Starmer’s gamble could be his ultimate demise

Telegraph politics 27/02/26 Keir Starmer gambled – and lost. Gorton and Denton, where the Green Party stormed to victory, may turn out to be shorthand for his ultimate demise. The question for Labour’s so-called soft-Left – sometimes considered by its own members to be “incapable of organising its way out of a paper bag” – is whether they can achieve their aims under Starmer’s leadership, or whether they conclude that they need one of their own in Number 10.

There’s no two ways about it, this by-election was a disaster for Keir Starmer. “There can no longer be any doubt that he is doomed to be a one-term Prime Minister,” said former Labour MP Tom Harris this morning. On the strength of this result, he’ll be lucky to be the half-term PM. Every major decision in the run-up to the Gorton and Denton poll rests squarely with Starmer. The Burnham block backfired spectacularly – Manchester’s mayor has so far been conspicuously quiet following the result. Labour poured so much energy into attacking Reform, only to discover far too late that the real threat was coming from the Left. The Greens surged to 40 per cent. Less than two years ago, Labour held the seat with an outright majority. If this result were replicated nationally, the Prime Minister and all but one member of his Cabinet would lose their seats. That won’t happen, of course, but you can see why this has ignited near panic across the already jittery Parliamentary Labour Party. The familiar line that by-elections are merely vehicles for protest won’t convince anyone after a defeat of this magnitude. Analysis has only just begun, but it looks as though Labour has haemorrhaged support among Muslim voters and the working class. In a pool clip this morning, a rattled Starmer vowed to “keep fighting against extremes in politics on the Right and the Left” – a belated acknowledgment of the pressure from both flanks. He criticised Green policies, and even tried to blame George Galloway’s endorsement in a letter to his own MPs, but offered no clear explanation of how he intends to change course and reverse Labour’s fortunes. All of which means the battle for the heart and soul of the Labour Party, something that’s been on and off for decades, is resumed once more. Angela Rayner, or one of her gofers, posted a helpful message on X about the need for “change” this morning. Andy McDonald, a former member of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, accused ministers who downplay the scale of the defeat of “being delusional”, adding that “moving to the Left is the only option”. He would say that: all the usual suspects are demanding Starmer’s head on a stick. Many Labour MPs I’ve spoken to, though, don’t want rhetoric or ideological revolution, they simply want competent government. The question now is whether the Left seeks to take control while leaving a weakened Starmer in place as a nominal leader. “Without Morgan, it’s very hard to see how Keir doesn’t capitulate to the progressive Left of the party,” one grandee warns. Starmer’s former chief of staff had strong links to Labour’s socially conservative, nationalist-leaning wing. With that in mind, it’s surprising that Lucy Powell, the deputy leader, was so boot-faced at the count earlier given that, in the medium term, this will be a gift to her soft-Left faction. Tuesday’s Spring Statement may offer the first signs of what is to come. If what Labour has tried to dismiss as a “non-event” becomes a vehicle for hastily-accelerated policies – the mansion tax, for instance – it will suggest a leadership scrambling to placate its internal critics in order to survive. But can Labour truly reset its strategy with Starmer still at the helm? For many voters, he is the lens through which everything is judged, and usually rejected. Pressure from the Greens, already explicit about their ambition to do to Labour what Reform hopes to do to the Conservatives, will only mount. As their newest MP Hannah Spencer put it: “I was here to replace Labour in Gorton and Denton – and that’s job done.” There has long been a concern within the parliamentary party that Starmer’s strategy of neutralising the Right would cost him dearly on the Left. His senior team reflects that approach: Shabana Mahmood at the Home Office, Steve Reed at Housing, Rachel Reeves in the Treasury, Wes Streeting at Health, John Healey at Defence. These are not figures of the radical Left, but moderates of the mushy middle. Starmer’s refusal to say whether Streeting will remain in post is prompting buzz about a possible reshuffle, one of few levers the PM has left to try and reassert some control. The hope was that Labour would occupy the mythical “centre ground” of British politics. The reality was the party’s sixth-worst by-election defeat ever. Combine that with the Tories managing less than 2 per cent of the vote and it’s hard to disagree with the words of one political scientist: “The two traditional parties are moribund. They are like a zombie company that needs to be disassembled.”