I HAVE A friend who comes from a long line of Yorkshire coalminers. Like everyone, their blood bleeds red. In their case, it has always also bled Labour Party red.

But a few weeks before last week’s elections, his grown children came to him, somewhat contritely, to ask if he would be angry or disappointed if they didn’t vote Labour this time. Instead, all of them were planning to vote Green.

“What could I say?” my friend asked. “I told them I’ve got no argument with that. None at all.” But there was sadness in his voice. In just a handful of years, his beloved Labour Party that once stood for what its name suggests — working people — has been rendered entirely unrecognisable.

How did the Labour Party and its ever weaker Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, pull off such a feat? And how can Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy actually believe, despite Labour’s crushing electoral defeat last week, that the party can still soar to new heights under Starmer’s leadership?

“You don’t get rid of the pilot mid-flight because of a bit of turbulence,” Lammy said. “A bit of turbulence”? Is that really how he sees it? The fact that Lammy thinks they’re still airborne when the plane is actually lying shattered on the ground, is one of many examples of just how isolated or wilfully stubborn this government is.

Starmer says he won’t walk away because that would “plunge the country into chaos.”

Apparently, he is oblivious to the mayhem he has already wrought with his draconian crackdown on free speech and his zionist fealty that saw his government help Israel starve Palestinian children in Gaza but fail to feed British children at home.

At this point, Starmer has one fan left, and that’s Reform Party leader Nigel Farage, who celebrated his party’s election successes last week by proclaiming the hope that Starmer will stay in office because “he’s the greatest asset we’ve got.”

So, while pundits are already placing Farage inside No 10 after the next general election, what’s to be done in the more immediate future, before that horribly possible eventuality?

When most of us pose this question on social media we get trolled by a horde of exponents in the art of ad hominem. But when author and political pundit Michael Rosen does it, what follows is a stream of well-considered, thoughtful and intelligent suggestions.

“So are we on the brink of a Farage premiership and perhaps one of the most dangerous moments in UK history?” Rosen asked on a May 10 post on Facebook, after analysing how a “right-wing secretive clique” inside the Labour Party orchestrated us to this point.

“Will there be a team of racists and fascists in power after the next election? Those questions ask for answers along the lines of ‘how do we campaign against that happening?’”

“It’s the last thing I want to happen, but I’m going to start preparing on the basis that Farage will be PM in three years,” responded Martin Horn, inserting a broken heart emoji. “The coordinated attack on the Greens across the legacy media and the relative lack of scrutiny of Reform show how things will go,” he said.

But others were less resigned.

“There’s a danger,” agreed Marc Hadley, “but Farage and his cohorts are beatable. I know this because I am part of a regional team who have repeatedly beaten them. There are positives, don’t succumb to pessimism.”

“Don’t demonise Reform voters but work to offer solutions for people with difficult lives,” wrote Liz Walter. “Keep trying to educate about why private yachts are more dangerous than small boats.”

“Use real spaces to talk — and offer real alternatives and start local — with cohesion,” advised Jess Mookherjee.

“What these elections have told us is that Reform does not appeal to 74% of the folks that could be bothered to go out and vote,” reassured Nicole Anne Beck. “If I had all the data I suspect that I would be able to show that all the results would have been very different if all the parties of the left-of-centre had partnered together into a Progressive Alliance.”

And Reform may yet unravel. “Reform still only have 3.8 percent of total councillors across England and in the devolved parliaments,” pointed out Nicola Tipton. “This is less than the Greens.” She also reminded Rosen that “already some of their elected councillors have resigned and others are being proved to be paper candidates with no visible online profiles and may even have been elected, different names, twice.”

“When voters send a message like this, we must reflect and we must respond,” Starmer said last week. “They’re frustrated. They don’t feel the change. I understand that. I get that.”

But does he?

As stated in this paper’s May 10 editorial, the Starmer “management” team “doesn’t have a clue what the public wants.”

The rise of the Green Party suggests one of the answers is an end to musical chairs among the hacks in Starmer’s Cabinet and some new, dynamic leaders who can connect with the values of working people.

Another, embodied by former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, under whose tenure party membership almost tripled, is integrity. That’s a suit not paid for by anybody else and one Starmer should try on for size.

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland. She is the author of No to Nuclear: How Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress And Provokes War, published by Pluto Press.