Starmer told members to leave; now Labour’s begging them to come back

In 2023, Keir Starmer infamously told Labour members they should leave the party if they didn’t like the direction of travel under his leadership. Can you guess how that’s going?

2023: Keir Starmer, “If you don’t like the changes we’ve made the door is open and you can leave”

2025: Labour, “Please come back” pic.twitter.com/XdSI4k8nav

— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) November 4, 2025

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out

In 2023, Starmer got the podium out to give Labour members a rollocking (emphasis added):

But I say this with all candour: The Labour Party is unrecognisable from 2019 and it will never go back.

It will never again be a party captured by narrow interests.

It will never again lose sight of its purpose or its morals. And it will never again be brought to its knees by racism or bigotry.

If you don’t like that, if you don’t like the changes we have made, I say the door is open and you can leave.

There are many grim ironies here – the first being that this speech was in reference to the manufactured antisemitism crisis which was levied against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. Said crisis was fuelled by Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, and while it was controversial to suggest this in 2019, it’s all out in the open now.

As Paul Holden writes in his upcoming book The Fraud (available 5 November), McSweeney is the man behind Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN). While SFFN was supposedly created to tackle fake news and antisemitism:

The irony was that SFFN, run by a man who had made his career as a factional spin-doctor, could itself be regarded as a prime example of fake news.

As we’ve always said, the issue was never that antisemitism doesn’t exist; it was that:

• The Labour right conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
• The media focussed on what little antisemitism existed in Labour while ignoring it in other parties.
• In some instances, Corbyn’s opponents flat out manufactured accusations of antisemitism in Labour.

The Fraud chapter linked here goes into detail on this. Holden also writes:

But it was the Canary that was the real target of SFFN’s early operations. Indeed, as Anushka Asthana tells it, the Canary was one of McSweeney’s ‘obsessions’. It had featured prominently in McSweeney’s 2017 SWOT analysis, which had decried the power of independent media outlets in buttressing Corbynism.

With no little hint of irony, one of the biggest threats that McSweeney identified in the same analysis was that the Canary might discover what the Labour Together Project was really up to. Or, seen another way, one of the biggest threats to his project was that the Canary’s dogged investigative journalists might discover the truth and report it accurately. As Asthana tells it, McSweeney’s warning to Labour Together insiders was stark: “Destroy The Canary, or The Canary destroys us”.

We were later cleared of the accusations made against us, as we always knew we would be.

The other irony from Starmer’s speech is that he said Labour “will never again be a party captured by narrow interests”. This is beyond rich given that Starmer’s Labour is obviously captured by corporate donors – many of whom Holden covers in The Fraud.

‘Feel like pure shit’

As you can see, Labour membership spiked under Jeremy Corbyn and plummeted under Starmer:

🚨 NEW: Labour membership has fallen to 396,000, a decline of 136,000 (-26%) since 2019.

This is the party’s lowest membership since 2015.

🔴 2019 ~ 532,046
🔴 2023 ~ 395,811

Decline of 136,235 (-25.6%). pic.twitter.com/l1ycRyH6NM

— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️‍⚧️ (@LeftieStats) June 3, 2023

It’s actually worse than this; last we heard, Labour were down to 333,235 members. Given the year they’ve had since that announcement, what do you think their figures look like now?

Obviously in a panic, Labour are now begging ex-members to come back:

Labour literally emailing defecting members saying “no please come back” is hilarious https://t.co/x2aPLOdXF3

— DTM (@mnsandbns) November 3, 2025

Labour being so desperate that they’re emailing members from a DECADE ago asking them to come back is very very funny https://t.co/UEiqR1d4UP

— Starch (@Starchyy__) November 4, 2025

Labour messaging.
1) shaking off the
fleas
2) the door is open- you can leave
3) please come back. pic.twitter.com/Fy3zHX3JWz

— Left Unity (@LeftUnityParty) November 3, 2025

Oh dear.

It looks like the problem with Starmerism is you eventually run out of other Labour leaders’ members.

Featured image via Number 10