I worked for Labour for three years in the run up to the 2024 election. I share the same confusion as others about what followed. This is the first of two opinion pieces attempting to unpack why the Keir Starmer premiership collapsed.
In May 2025, after Labour’s first set of local elections in office, Keir Starmer declared that the bad results showed the need for his government to go “further and faster”. It was a statement which rang hollow. The obvious follow-up question – “towards where?” – had never been answered. And it was this lack of purpose, as opposed to a lack of progress, which was the real cause of Labour’s losses.
This frustration with Starmer was widespread. It was usually attributed to his absence of a ‘vision’, but I’d put it down to something slightly different: the lack of an organising principle. It was not clear, in office, what guided Labour decision-making. And yet many of the decisions taken, far from being the comfort zone or path of least resistance, were unpopular. A lot was asked of Labour MPs, members and voters as a result, without it ever being explained why it would be worth it in the end.
The three North Stars
To my mind there are three ‘North Stars’, which at points determined the direction of travel, in the two years after July 2024. These vie for primacy within any government, steadily using up political capital amongst supporters. But they especially did so with 2024-26 Labour, in the context of broken services, small budgets and low trust. Each North Star encompassed an idea of what Starmerism was supposed to be. And it was a confusion and conflict between the three which undid his premiership.
North Star 1 is long-term reform. An initial premise of Starmerism was an end to “sticking plaster politics”. He was to be a sort of political Gareth Southgate – unflashily addressing core structural problems, rather than pursuing ideological hobby-horses, media headlines or easy wins. This would fix the country but take time to bear fruit.
Labour would use its massive majority then, according to North Star 1, to address issues which had been placed in the ‘too difficult’ box for a generation. There was vagueness about how far this would go. But it could apply to childcare, adult social care, mental health services, asylum, energy policy, council tax and land value, digital ID, housing and planning reform, the green transition, welfare, pensions, asylum policy and regional policy, to name but a few.
Reforms in some of these areas are more overtly progressive than in others. Many are unpopular or expensive to fix. But they’re all topics where modernisation, investment and rationalisation have been put off for too long. The consequences of this deferral were brutally exposed by COVID. Labour’s raison d’être would be a long-term rebuilding project.
The five missions were crucial here, representing not slogans but non-negotiable goals, which would override departmental squabbling and short-term pressures.
North Star 2 is short-term growth. This was also a feature of Starmerism in opposition, with the goal of the ‘fastest growth in the G7’ a driving ambition. Labour, this said, must first attract investment and grow the pie, before it could afford to ease the cost-of-living and to fund the NHS. This was the thing the Tories, with their high ministerial turnover and culture war obsessions, had failed to do.
Growth could potentially be delivered via stable governance, fiscal responsibility, tough decisions on welfare, openness to big business, house-building, an embrace of international trade, favourable tariffs from Trump, deregulation of things like planning, an embrace of AI and digital economies, an open migration settlement, and closer ties with Europe.
Although there are serious questions about whether politicians ever get credit for growth, such steps would win financial breathing space. They’d improve citizens’ material conditions, after years of wage stagnation, and would help to fund services – ensuring that people felt better off by the time of the next election.
North Star 3 is deference to the popular will. Again, this was an important ingredient of Starmerism pre-2024, with its focus on public opinion. The fact that Keir Starmer had ‘changed the party’ in the interests of ‘working people’ was proof, he said, that he could change the country.
A true spirit of deference to the popular will might mean ‘tough’, deterrence-based policies on migration, welfare and crime. It might mean cuts to international aid, Euroscepticism and soft-pedalling on net zero. But it would also, to be clear, involve decidedly interventionist economic policies: crackdowns on big business, nationalisations, social housing, price controls, and deflationary policies to cut the cost-of-living – all things which are generally popular with the rank and file, but not with policy-makers or experts.
This prospectus might not always yield the results the electorate expected. But it could stake a strong claim to be ‘on their side’. It takes at their word many of the methods chosen and answers put forward by the median voter.
