Labour Supporters - Do you think it would help if KS was replaced?

[Mrsmunchofmunchington]

I am a life long labour voter. Like many I am incredibly disappointed, in fact I’m devastated by the direction of the current government.

Something needs to change in a pretty radical way or we are opening the door to Deform.

I’m torn between thinking the last thing we need is another revolving door at no 10 but I have lost any confidence that KS is able to lead us out of the mess the tories left us in.

Would it be a good thing to change leaders if this was possible and if so who should it be?

I just don't want anyone worse. Keir Starmer is absolutely terrible but looking at the possible replacements we could be out of the frying pan and into the fire very easily. Which I suppose is what already happened last July.

I just don't want anyone worse. Keir Starmer is absolutely terrible but looking at the possible replacements we could be out of the frying pan and into the fire very easily. Which I suppose is what already happened last July.

Yes quite. If the government collapsed we will get Reform and whatever ragtag bunch of chancers they can drag up to stand in each constituency.

Thing is Labour have no leg to stand on about quality of MPs or councillors. They keep denigrating the quality of Reform councillors + potential MPs but really should be keeping their mouths well shut

I mean Labour have been a party for 100 years. Reform have only existed for a few years, and would probably have a list of degenerates as long. Especially if you are counting councillors too.

The names on here aren't 100s years old are they 🙄? I'm not saying Reform are better, what I'm saying is that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Will this week's excitement be Starmer giving the full backing to at least one of his advisors at PMQs, then firing them the next day? The blame for the Mandelson debacle has got to end somewhere.

This is EXACTLY what I think. Their optics have been horrendous. The country needed the new government to be calm, measured, treat us like grown ups. They should have completely gone the other way and thrown some bones to small business/ start ups/ farmers. Give people some HOPE and some aspiration. It’s been all stick and no carrot. You can’t have growth with no optimism.
We are heading for a mad inversion of reality where people will end up voting for the person ( Farage) who is directly responsible for the kind of immigration they are complaining about!
The right have always pushed more immigration of low cost workers, never mind what they said, it was in their policies. UKIP pushed the Tories to the EU referendum, millions of integrated EU workers went home, the government had to relax immigration from less stable nations. The whole thing has been bonkers.
I don’t want a new Prime Minister I want Labour to hire a really good comms director and to focus on actually helping the country to function better - for everyone, not just people working in the public sector.

Stop blaming the comns. It's the policies which are the issues. Constantly saying "its the comms" insinuates everything is actually going fine, it's just PR. They wouldn't need better conms if they didn't have anti-growth policies!
As an example see unemployment figures below. Stop letting them off the hook, Labour need to start taking accountability and stop the gaslighting.

Yes they do.

This. Sadly.

Stop blaming the comns. It's the policies which are the issues. Constantly saying "its the comms" insinuates everything is actually going fine, it's just PR. They wouldn't need better conms if they didn't have anti-growth policies!
Er… if you read my post I made several references to bad anti growth policies!
But I don’t think everything they have done is bad, by any stretch. A decent comms strategy would be able to draw attention to that.
Even at their most incompetent this government have a looong way to go before they can begin to match the shit show that was the Tories.

I’m baffled by this comment. On what grounds would there be a General Election next year? And moreover, in what ways are Reform’s main players not part of the establishment? For starters, Lee Anderson was formerly deputy chairman of the Conservative Party and today’s defector Danny Kruger is a former Etonian, long-term Tory and former speechwriter for David Cameron. Follow the money on former Tory now Reform donors for further insight. Risking the country to these self-serving charlatans is a high-risk approach to kicking other parties into action - look at the US for how voting in a ‘maverick’ leader works out. Seriously, I understand the frustrations with current politics (ever thus though), but this logic makes no sense at all.

@CoreyFlood The problem is that they promised change. They have continued to look like Tories. Money grabbing, inept and slow plus the usual fault of talking and not doing. They’ve moved the deckchairs on the Titanic and are now facing dissent among the PLP as the splits show after a year. For these reasons they are not the party of change. They are the useless status quo that’s not delivering growth and punishing people who are aspirational as only labour knows how.

Voters are not happy and yes, it lets in Reform. Not for objective reasons - for “none of the above” reasons. Labour were ill prepared to Govern - 14 years they had to get this right. What a waste of time.

While not excusing the shambles that was the last conservative government at least they didn’t deliberately implement polices to make matters worse. On the economy, employment and housing this government has caused a huge backward shift, and that is far worse than we saw under the previous lot. How his party have tolerated a leader without a plan for so long baffles me. That plan should have been written 2 or 3 years ago…instead, there’s nothing 15 months after winning a landslide majority.

@Mrsmunchofmunchington says "but I have lost any confidence that KS is able to lead us out of the mess the Tories left us in".
This wailing about the mess the Tories left must stop. It really doesn't help solve the problems that affect us all. I think it helps excuse the facts that Labour really don't have answers. Wes Streeting is an exception the way he is working away at the NHS Juggernaut.
They had 3 years after the election of Starmer to analyse and prepare plans. They had no plans.
Reasonable people did not expect them to solve the problems immediately but they have not published any outline of their intentions.
The Labour Party needs a new leader, the Country deserves one.

Bad handling of business leads to huge losses like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/16/big-pharma-firms-uk-investment-trump-msd-eli-lilly-astrazeneca

That = UK jobs lost and tax receipts down.

No. It's the press that's getting him they aren't celebrating his achievements of which there are many. A change of leader wouldn't help that. They would turn on them too. Just leave him alone , crack on with running the country. Maybe a leadership change before the next election

This is really disappointing. Something that could have brought jobs and innovation to the country has just been thrown out of the window. I had hoped Labour would at least do what they said they would do and invest in industries like this but without industries like this there is no money for anything else.

The press never celebrate the good news, especially not when there’s so much bad news. The art of politics is to avoid creating bad news. KS doesn’t seem to understand that.

They don't understand how business works and have changed the UK from a global leader in R+D to this.......it is incompetence on a mind blowing scale

I think they didn't know anything about the new intake of backbenchers or how to deal with so many new MPs, but I agree they should have engaged with them more, explained what their focus was and explained the consequences to them of basically acting as the official opposition.

No, it's gross incompetence. Look at economic figures, unemployment figures, the article I posted about Big Pharma etc etc.
That's not bad press, its fucking incompetence by Labour.

What achievements, set gains the millstones, sorry, milestones so widely touted at the beginning of his term can anyone name? He isn’t running the country, he’s reacting.

Growth targets haven’t been met. Housing targets haven’t been met. We still have strikes on the trains and the NHS so that’s not been fixed. Cost of living rises, in part as a direct result of government policies, mean that people aren’t better off when he said they would be. Immigration targets haven’t been met. Inflation targets haven’t been met. Interest rate reductions are lower than predicted, again because of government policy. Our international reputation has fallen so far that long term bond yields are higher than under the lettuce. We now have a worse tariff deal than the EU, because Starmers much vaunted 10% has had special, targeted and much higher tariffs applied to pretty much everything we actually export after the ‘deal’ was done. On top of that we have more resignations, cronyism and corruption than under the last years of the previous government. Then of course there was the ‘country before party’ statement, that has turned out to be as empty as his vision for a Labour term in power.

To answer the actual question. No, we need to get over the idea that constantly changing leaders is the only way to run a country.
The government in this country is not one person.