Starmer has brought in multiple officials who worked under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair to try to turn things around. But one person who speaks regularly to No. 10 argued that unlike Blair, the current prime minister doesn’t have a “Starmerite” ideological caucus, and that MPs’ loyalty to him was forged during his 2024 election victory.
Economic stagnation
On the left of British politics, where Starmer also has his detractors, the public discontent has been given a different diagnosis.
Labour MP Clive Lewis, a key figure in a new group called Mainstream, which has been set up to fight a political drift to the right, said: “People want respect in their lives. They want to be able to know that their children will have a warm, safe home, that they will be able to have a decent education over which they have a say.”
Lewis blames the “form of capitalism that we have adopted in this country” for the disillusionment, and warns change is needed.
“That means that many of the vested interests, the corporations, the banks, the financial institutions, the billionaires, the multimillionaires, they’re gonna have to take a hit in terms of the power and influence that they have. This doesn’t work without that.”
Luke Tryl, executive director of the More in Common think tank, which regularly tracks public sentiment, said: “There is no doubt that many Britons are deeply disillusioned with the state of the country today, and few people are happy with the trajectory the U.K. is on.