Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
A senior cabinet minister has admitted that Sir Keir Starmer’s government has hit rock bottom, comparing Labour’s current plight with the situation after the 2021 Hartlepool by-election defeat when Starmer almost quit.
Wes Streeting, health secretary, on Sunday insisted the prime minister would find a way out of the party’s current hole, just as he turned around Labour in opposition after Hartlepool and won the 2024 general election.
Streeting’s comments came after Lucy Powell, Labour’s new deputy leader, said the party was not being “bold enough” and urged Starmer to listen more to MPs and activists, who typically favour a more leftwing approach.
Streeting and Powell both admitted Labour had been given a kicking by voters in last week’s Caerphilly by-election, where Plaid Cymru won a seat in the Welsh Senedd in an area that had been solidly Labour for a century.
“We had a terrible by-election in Caerphilly, on Thursday,” Streeting told Sky’s Trevor Phillips. “The response to that has got to be similar to the response that we saw from Keir Starmer when Labour lost the Hartlepool by-election. That was a real shock to Labour’s core.
“What Keir did was take the result on the chin and also took it to heart and changed the Labour party with a pace and scale of ambition. That meant we were able to win a general election that no one thought we could win. We’ve got to do the same now in government.
Lucy Powell said Labour had ‘one big chance to show that progressive mainstream politics really can change people’s lives for the better’ © Lucy North/PA
“We need reform of the state, reform of our public services, reform of the economy, and only by doing those things and having people feel change are we going to rebuild trust in politics.”
On Saturday Powell made similar calls for a dramatic improvement in Labour’s performance in office after winning the election to succeed Angela Rayner as the governing party’s deputy leader.
Seven weeks after Starmer sacked her from the cabinet, Powell secured 87,407 votes from party members compared with 73,536 for rival Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary.
The MP for Manchester Central’s victory was built on the support of left-leaning party members disappointed at Starmer’s record since Labour secured a landslide general election victory last year.
Powell was dismissed from the cabinet in September as part of a reshuffle after Rayner resigned over a tax scandal.
Speaking on Saturday, Powell said voters felt that the government was not being “bold enough” in delivering the change it had promised.
“We have this one big chance to show that progressive mainstream politics really can change people’s lives for the better,” she said. “We must give a stronger sense of our purpose and of our Labour values and beliefs.”
After a lengthy leadership contest in which she criticised Starmer, Powell on Saturday called on the party leadership to listen to members rather than impose “command and control” from above.
After her victory, Starmer praised Powell as a “proud defender of Labour values”.
Recommended
Powell will not return to the cabinet, but she will wield influence with MPs and the wider Labour party. The deputy leader position also carries a seat on the National Executive Committee, the party’s rulemaking body.
In June, the government was forced into a U-turn over cuts to welfare spending, a debacle that Powell said was caused by the failure of Starmer’s team to listen to MPs.
She has suggested that her private opposition to the welfare cuts — and criticism of the leadership for suspending several rebel MPs over it — may have led to her dismissal from the cabinet.