Death doesn’t always come as violently or as painfully as we might imagine. It can be deceptively gentle. Someone who is freezing to death, near the end, might feel so warm that they remove their clothes, so as to cool down, before lying down to quietly die.
It is increasingly difficult not to think of this when having conversations in Westminster ahead of the local elections. It is taken as a given that the results will be truly calamitous for Labour, and dire for the Conservatives, too.
But it is also increasingly expected that the leaders of both parties will survive. Backbenchers seem set to hit the snooze button on what was once expected to be a seismic political wake-up call. The obvious, looming question is: why?
In Labour’s case, it’s definitely not that things are improving. In Wales, Labour faces losing its position as the leading party in the country for the very first time in its history.
That has been known since the year began. But now, it seems it might struggle even to win third place on the ballot – and where it once seemed like it might be able to stay in government as a junior coalition partner to Plaid Cymru, it could now be displaced by a resurgent Green Party.
Wales is surely the headline loss facing the party, but in Scotland, even after a years-long corruption scandal that has engulfed the SNP administration, John Swinney’s party is expected to advance and Labour faces something close to electoral wipeout.
In England, Labour is expected to lose 1,000 or more council seats, right across its heartlands. Local elections might not change the national picture overnight, but if the results land anywhere near expectations, MPs will be acutely aware that there is no longer such a thing as a Labour Party safe seat, anywhere. That tends to focus minds.
Is the answer that Keir Starmer’s personal ratings are recovering, then? Absolutely not. YouGov puts the prime minister’s approval ratings at -49, a marginal improvement from his all-time low of -61, but still cataclysmically poor. JL Partners asked an even more pointed question: “Should Keir Starmer stay or go?” 64% of respondents said he should leave, and only 18% said he should remain. Even 2004 Labour voters were largely against Starmer: 46% said he should depart, and only 27% said he should stick it out.
Starmer remains the least popular PM since records began, less than two years after a landslide victory. What makes it worse is that the current numbers probably flatter him: prime ministers tend to poll slightly better than usual during times of crisis, and Starmer is generally felt to have responded quite well to Trump’s war on Iran.
At the same time, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage flailed around on the issue, initially supporting the wildly unpopular conflict. Taken together, that means the current dismal numbers probably represent a ceiling on how much Starmer’s popularity can recover, not a floor showing how low they can go.
Six months ago, Labour backbenchers would talk openly and unguardedly about how they would be ready to move against Starmer once the local election results came in – confident that they’d be ready, and that they’d act to stop what could otherwise become a death spiral for the party.
Today, even those backbenchers who still think removing Starmer is essential don’t believe it will happen. Labour’s MPs – many of whom are first-timers – still don’t know each other very well, don’t trust each other all that much, and simply don’t have the experience to run the logistics for a successful political coup.
Where new Conservative MPs could at least learn the ropes on how to oust a leader from their colleagues – who managed to topple Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – Labour’s track record is much patchier on this front. The bid to force Jeremy Corbyn to resign was a disaster, and even if Gordon Brown’s efforts to dethrone Tony Blair eventually succeeded, they only did so after numerous botched attempts.
Labour is bad at coups: it doesn’t have the culture for them, it doesn’t have the expertise, and the structure of the party (and its rulebook) is set up to make them difficult. That’s a significant series of obstacles to getting rid of Starmer. Plotters who once thought they could handle those, though, have run into a bigger challenge: they absolutely cannot find a candidate to unite behind.
Starmer was unusually swift and decisive in blocking Andy Burnham from running in the Gorton and Denton by-election. That decision might have cost the seat – though Labour might still have lost it anyway – but it could have saved his premiership. Burnham, fresh from an election victory and without time to cause ructions with his new parliamentary colleagues, would have been the obvious standard bearer. Now, he’s out for the count.
Almost every other likely candidate comes with serious baggage. Angela Rayner is popular, maybe even beloved, among the membership and is a formidable media performer. But the broader public has already made up its mind about her, and they do not like her. Beyond that, she still has a tax scandal hanging over her.
Wes Streeting is seen as the rising talent of Labour’s “right”, but is in a seat that looks impossible to hold at the next general election, and could be damaged by the Mandelson scandal – even if he could win a vote of the members, which looks increasingly difficult. Yvette Cooper and Shabana Mahmood both still hold leadership ambitions, but the membership would never wear a leader coming from the Home Office.
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That leaves Ed Miliband as the most obvious unity candidate of the soft left – a veteran, well-liked minister with a rare track record of delivery in this government – but he has been leader once, and was rejected by the electorate. More than that, he has said with apparent sincerity that he doesn’t want the job.
With every obvious candidate ruled out, would-be rebels are drawing a blank. Sticking with the devil they know feels like the only choice. The logic here might not hold. If you’re in a bus headed directly towards a cliff edge, kicking out the driver feels like a risky move. But if he’s the person jamming his foot on the accelerator and holding the wheel in place, do you really have anything to lose by trying it?
The Conservatives’ position with Badenoch is superficially easier to explain. After all, she only has a YouGov approval rating of -25; compared with Starmer, she’s downright popular. This has come in concert with an influx of positive press about Badenoch’s improved performance, as if momentum is behind her.
This ignores what is usually a fundamental law of British politics, which typically works like a seesaw: when the government is down, the opposition is up. Starmer is the least popular PM ever, and Labour is consistently polling below 20%. Badenoch is still at -25 and her party is also polling below 20%.
In that context, her numbers are dire. The positive write-ups she receives read far more like copium than serious analysis. Badenoch is polling better because her nonsense doesn’t get any attention any more: Conservatives who once would have tried to oust her have just defected to Reform. Nigel Farage and Zack Polanski get the attention as opposition figures. Badenoch is easier for many voters to like when they don’t actually hear what she’s saying.
Robert Jenrick was seen as all but certain to take the leadership from Badenoch after May’s elections. Either he thought the chances were dimming, or decided the trophy wasn’t worth the contest, because he has jumped ship to Reform. That means Badenoch is almost certainly safe in office. Maybe when the shock of the results actually hits, MPs of one party or the other will be galvanised to action. It is one thing to know something is coming, and another for it to be real.
But there is every chance that both of the UK’s major historical parties get the worst results in their history in May, and do nothing about it, even as both battle populist rivals sapping the very core of their supporter base.
If neither party acts in 2026, it only gets harder after that: a general election might come in 2028. Could either really face a damaging leadership contest in 2027? The same MPs who bottled it once can easily do so again.
Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch both look safer and more secure in office than they have for months. That might be good news for them and their teams, but less so for the prospects of the political movements they represent. Britain’s two great parties of the 20th century, and the first quarter of the 21st, might just be accepting that it’s their time to die.
