-British. It is what a serious country does. Being America’s puppet is not patriotism. Making hard decisions in Britain’s interests is.
Clean and Trustworthy Governance:
Labour needs to rediscover clean government. That starts with an apology. Starmer should apologise for his freebies, and so should any minister who takes them. Not because a pair of spectacles is the same as Farage trousering millions, but because voters understand the spectacles in a way they do not understand the millions.
Most people can imagine being given a free pair of glasses. They cannot imagine being handed £5m. And ordinary people do not spend £3,000 on spectacles. I paid £320 for mine and winced. So when Labour people say “but Farage is worse”, they may be right morally and legally, but they are missing why this lands. It looks like a governing class taking perks while telling everyone else to be patient.
Mandelson is worse, because it is not just about gifts. It is about judgement. Starmer should refer the appointment to the Privileges Committee, publish what can be published, and accept the consequences. If Labour wants to be the party of clean government, it cannot investigate corruption only when it belongs to its enemies.
The promise should be simple: no freebies, no favours, no jobs for mates, no donor class, no special rules for insiders. Public office is not a private club.
Clean Governance is also about keeping promises. We were promised a conversion therapy ban in the manifesto6 the King’s Speech promised a draft bill by the end of the session7, it hasn’t happened. We were promised a Hillsborough Law but that’s been languishing at Report Stage since December8. We were promised a National Wealth Fund Bill to put the former UKIB on a statutory footing but apart from various comments from Reeves, Milliband and Reynolds, it’s missing in action. If you can’t or won’t do something you promised, say so and explain.
Security:
The third offer is security. Not the pseudo-security of blaming migrants, banning protests and pretending cruelty is competence. Real security: a home you can afford, work that pays and respects you, bills you can manage, a health service there when you need it, and a council that can do the basics. Labour should be the party that makes life less precarious. If it cannot say that, plainly and repeatedly, then it has forgotten one of the oldest reasons it exists.
Beveridge named five giants: Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. Labour does not need to invent a new moral language from scratch. It needs to remember that its purpose is to fight the things that make ordinary life insecure.
Today those giants look familiar. Want is children going hungry and workers relying on food banks. Disease is waiting months for treatment or being unable to see a GP or a dentist. Ignorance is schools under strain and people left behind by a changing economy. Squalor is unaffordable rent, damp flats, homelessness and polluted rivers. Idleness is not laziness; it is the waste of people’s talents in insecure, low-paid work or communities where decent jobs have disappeared.
And running through all of them is fear. Fear of eviction. Fear of debt. Fear of illness. Fear of being treated as disposable. Fear of being made into a target because you are a migrant, Muslim, Jewish, disabled, gay or trans. Labour should be the party that takes fear out of people’s lives. Not by feeding panic, but by building security.
The voters that left Labour to vote Reform, Green or Plaid on Thursday listened to Labour once, but they don’t think Labour is listening to them. The Tories spent years changing the salesman while refusing to admit the product was broken, and the country paid for it. Labour should not repeat that mistake in bold.
Keir Starmer may not be the person to lead Labour into the next election. He may not even be the person best able to rebuild the party now. But replacing him before Labour has worked out what it stands for would be an evasion, not a renewal. A new leader could give warmer speeches, tell better stories, look less pained in interviews and maybe even enjoy a short polling bounce. But if the offer remains the same, the voters still won’t vote for it.
The question Labour must answer is not “who can sell this better?” It is “what are we selling?” If Labour is to recover, it needs a product worthy of the name, patriotic without being servile, clean without excuses, and committed to making people secure in their homes, work, health, communities and identities. It needs to fight fear without feeding it.
Until Labour can say clearly what it is for, changing leader is just changing the person standing beside the empty shelf. Keir Starmer should stay, for now, not because he has earned the right to carry on regardless, but because Labour has not yet earned the right to pretend he is the whole problem.
