Starmer is toast. To stop Farage now, Britain's left-wing forces must unite

Starmer is toast. To stop Farage now, Britain's left-wing forces must unite Submitted by David Hearst on Tue, 05/12/2026 - 17:48 After a disastrous electoral performance, Labour's most urgent task is to select a new leader who can rally a coalition of progressives British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is pictured in Paris on 17 April 2026 (Tom Nicholson/AFP) Off The architects of New Labour have eviscerated the Labour Party twice, once when former Prime Minister Tony Blair took Britain into the Iraq War in 2003, and now under the leadership of Keir Starmer. Unlike other Labour crises - such as the short-lived rebellion of the Gang of Four who defected in 1981 to create the Social Democratic Party, or the Brexit vote in 2016 - New Labour remained uniquely toxic to Labour’s brand.  This is because it gained power through party purges. New Labour did not just define itself against the unions, the left and progressives in general; it ousted anyone who lay in its path, irrespective of ideology. The ends justified the means, however dirty.  The same dark arts used to bring Jeremy Corbyn ’s leadership down were applied to blocking Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham ’s path back into parliament.  At a high point in his campaign to stamp his authority over the party, ostensibly over the issue of antisemitism , Starmer said : “If you don’t like the changes that we’ve made, I say the door is open, and you can leave.”  More than 200,000 members of the party which Corbyn assembled did just that. From a peak of 532,046 members at the end of 2019, Labour was left with 333,235 in 2024 , and the haemorrhage of support continued even faster after that. Then, as...

Original source: Middle East Eye