A Dark Path
Keir Starmer, 11th May 2026: The election results last week were tough, very tough. We lost some brilliant Labour representatives. That hurts, and it should hurt. I get it, I feel it, and I take responsibility. But it’s not just about taking responsibility for the results. It’s about taking responsibility to explain how, as a political and electoral force, we will be better and do better in the months and years ahead, because we are not just facing dangerous times, but dangerous opponents, very dangerous opponents. This hurts not just because Labour has done badly, but because if we don’t get this right, our country will go down a very dark path.
This speech was given an advance billing to which no speech could have measured up. It was designed to be the moment that Keir Starmer retrieved his premiership with an address that defined who he is. He needed to have done this three years ago; this was the last chance. And this opening does at least establish a serious question, which ends on a fateful note when he evokes the dark path down which the country may tread. It is a set-up that promises a major speech and a bold change of direction. It won’t be too much of a spoiler—because there really isn’t much to spoil—to say that this promise wasn’t fulfilled.
Lessons learned?
Starmer: I know that people are frustrated by the state of Britain, frustrated by politics, and some people are frustrated with me. I know I have my doubters, and I know I need to prove them wrong, and I will. So let me start on a personal note. Like every prime minister, I’ve learned a lot in the first two years in the job. In terms of the policy challenges that our country faces, incremental change won't cut it. On growth, defence, Europe, energy, we need a bigger response than we anticipated in 2024, because these are not ordinary times, and this is a political challenge just as much as it’s a policy challenge.
The most frustrating trait shown by Starmer, at least for those who wished him well, is that he does not seem to learn. You only get one opportunity to make this point that people are fed up with you, and to ask for another chance. Tony Blair did this after a couple of years in office. David Cameron did too. But they were announcing a significant change of direction, and Starmer has lost the authority to say that he will change.
The worst thing about what follows is that it is a speech about what is needed, rather than a speech which provides what is needed. Starmer calls for abstractions such as “urgency”, yet he demonstrates no urgency. He is a man with no plan who is telling us of the need for a plan. It is as if he were absolving himself of the responsibility, as if a plan springs out of nowhere. It is all so abstract, so removed. Talk about talks.
Stories and spreadsheets
Starmer: Delivery is, of course, essential, but it’s not sufficient on its own to address the frustration that voters feel. We’re battling Reform and the Greens, but at a deeper level, we’re battling the despair on which they prey, despair that they exploit and amplify. And so analysis matters—but argument matters more. Evidence matters, but so too does emotion. Stories beat spreadsheets. People need hope. So we will face up to the big challenges, and we will make the big arguments, the Labour case, that only Labour values and Labour policies can ensure our country not only weathers these storms, but emerges stronger and fairer, and the Labour case that neither Nigel Farage nor Zack Polanski offers our country the serious progressive leadership that these times demand.
There are two further promises here. The first is that he will tell some stories, to accompany the spreadsheets. The second is that neither Farage nor Polanski offer a serious account of what the nation needs. Yet this speech has no stories in it at all. He tells no parables, dwells on nothing, evokes no lives beyond the oft-told tales of his brother and sister, stories which don’t really go anywhere. When he mentions Farage and Polanski it is as if the mere mention of their names is sufficient to condemn them in the eyes of his audience. It probably is, in the sense that the immediate audience are all Labour party members, but this is woefully underwritten as analysis. This speech could have been a forensic analysis of exactly why Farage and Polanski are wrong but, as always, Starmer raises a subject and then changes it.
Working-class Labour
Starmer: For the British people tired of a status quo that has failed them, change cannot come quickly enough. And truth be told, I’m not sure that they believe that we care. I’m not sure they believe that we see their lives. That’s tough to say when you come from a working-class background like me. It’s hard to hear that, because I do know what it’s like to struggle and to strive. But what I take from it is that I’ve spent too much time talking about what I am doing for working people, and not enough time talking about why, or who I stand for. Because I can see how hard life has been during these decades of crisis. I can see that very clearly. My late brother Nick spent all his adult life going from one job to the next. The status quo did not work for him. My sister is a carer working long hours on low pay year after year after year. She didn’t even get sick pay in the pandemic. The status quo did not work for her.
This was a speech directed squarely at the Labour party. The big policy announcement was the nationalisation of British Steel. That followed the return of Labour’s losing prime minister, Gordon Brown. But this section displays the acute temperamental distress caused by the loss of the working-class vote to Reform. Starmer and other senior ministers spend a lot of time declaring that they are the government for the working class because they cannot imagine anything else. There is nothing in this passage that says what Labour might actually do for the working class. It is a lament, but it is no more than that.
British Steel
Starmer: Strong nations in a world like this need to make steel. That’s why we're backing steel in Port Talbot and across the UK. But in Scunthorpe, we’ve been negotiating with the current owner, and a commercial sale has not been possible, and now a public interest test could be met. So I can announce that legislation will be brought forward this week to give the government powers, subject to that public interest test, to take full national ownership of British Steel… That is a Labour choice.
The announcement that British Steel will be taken into public control was the one line in the speech that caused spontaneous applause from the party members in the audience. The problem is not that it is wrong as a policy but that it is too small. The applause shows where the Labour party’s heart is, but nationalising a struggling industry is no sort of answer to the real travails of the nation and no sort of answer, therefore, to the predicament of the prime minister. If this announcement were the herald of a long section on how an industrial policy could help to produce sustained growth then it would be an interesting inclusion. But, once again, it is the end of the section rather than the start. The same then happens again…
A quick detour on Europe
Starmer: I want to remind you what Nigel Farage said about Brexit. He said it would make us richer. Wrong: it made us poorer. He said it would reduce migration. Wrong: migration went through the roof. He said it would make us more secure. Wrong again: it made us weaker. He took Britain for a ride, and unlike the Tories actually, who at least had to face up to it, he just fled the scene. And now he’ll talk about almost anything other than the consequences of the one policy he actually delivered, because he’s not just a grifter, he is a chancer.
There is a big speech to be made about the UK and Europe, and another to be made about why Nigel Farage offers apparently easy answers to questions that are genuinely complex—but this meagre passage was neither. Starmer continues his speech about what a speech ought to be by changing the subject once again, this time to the gap between those who go to university and those who do not. It is not enough to declare passion or urgency; these are traits that have to be exhibited.
Giving up
Starmer: I will never give up on the hope we can unlock in this country, the hope of renters for security in their home, of workers for fairness at work, of public services freed from austerity, the hope of European solidarity, of community pride, of the people who paint over the graffiti that is racist, a country taking control of its future, our spirit unchanged, our resolve unbroken, the hope of a country that can and will become a stronger, fairer Britain. That is the hope I’m fighting for. That is the hope we are fighting for. That is the Labour choice. Thank you very much.
Almost by the time he closed the speech and opened to questions, Starmer’s first line here was redundant. He might not be giving up, but the Labour party is giving up on him.
At the start of this address—this attempt to salvage his premiership—Starmer said that he had perhaps talked too much about what his government had done and too little about why. In fact, the missing piece of the speech was how. This was a speech composed of too many clichés in which standard Labour hopes were adduced and then wished into being with no sense of how any of it was at all likely.
The refrain of this speech, insofar as it had one at all, was that this was “the Labour choice”. Labour will probably now make a choice, and that choice will be: Wes or Angela? Yvette or Ed? Any of the above, or Andy?
