“WHe ran as a changed Labour candidate.” Declared “We will govern as a changed Labour Party,” Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday morning, shortly after Chancellor Rishi Sunak publicly conceded defeat. Starmer has yet to say what this change will be. But the Labour leader has presented himself as a Prime Minister ready and able to change the current alarming situation. Starmer did not sweep his party, or the nation, but voters gave him a landslide election victory. By pitching improvements without chaos, Labour was preferred to a chaotic and disastrous Conservative government.
Sir Keir is now the first politician to lead the British Parliament since Tony Blair. A Labour government comes only once in a generation. The party won a landslide victory with a majority of more than 170 votes. The victory was Collapse He has not received the support of the Conservative Party, which has seen 12 cabinet ministers and a former prime minister among its key figures disappear from Parliament. Liz TrussThe Labour Party deserves the people’s gratitude for ending its association with corruption, cronyism and fraud.
The mood right now is one of optimism that Britain will be better. It would be rude to disturb that. Sir Keir’s victory is, in his words, a “ray of sunshine of hope” in a dark sky. It should be greeted with celebration and enthusiasm for what his government can achieve and represent. With the far right making gains across Europe and Donald Trump rising in the polls, Labour has the opportunity to build a modern liberal social democratic project that brings light to a global dark cloud.
The party campaigned on a minimalist platform carefully designed to keep expectations low. Its campaign rhetoric of “change” was vague about the means and ends Labour proposed, and lacked policy detail. Setting the bar low and making it easy to clear may be smart politics. But Labour’s landslide victory sends a number of messages. The public has made it clear that Sir Keir has the power of Parliament to be emboldened. That means delivering on expectations he rarely raised and keeping promises he didn’t make. There is a risk that Labour will try to govern as it campaigned and fail to produce meaningful change once in power.
Remaking British Politics
In the short term, Labour’s opponents need to ease their fears about the new reality: the legacy of a post-Brexit Britain in which parliamentary sovereignty dominates subordinate institutions and officials. Sir Keir is no Gulliver the Giant, foolishly ceding “freedom” to rival puny politicians. He is not reordering British politics. But that doesn’t mean politics isn’t being reordered.
The fragmentation of left politics is a warning for Labour. Sir Keir lost two of his expected ministers on election night. Both parties had five-figure majorities. Both lost because of the rise of progressive voters who rejected Labour’s caution. In areas with large proportions of Muslim voters, the party lost support due to anger at Labour’s apparent equivocation on Gaza. One of the party’s most effective media performers John Ashworthhas lost its seat and the current Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, is on the brink of defeat. Labour must be hoping that as the fighting in the Middle East calms down, so will this political uprising.
The rise of the Green Party, which defeated key Starmer MPs Thangam DebonairThe Greens will likely be a long-term threat. They won four seats, appealed to progressive voters in both urban and rural areas, and are now the largest contender in 40 constituencies. That’s not a bad thing. Parliament won’t be able to escape an existential threat, and the Greens will be hard on Labor over its delivery of much-needed ambitious climate targets.
The magnitude of Sir Keir’s victory masks a crisis in the election’s legitimacy. Labour won almost two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons, with just over a third of the vote. Compared to 2019, the party’s vote share in England remained stable, but in Wales it actually fell. Despite Labour’s victory in Scotland against a faltering Scottish National Party, Sir Keir Starmer will enter Downing Street with a record number of seats and an overwhelming majority. Declining voter turnout This figure is lower than the number achieved in 2019 when the party was defeated under Jeremy Corbyn (who was re-elected as an independent on Thursday).
Such an uneven result shows how undemocratic the UK has become, and suggests that proportional representation could become an issue around which opponents can rally. Ironically, after a vigorous campaign highlighting key issues, the Liberal Democrats, the most consistent supporters of electoral reform, now have a number of seats that roughly reflects the share of the vote the party won: a record 71 seats in the House of Commons.
Fighting reform
Without an effective response from Sir Keir, this lack of democracy could intensify the discontent stoked by Nigel Farage’s Reform Party. 800,000 votes were needed to elect one Reform MP. Farage’s early campaign, in which he defended Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, blatant racism and claimed Muslims lack British values, set off alarm bells. Reform’s second place finish in more than 100 constituencies should also sound alarm bells. Farage will be targeting Sir Keir and is prepared to eat away at majorities in “red wall” seats where Labour has long led Parliament.
The stakes could not be higher. How Sir Keir chooses to govern will determine whether Labour will be more popular with voters than the Reform Party in future. A more authoritarian and rightward shift in Labour would only legitimise what right-wing populists have been saying for a long time. That would embolden not only Farage but also his supporters within the Conservative party.
Labour must fight for reform in the areas it chooses, not in those chosen by Farage. This means Sir Keir should return the party to its original objectives: focusing on equality, promoting rational political debate, redistributing power and wealth, and achieving social and economic modernization. Only radical reform can remake society fairer, safer and more prosperous. That means putting an end to the cuts to public services and the impoverishment of welfare. Sir Keir’s government should dispel the aura of obedience and tradition that protects the privileges of the elite.
Labour won because they were not the Conservatives, and because they looked not much different from the Conservatives. That may be good for winning this election, but it will not be good for winning the next one. Labour’s proposals acknowledge that our current way of life is environmentally, emotionally and morally unsustainable. Incrementalism in these circumstances is not just misguided, it is dangerous. Simply removing injustices piecemeal risks lulling the party into a false sense of progress. Sir Keir must not be prevented from making the substantive change that is especially sorely needed.
