DARREN LEWIS: ‘This mess is fixable however Labour have to alter now – earlier than it is too late’
As Labour took a battering in the local elections, it’s time for change. Let this be a warning to Keir Starmer and the rest of the the party to sort things out before it’s too late
Keir Starmer delivered a make-or-break speech as he faces threats to his leadership(Image: Getty Images)
Friendships have been fracturing across the UK even faster than Sir Keir Starmer’s plunge into the abyss. Social media users are still publicly distancing themselves from acquaintances, workmates and in some cases family who voted Reform. Understandably so. The fundamental stated aim of the corporate Reform lobby group led by millionaire Nigel Farage is to purge this country or immigrants. Mostly people whose skin looks like mine.
His mass deportation plans, set out last August, are well documented. Last September he threatened hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants too with deportation. One of Reform’s leading MP’s, Sarah Pochin, made clear her views last October when she said: “it drives me mad when I see adverts full of black people, full of Asian people.”
On the BBC’s Sunday morning politics show, deputy Reform leader Richard Rice repeatedly refused to condemn remarks made by a council candidate that Nigerians should be “melted down” and used to “fill in the pot holes”. During the summer riots of 2024, thugs parroted the racist ‘Stop the boats’ soundbite spawned from Reform rhetoric.
You know who they are. And yet they are pulling off the trick of convincing millions that their issues are the fault of immigrants, instead of a broken system that doesn’t care about any of us – regardless of creed or colour. They are driving wedges between large, hoodwinked parts of the country, between communities and now between families and friends.
So you can see why many are looking sideways today at colleagues and associates, re-evaluating their WhatsApp groups and refreshing their circles. This will always be a column where all voices are welcome. Far better to de-construct ludicrous, poisonous arguments than shut them down in an age when censorship is no longer a thing anyway.
What we can’t do is let a Labour government off the hook that, like the socialists in the US, has its supporters down so spectacularly that many have embraced the dark side. My jaw is still on the floor from Starmer’s response to last week’s local elections hammering. Harriet Harman named as his adviser on women and girls. Gordon Brown as his global finance envoy. Does Starmer actually want to get booted out?
Both are selections symptomatic of a tired, out of touch leadership. Choices showing that an Angela Rayner or an Andy Burnham cannot come in soon enough. “What we are doing isn’t working,” Rayner said in a statement on Sunday, “and it needs to change. This may be our last chance.”
The idea, that 75-year-old Harman would be a more inspirational figure for women and girls than, say, Hannah Spencer, the Greens’ 35-year-old new Gorton and Denton MP is laughable. Starmer knows politics but he doesn’t know people. He doesn’t understand our lives. The media appearances of his ministers, urging us to continue indulging a man sticking two fingers up at us are nothing short of embarrassing.
This column predicted the popularity last week of 20-year-old Green Party politician Dylan Law. He was duly elected the Deputy Mayor of Hackney where I grew up, last week alongside another rising star, Zoe Garbutt. This country wants energy and fresh ideas. This electorate wants people who look like them, sound like them and understand their needs. Not fig leaves for a performative shambles.
David Lammy, once an MP who represented the concerns of his Black and Brown constituents, no longer has the confidence of that demographic. Likewise Shabana Mahmood whose rhetoric and policies could easily be those of the Tories.
The Greens under Zack Polanski sound more like the party of the working class than, er, the party of the working class. It is fixable but Labour have to change it now – before its too late.
