Britain’s prime minister and Labour Party leader, Keir Starmer, has spent much of the past year looking over his right shoulder at the threat from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Many in Labour, however, are wondering if their biggest problem might be on the left.
The election on Tuesday morning of insurgent “eco populist” Zack Polanski as the new leader of the Green Party in England and Wales neatly encapsulates the conundrum on Starmer’s left flank.
Polanski, who represents a new, more radical version of the once-mannerly Greens, warned Starmer in his acceptance speech that he planned to “replace” Labour as a force on the left. The Greens won just four seats in last July’s election but recent polls suggest the party may be on the cusp of a breakthrough in support.
Meanwhile, Labour angst about its left flank had already been bubbling all summer.
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Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader who infamously fell on his backside on Brighton beach, argued coherently in early August that the main threat to the party comes not from the direct loss of support to hard-right Reform, but from a fracturing of the wider left vote that is bound to weaken Labour resistance to Farage’s party in tight constituencies.
“I’ve been saying for months, we’ve got two dangers,” Kinnock told LabourList. “The smaller one is Farage’s ability to take some Labour votes, and the big one is seepage to Liberals, nationalists, Greens and abstention. That’s where the real threat lies.”
The prospect has left Starmer to walk a proverbial political tightrope. For every vote he saves by tacking to the right on immigration to counter Reform, he risks losing more votes to his left, where many voters remain angry over Labour’s official line on Gaza.
Many on the left argue Labour has been too quick to follow Reform in scapegoating migrants for Britain’s domestic ills, while also backsliding on the climate agenda that traditionally motivates left-wing activists.
The rise of Reform on the right along with the new threats on the left – as well as the Greens there is also the putative new party cofounded by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – risks a genuine splintering of the British electorate at the next national poll.
Kinnock sniffs peril ahead due to the vagaries of Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system, which has a tendency to distort electoral swings.
“What we’re seeing is the development of a proportional representation electorate with the first-past-the-post system. And that is really dangerous,” said Kinnock.
The left-wing trouble for Starmer really went up a notch on Tuesday morning after the Greens elevated London Assembly member Polanski as their new leader.
He defeated incumbent co-leader Adrian Ramsay and his running mate Ellie Chowns, both new MPs but part of the Greens’ old establishment order. Supporters of the radical socialist Polanski, a former actor, joined the party in their droves in early summer so they could back him in the members’ vote that closed over the weekend.
It was reminiscent of the “entryism” strategy that won Corbyn the Labour leadership in 2015, when thousands of radical left-wingers stuffed Labour’s ranks just so they could back him in a leadership vote.
“My message to Labour is very clear,” said Polanski on Tuesday to a roomful of whooping Green Party activists in central London. “We are not here to be disappointed by you. We are not here to be concerned by you. We’re here to replace you.”
A more radical, activist-led approach by the Greens under Polanski may draw support from the radical wing of Labour supporters once excited by Corbyn.
The rise of Farage: can Keir Starmer do anything to halt Reform?
Apart from the Greens, there are two other main threats to Starmer and Labour from the left. The most obvious is from Corbyn’s new outfit – its working title is Your Party – which he cofounded with fellow former Labour MP Zarah Sultana, who clashed with Starmer.
A recent poll by More in Common for the Sunday Times found that the new outfit could attract support from up to 21 per cent of voters. That would really splinter the left-wing vote, potentially clearing the way for Reform to steal through the gap.
The other threat to Labour comes from so-called Gaza independents – predominantly Muslim MPs elected on pro-Gaza tickets by voters who would have been traditionally Labour, but who have been repulsed by Starmer’s caution in his dealings with Israel.
There has been a wholesale fracturing of the relationship between Labour and its support in many north England Muslim communities – particularly among south Asians such as Pakistanis and Kashmiris – over Starmer’s perceived softness on Israel over Gaza. That may be an important factor at the next election.
All told, the growing pressure on Starmer from the left in the form of a radicalised Green Party, a new Corbynite party and potentially a raft of new “Gaza independents”, presents a big headache for the Labour leader.
He is being squeezed from all sides.