Organising principles
Each North Star comes with a different target electorate and approach to office. North Star 1 is the most overtly social democratic (albeit in a way which challenges parts of the left’s orthodoxy, through its insistence on reform). North Star 2 requires the government to prioritise stability, markets and the status quo, meanwhile, probably appealing most to aspirational and Blue Wall voters. North Star 3 points towards a disruptive style of government and more explicitly targets a Red Wall electorate.
None of the North Stars can be ignored, of course. But a clearer organising principle for Starmer’s Labour would have clarified which of the North Stars mattered most in each area. Would the stance on Europe be governed by the no-holds-barred urgency of growth or by the perceived strictures of public opinion, for instance?
Moreover, such an organising principle would offer a wider diagnosis and prescription for the country. Was the true cause of the mess Labour inherited the continual throwing into the long grass of big problems by the Tories? Was it the incredibly sluggish economy post-Brexit (exacerbated by the “f*ck business” ethos of Boris Johnson)? Or was it the desecrated public trust, caused by governments breaking their promises and sidelining the public’s demands?
One can answer ‘all three’. But in truth each points to a different North Star, and to a different story about what the incoming Labour government would do and where it would start.
The changing destination
The actual narrative of July 2024 to July 2026 is muddled, in relation to the North Stars. In the very early days of office, North Star 1 seemed to be ascendant – with GB Energy, rail nationalisation, devolution and changes to planning suggesting a reform agenda. Even the controversial Winter Fuel policy was a rationalisation of sorts.
But these faded from view as the economy continued to struggle, as did the missions, and the impetus moved towards North Star 2. Approaches to the environment, welfare and regional equality appeared to seek quick wins on the economy over structural changes. The Heathrow third runway was signed off, yet projects like HS2 completion, which might have created regional growth, remained unfinished. Adult social care was disappointingly deferred; tax rises remained off the table; etc.
The rise of Reform UK in 2025, however, meant that North Star 3 could not be ignored either. On international aid, the two-child benefit cap, migrant deportations and the EU red lines, Starmer appeared to increasingly prioritise the instincts of the public – or the perceived instincts of a significant part of the public – even when the policies in question acted as an overt brake on economic good sense. The migration policy in relation to foreign care-workers is a case in point.
The inconsistency of this approach was Labour’s big problem under Starmer. The departure from North Star 1 and the simultaneous pursuit of North Stars 2 and 3, created internal contradictions and external frustrations. Ultimately, it started to look like a reversion to the Tories’ “sticking plaster” approach.
Speaking personally, I became very irritated by the mix of North Star 2 prudence on the economy and North Star 3 posturing on asylum and aid, especially in the first half of 2025. Whilst I am realistic about the short-term pressures of the economy and about the level of public anger about immigration in some quarters, it struck me that that an adherence to ‘what works’ should be applied to neither or to both.
All of this may seem unfair. Starmer’s defenders point to long-term improvements quietly happening and even now beginning to take effect, and to genuine progress in things like NHS wait times. But in a way the very fact that this story was never told illustrates the muddle that Labour got into. The government never seemed able to hold its nerve for very long, or to stick to any given course.
Conclusion
As Andy Burnham approaches his first conference, it’s worth the new government giving serious thought to the interplay and conflict between the three North Stars. All are legitimate in their own way. But pursuing them uses up electoral capital and tests loyalties. By not being clear about the contradictions between the three – and the sacrifices necessary to reach each one – they steadily cancel each other out. A failure to grasp these contradictions is in fact a large part of the reason why Britain has become ‘ungovernable’ in recent years.
Where must the long-term trump the short, then, for Andy Burnham’s government? Where must the short-term trump the long? On what points is public opinion sacrosanct, and where must it be challenged or sidelined? None of these questions are easy. But the strange beast that Starmerism became reflects the peril of not acknowledging them.