Opinion

Labour faces decisions that will alienate some in Britain who voted for it

Keir Starmer is an antidote to the privileged Tories he has displaced but he will need to be ruthless and willing to upend policy

Newly elected British prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria: The list of challenges ahead for Labour includes a stuttering economy, an ailing National Health Service, housing shortages and increasing inequality. Photograph: Lucy North/PA Wire
Hugh Linehan's picture
Hugh Linehan
Sat Jul 06 2024 - 07:00

When Keir Starmer surveys the green benches overflowing with Labour MPs in the House of Commons next Tuesday, he might think back 4½ years to December 2019, when the political punditocracies agreed that Boris Johnson’s 80-seat majority meant Labour was doomed to at least two terms in opposition. Or even just three years, following the Hartlepool byelection defeat, when his own future as party leader was seriously in doubt.

Now, with a victory as gigantic as opinion polls had predicted, Labour holds a majority equally as impressive as the one Tony Blair won in 1997. And while Blair’s victory was the culmination of a decade of painful reform and modernisation, Starmer appears to have effected a similar transformation in the party in less than half that time.

He has, of course, been helped by his Conservative opponents, but this is surely the most dramatic British electoral turnaround since the Liberal party’s last great triumph in 1906.

This Labour government is not coming to power on a wave of enthusiasm or optimism. The new prime minister cuts an unlikely saviour figure

And yet. Soaring seat numbers do not not completely mask a more prosaic reality. Labour’s vote share this time lags behind that achieved in 2017 by Starmer’s predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn (now purged from the party but successfully returned as the independent member for Islington North). Labour actually went slightly backwards in the polls over the course of a rather lacklustre campaign. Two shadow cabinet ministers lost their seats on Thursday night, to the Greens and a pro-Palestinian independent respectively. Starmer himself saw his own majority slip in the face of a challenge from the left. And the single biggest contributor to that stonking majority came from Nigel Farage, whose Reform party split the right-wing vote, handing dozens of seats to Labour that the party could not otherwise have hoped to win.

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Although they will soon be forgotten when the new government gets up and running, the peculiarities of the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system were on full show this week. Defenders will argue that the system delivers conclusive results rather than the confusion and post-election compromises of proportional representation. But first past the post is singularly ill-equipped to reflect a British political landscape which, as in many other democracies including Ireland’s, is increasingly fluid and fragmented. Traditional two-party systems are in decline everywhere and the UK is no exception. Where Labour and the Conservatives once commanded close to 90 per cent of the vote, on Thursday they got less than 60 per cent between them.

In most countries, that would lead inevitably to coalition governments. In the UK it can mean wild swings driven by hard-to-predict trends. The incoming administration will be highly aware that its massive majority wobbles on a precarious pedestal, with an unprecedented number of marginal seats that will be in play again at the next election. The prospects of a Blair-style three terms in government seem remote.

Labour will also be conscious that anti-incumbency is the order of the day. Almost 80 per cent of those who voted cast their ballots against the Conservative party. Some of those were tactical voters choosing between Liberal Democrats and Labour as the best option to oust the Tories. Others were Reform supporters expressing their sense of betrayal over Brexit and immigration. Scottish voters gave a drubbing to the Scottish National Party. Unionists in Northern Ireland deserted the Democratic Unionist Party. Labour will need to be attuned to this mood of disempowerment and disenchantment, which can – and will – soon be directed towards it.

What then, will this new government promising “change” actually do? Having successfully carried the precious Ming vase of Labour’s poll lead through the 40-day campaign and into Downing Street, Keir Starmer and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will now have to reveal their hands. They don’t have great cards to play. The list of challenges is long: a stuttering economy; an ailing National Health Service; housing shortages; increasing inequality. The carefully worded commitments on tax and spending in Labour’s manifesto reflect a pragmatic desire to reassure the electorate that the days of profligate Corbynite spending promisess are over. But they also represent a commitment to sound fiscal principles that harks back to a previous generation of Labour leaders such as Denis Healey and Roy Jenkins.

Whatever about a Ming vase campaign, a Ming vase government will be insufficient to meet the moment. If it is to make any progress in restructuring the health service, reforming the planning laws or reviving British industry, Labour will need to make decisions that alienate some of those who voted for it this week. Since he became leader four years ago, Starmer has demonstrated a streak of ruthlessness and a willingness to upend policy. That will almost certainly be needed.

Labour will be highly aware its massive majority wobbles on a precarious pedestal, with an unprecedented number of marginal seats. The prospects of a Blair-style three terms in government seem remote

It may help that expectations are low. Unlike 1997, this Labour government is not coming to power on a wave of either enthusiasm or optimism. And the new prime minister cuts an unlikely saviour figure; nobody was singing his name at Glastonbury last weekend. Still, after 14 years of Conservative rule, many will feel some sense of relief and renewal simply at being led by people who look and sound a little more like them. The contrast with the mostly privately educated and upper-middle-class ex-ministers who are now packing their bags is striking. Rishi Sunak may have been the least worst of the three prime ministers the Conservatives gave the country since the last election, but he still embodied a party that had been in government far too long.

As they accustom themselves to their new seats on the opposition benches, the drastically reduced Conservatives seem set for another round of internal bloodletting. Hemmed to the right by Reform and to the left by the Liberal Democrats, they will struggle to settle on a way forward. For the next five years or so, though, the endless psychodramas of the British right will no longer occupy centre stage. That position now belongs once again to Labour.