Labour has turned into the Conservative Party

Sir Keir Starmer was elected in exasperation. After 14 years of Conservative rule, which ended in chaotic incompetence, he was able to win a jaw-dropping majority simply by setting himself up as the antithesis of what went before. Sir Keir huffed for Britain; he tutted for the nation. He was not much. But, crucially, he was not the Conservatives.

Now, alas, it appears he is. If Sir Keir’s government resembles anything, it is recent Conservative ones, which were marked by feral MPs, an inability to distinguish between narrow interest and the national interest, and a carousel of prime ministers that turned both them and the country into a joke. Under Sir Keir, Labour has morphed into what he once deplored.

It was Conservative mps who began the trend of dumping prime ministers in a fit of pique. They romped through three in two months in 2022. Of their five prime ministers since 2010, only one lasted much longer than three years. Not one converted a majority at a general election into a whole term in office. Labour mps have followed this Tory fashion. Just under 100 have called on Sir Keir to go. Barely two years after Sir Keir won a stonking majority at a general election, over half of the House of Commons wants him out. Only a mixture of tactical ineptitude and cowardice by his potential successors keeps Sir Keir in place, for now.

Is this good for Britain? No. But party interest comes first in this era. Such selfishness was once a Tory trait. David Cameron embarked on the Brexit referendum not because it was good for Britain but because it was a useful way to appease rebellious backbenchers and protect his right flank. Tories knew Boris Johnson was not up to the job, but gave it to him because it would help their immediate electoral prospects, rather than the country. It was, as Sir Keir called it, “Party first, country second.”

A Tory vice has become a Labour one. In the Labour Party, questions of state are now viewed entirely through the prism of the party. Why not rejoin the eu to help our chances of retaking Lambeth council? Would a break with Donald Trump reassure wavering voters in Gorton and Denton? How would members think about, say, Wes Streeting as leader?

But then why wouldn’t mps consider party members? Under the Tories, a strange revolution took place in British politics, whereby party members directly pick the prime minister, turning the job into a de facto presidency with an electorate made up only of those who paid the £25 ($34) it cost to join the Conservative and Unionist Party. The first example was Mr Johnson; the next was Liz Truss. When Sir Keir leaves, the third British president will come from Labour’s ranks. The only thing that has changed under Labour is the price: picking a president now costs £74.

And so Labour will turn further inward, as the Tories did. Questions of competence come second to whether a leader can swing the membership—the retired librarians and trade unionists—who make up the party’s rank and file. What should be a national debate becomes a family affair. Small differences between Labour factions turn into ideological schisms; milquetoast policy is dressed up as bond-market-defying radicalism to placate people who own all 11 volumes of Tony Benn’s diaries. Elected representatives end up guessing what fee-paying members would bear, shifting Britain from a democracy to a selectocracy.

Even if this coup fails, Sir Keir’s authority is shot. The sight of a lame-duck prime minister limping on became familiar in the Tory years. “Prime ministers always take longer to die than people think,” said one former Conservative cabinet minister. Ms Truss’s swift execution was an exception, rather than a rule. During her three years in power, Theresa May spent more time dead than alive. Mr Johnson endured the best part of six months in a terminal condition, staving off a confidence vote a month before his demise. Good governance goes out the window in that period. The opportunity cost is immense.

Of all the sins of the Conservatives, it was this tendency to ignore problems for years that most angered Sir Keir. He even had a forgettable phrase for it: “sticking-plaster politics”. It aptly describes Sir Keir’s own efforts. Social care has been hoofed into touch, the subject of another interminable review. Welfare reform has been similarly ignored. Such problems will not be solved if Labour engages in an internal blood feud.

Labour mps were feral enough before they brought their contempt for their leader into the open. However they dress it up, their motivation is simple. Why wouldn’t the MP for North West Cambridgeshire try to boot the prime minister out when the party is polling at 19% and on track to win as few as 18 seats? “They’re always up for the fight to save their own skin,” said Sir Keir in 2023 of Tory mps. So it is in Labour in 2026.

Those on the right like to dub the Conservatives and Labour “the uniparty”, suggesting there is little between them in policy. That is wrong. But when it comes to their manner, Labour and the Conservatives are now alike. Compared with the wild promises of fringe parties, all the centre can offer is competence: that voting for a fringe party, whether Reform uk or the Greens, risks chaos.

Sir Keir knew this and exploited it in opposition, lamenting the chaos of Tory rule. Yet in office he has governed in a manner he professed to detest. Governments that do the opposite of what they promised are punished. The Conservatives learned this in 2024, when they suffered an epochal defeat. The Conservatives promised a land of low tax and low immigration and when they delivered the opposite, voters delivered their verdict. Sir Keir’s government promised little other than stability. It has failed. Voters are exacting the same price. ■