Today, ordinary Labour members and hardworking candidates are paying the ultimate price for a crisis they did not create.
In every nation and region of the UK, these painful results show that communities are turning away from Labour to Reform, to the Greens, and in Wales to Plaid Cymru. To our left and to our right, voters doubt our vision, question our values, and are rapidly losing faith in the promise of change we made in 2024.
This crisis is the terminus of a failed political experiment at the top of the Labour Party that has put control, centralisation, and factional advantage before the founding principles of our movement. It is, fundamentally, a crisis of purpose.
In every major test since 2024 - in Runcorn and Helsby, Caerphilly, Gorton and Denton, and now in elections across Wales, Scotland and England - the public has rejected this approach.
It is time for the Labour Party to reject this approach too, and to demand that we pursue a different path. This path must end the cost of living crisis immiserating the country, ensure power and prosperity are enjoyed by all communities, and reject the extraction, environmental destruction, and inequality fomented by our broken political and economic settlement.
It must also realise Labour’s promise to be a broad church, upholding pluralism, democracy and participation. Recommitting to the strength of our common endeavour is the only means by which we will rise to the immense challenges of this present moment.
Today, it seems increasingly unlikely that our party’s current leadership will take us into the 2029 General Election. If this is the case, then there must be an orderly transition and a genuinely open, democratic debate about both who and what comes next.
To the Labour movement, we say this: defeat is not inevitable, but neither is change. For the sake of the communities we exist to serve, we must organise for a better Labour Party.
