Serious Labour Pains

[malaise]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/may/07/elections-2026-local-scotland-wales-reform-green-labour-conservatives-live-news-updates

Starmer says results 'very tough' for Labour, he takes responsibility, and party must 'reflect and respond'
Keir Starmer has said that the results for Labour have been “very tough”, that he takes responsibility, and that the party must “reflect and respond”.

Speaking at Kingsdown methodist church in Ealing, west London, he said:

The results are tough, they are very tough, and there’s no sugarcoating it.
We have lost brilliant Labour representatives across the country, these are people who put so much into their communities, so much into our party.
And that hurts, and it should hurt, and I take responsibility.
When voters send a message like this we must reflect and we must respond.
I think the vast majority of people do understand that we face huge challenges as a country.
We’ve had a series of economic shocks in recent years and there’s a very difficult international situation at present, they know that.
But they still want their lives to improve, they still want to see the change that we promised, they know the status quo is letting them down and they’re frustrated, they don’t feel the changes.
It is customary for leaders to issue statements like this after bad election losses. It may quash any claims that Starmer is in denial. But he did not say anything about how the party “must respond”. There are reports that he is planning a big speech that will address this next week.

This statement also confirms that Starmer has no intention of taking the advice of John McDonnell and others and announcing a timetable for his departure.

[highplainsdem]

1. While much of the loss can be blamed on the cost of living, I can't help wondering how much Labour's

pandering to AI companies cost them votes.

They got a lot of VERY negative media coverage for their stupid proposal to let the AI companies just take all the copyrighted work they wanted for training data for AI, with the creators and owners of that work allowed to opt out later, if they could figure out which of the secretive AI companies stole their work and convince them to remove it (while the AI companies made it clear they'd consider that too much trouble, and they wouldn't compensate the creatives, either).

Labour was pushing for much more use of AI by government and business, too, which does not get a lot of votes when there are already serious problems with the economy.

And Labour was pushing construction of data centers. From the Times 2 days ago:

Sky-high electricity prices threaten Labour’s AI revolution
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/electricity-prices-threaten-labour-ai-529ccxwxv

Democrats really can't afford to be pro-AI, either, if they want to be seen as on the side of the people vs corporations.

(Which, again, is a reason why it looks bad for DUers to post and praise AI slop.)