Could Starmer's Rivers of Blood speech be the death-knell for the Labour Party as we know it?

I wondered after Starmer's "Rivers of Blood" speech on Monday whether it was one of those key political moments that everyone would remember decades later, like Mrs Thatcher's "the lady's not for turning", or Harold Wilson's "the pound in your pocket" or James Callaghan's "there was I, waiting at the church" or Callaghan's "Crisis? What crisis?" (although of course he never used those exact words).  Then I thought I might be a getting a little bit carried away - but now 48 hours later I'm back to my original position.  The speech seems to have fundamentally changed how people view Starmer, and many of his former backers have now distanced himself from him.

When asked to explain how an unreconstructed Bennite like Jeremy Corbyn managed to be elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015, something which was supposed to have been impossible, some commentators pinpointed the "controls on immigration" mug released under Ed Miliband's leadership as having been pivotal - it moved some Labour members away from the imperative of "we must find a winner to lead us" and towards "we must find a leader who will uphold some basic standards".  If a mug with a generic message about "controlling" immigration could have that effect on Labour members, the mind boggles as to the effect of the party leader echoing the language of Enoch Powell.

I'm not suggesting this means history will repeat itself and Starmer will be replaced as Labour leader by a Bennite or Corbynite - the rules have been stitched up to ensure that is highly unlikely.  But Labour members who cannot stomach what Starmer has become will look for an alternative, and if they can't find a viable alternative within the Labour party, they'll find one outside.  It's always a mistake to assume that people have nowhere else to go.  The same is true for the more liberal component of Labour's rump voter coalition, which offers a major opportunity for the Greens and possibly the Lib Dems in England, and for the SNP in Scotland.  Labour may not have much of a support base left the way things are going.

But won't any liberal voters Starmer loses be offset by the racist Reform voters he clearly intended to attract with his speech?  I don't think they will, because if you hate immigrants enough for that to be the main determinant of your vote, you're going to vote for the Real McCoy of Reform, you're scarcely going to bother with an unreliable semi-skimmed version offered by a former human rights lawyer who can't seem to make up his mind what he believes in.

The thinking behind inserting the Powell language is puzzling, because it's not as if the ordinary racist on the street can recite Powell's 1968 speech backwards - they would only recognise where the words came from if the media explained it to them.  So presumably the idea must have been that racists would be informed that Starmer had borrowed Powell's language, would immediately accept that as intentional and authentic, and would think "he's just like us normal people who know Enoch Powell was right, I'm going to vote for that geezer".  Seems a bit of a stretch.

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I hardly ever watch news bulletins on linear TV channels these days, and so I only caught the first few minutes of the Ten O'Clock News last night because it happened to immediately follow the first Eurovision semi-final.  My jaw dropped to the floor somewhat, because for the first time since the genocide started the BBC seemed to be doing something approximating to its job.  The gravity of the situation, and Israel's responsibility for it, was laid bare, and Jeremy Bowen even repeatedly used the words "stop genocide" without any of the usual caveats about strenuous Israeli denials.

It's too little, too late, of course, but even at this late stage anything that educates the public will increase pressure on the Labour government to temper its unlimited support for the genocidal Israeli regime, and is thus better than nothing.

Labour seem to be dropping the pretence that HMP United Kingdom is anything other than Greater England. When statements like this used to be made, there were always exceptions that speaking Welsh or Scottish Gaelic would do too - are they even bothering with that now? Seems not. https://t.co/XqlkMDTy2z

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 12, 2025

In years of Sam's tweets popping up on my Twitter, this is the first time he's said the SNP are right about anything. Which maybe ought to make us question whether it's actually a significant mistake the SNP are making - ie. you don't abandon the democratic principle of 50% + 1. https://t.co/h5Z0in0sY5

— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) May 12, 2025