KEIR STARMER is right about one thing — the fight to stop Reform UK forming the next British government is “bigger than Labour.”

Despite his claim as Labour conference opens that he can “pull things around,” however, there is growing consensus that he can’t. The latest Ipsos polling shows that Starmer is the most unpopular prime minister since the question has been asked (his Chancellor Rachel Reeves is also the most unpopular ever). The party’s biggest trade union affiliate, Unite, warns it could sever ties if Labour hasn’t changed direction by the autumn Budget.

“King of the north” Andy Burnham is openly on manoeuvres for the top job. Other regional heavyweights are carving out independent narratives that expose Starmer’s weakness, whether that’s London’s Sadiq Khan giving US President Donald Trump the visceral denunciation he deserves or North East Mayor Kim McGuinness saluting the weekend’s successful street mobilisation against the far right in Newcastle, an example of the politics of grassroots organising that Starmer has always tried to stamp out.

Starmer has, belatedly, come out with some fighting talk about Reform’s mass deportations plan. But at every step his authoritarian instincts pave the way for an anti-democratic hard-right government. He has continued the repressive march of the Tories in giving police greater powers to shut down protest: indeed the Palestine Action ban has prompted mass arrests of sit-down protesters on an unprecedented scale.

His latest proposals — commissioning a Tory peer to draft legislation to stop people challenging construction projects, and above all his pursuit of mandatory digital ID cards — follow the familiar theme of empowering the state and over-mighty corporations, and disempowering the citizen. Aside from making Britain less free in themselves, they place ready-made weapons in the hands of any incoming far-right government.

Starmer’s whole record points to his inability to lead, or even for Labour under his leadership to meaningfully contribute to, the fight to defeat the far right. Challenges to his leadership are welcome: the sooner he’s gone the better, and unions will need to be alert to any dirty tricks attempted to block potential challengers such as Burnham from returning to Parliament.

But that is not to suggest that the left can wait on Labour grandees to sort this out, or assume a change of leader in itself would mean a change of direction. Again and again, the “soft left” has surrendered to corporate power and shied away from the much-needed confrontation with the City of London and its politics of privatisation and outsourcing — a confrontation which is essential if we are to start tackling the economic and social crises that provide a breeding ground for far-right hate.

There has been far too much complacency, including among trade unions, over the depth and breadth of Britain’s problems. Only a radical change of direction will spike the far right’s guns: and such a change is inconceivable without mass pressure from below.

Here, the proactive mobilisations against racism we saw this weekend in Newcastle show the way, as does the undaunted mass movement for Palestine.

But it is also a chance for the new left party trailed by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana to move beyond disputes about internal structures and develop a mass presence through action: something it should be well suited to do, given its emergence from the Palestine solidarity movement in particular. Its huge mailing list and the mushrooming local supporters’ meetings should be used to build protests and demos in every locality that everyone on the left and many beyond it can rally around.

Protests against racism, against the war economy, against digital ID cards (two million have already signed the petition against them) — and against Starmer. The PM looks doomed anyway: but there is no guarantee of change for the better unless it is pressure from the left that deals the killer blow.