Starmer’s Messaging Failure Opens Door to Burnham, Streeting as Labour Alternatives

Net migration has fallen by three-quarters, NHS waiting lists have seen their biggest reduction in 17 years, knife crime dropped by 10 percent, the economy grew fastest among G7 nations, wages rose, energy bills and petrol prices were held down, defense spending recorded its largest sustained increase since the Cold War, and free childcare was massively expanded.

If Prime Minister Keir Starmer followed Gordon Brown’s style of enumerating Labour achievements, he would have ample material to discuss.

Brown faced mockery for his thunderous, sometimes monotonous recitals of government successes, and George Osborne was ridiculed for relentlessly repeating his “long-term economic plan.” Yet forging a narrative and hammering it home is essential to communicating a government’s purpose, and Starmer has failed to establish one.

Starmer has cycled through various messaging frameworks — the five missions, plan for change, and deliver, deliver, deliver — without settling on a coherent list of achievements to repeat at every opportunity.

A former Labour adviser cited a “lack of Labour myth-making,” while an MP questioned whether No 10 is too squeamish about touting migration reductions and defense commitments, recalling the backlash against Ed Miliband over his promotional “controls on immigration” mug.

Labour has attempted to fill the gap with advertisements and a website titled “What Has Keir Done,” but the list is confused and lackluster; one of the first points states he “secured a £400m investment to boost clinical trials, improving NHS services and driving growth.”

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Starmer tried to generate positivity around waiting lists and economic news, but the messaging that Labour is already improving lives remains insufficient, leading MPs to look elsewhere.

Wes Streeting offered a more uplifting tone in a quasi-leadership pitch in the House of Commons, highlighting his record on waiting lists and saying: “I don’t believe our party has time to waste in government treading water. The Labour party was elected to deliver real change. We still can.”

Andy Burnham appears best able to blend his successes in Manchester — the Hillsborough law, public ownership of buses, the country’s fastest growing regional economy — with a sense of hope that he can transfer that to wider national change.

Kemi Badenoch criticized Labour MPs by saying they “are not getting rid of the prime minister over his terrible agenda – they just want a better salesman.”

It remains unclear whether Burnham would deliver substantially different policies beyond broad principles about “Manchesterism,” but polls suggest a change from Starmer to Burnham could considerably improve the government’s popularity.

A more optimistic outlook, promise of deeper change, and better storytelling about national renewal appear to be Labour’s best hopes for countering the populist right.