Labour Party membership has plummeted as almost 200,000 people have deserted Sir Keir Starmer’s party, new figures have revealed, amid growing competition from newer political movements and widespread dissatisfaction with the government’s direction.
Figures published on Thursday showed the party had lost another 37,215 members over the course of 2024, around 10 per cent of its total membership at the start of the year. By the end of 2024, Labour’s membership stood at 333,235, well down on its recent peak of 532,046 at the end of 2019, just after the party lost the General Election under former leader Jeremy Corbyn.
The dramatic decline represents a loss of nearly 40 per cent of Labour’s membership since its 2019 peak, with the party now haemorrhaging members at a rate of one every ten minutes, according to analysis by LabourList. Between the end of November and the end of January alone, membership fell by more than 9,500 – a rate of around 152 departures per day.
Despite this exodus, Labour remains the biggest party by pure membership numbers, though it faces surging competition from newer parties, particularly Reform UK. Whilst Nigel Farage’s party does not publish a membership figure in its own accounts, a ticker on Reform’s website showed it had 234,499 members at time of writing, having overtaken the Conservative Party’s 131,680 members in December 2024.
The populist party has experienced exponential growth of 300 per cent in just eight months since Farage returned as leader in June 2024, when it had only 40,000 members. The return of Farage gave Reform UK an almost immediate 25,000 boost, with the total membership figure hitting 75,000 in August 2024.
Meanwhile, over 650,000 people have signed up to potentially become members of Your Party, which Mr Corbyn co-founded with Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana. However, unlike the others, Your Party does not require a fee to join, with the “Your Party” name serving as a temporary placeholder until a permanent name is decided at the party’s founding conference in autumn 2025.
These figures show that a new left-wing party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana has the potential to shake up British politics,” said Keiran Pedley, Director of UK Politics at Ipsos, after polling revealed one in three 2024 Labour voters would consider voting for the new party.
The Liberal Democrats suffered a slight fall in membership from 86,599 to 83,174 despite recording its best electoral results, whilst the Green Party gained around 5,000 new members. The Conservative Party does not routinely publish its membership figures in its annual accounts, but did record an increase in income from membership fees of around £500,000.
Thursday’s accounts also showed both main parties reporting deficits for the year after the most expensive general election in British history. Labour recorded a loss of £3.8 million after spending £94.5 million over the course of the year, whilst the Conservatives spent £52 million and lost £1.9 million.
The 2024 general election saw total party spending reach £69.3 million, up from £50.1 million in 2019, even after adjusting for inflation. Labour spent 89 per cent of the new spending limit (£30.1 million), whilst the Conservatives spent exactly 70 per cent (£23.8 million).
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK recorded surpluses of £1.1 million and £1.5 million respectively, and the Greens enjoyed a £232,457 surplus. Reform’s healthy financial position comes as the party focuses on filling its coffers ahead of the 2029 General Election, with Farage urging supporters to mimic the Liberal Democrats’ well-targeted local campaigning strategy.
Labour’s membership crisis has been particularly acute among younger members, with national executive committee members reporting that the party’s youth membership has fallen to 30,000, from more than 100,000 five years ago. The decline has accelerated since the general election, with the party losing more than 11 per cent of members between July last year and January.
Recent polling by Ipsos revealed that dissatisfaction with Starmer has reached 61 per cent, his highest as Labour leader, with only 27 per cent of Britons satisfied with his performance. Even among 2024 Labour voters, only 54 per cent express satisfaction.
The membership exodus comes as Corbyn and Sultana’s new party gains momentum. In less than a week after launch, the party had received over 600,000 sign-ups, rising to over 700,000 by August, with some reports suggesting it has now reached 800,000. The party promises to tackle “the crises in our society with a mass redistribution of wealth and power” and campaign for “a free and independent Palestine.
As Labour grapples with its shrinking grassroots base, the political landscape appears increasingly fragmented. With Reform UK claiming to have overtaken the Conservatives in membership and Your Party attracting hundreds of thousands of sign-ups, the traditional two-party dominance faces unprecedented challenges from both the right and left of the political spectrum.
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Image Credit (Shortened):
Keir Starmer at the White House (10 Jul 2024) – U.S. federal government work, in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
