Labour’s victory brings new uncertainties

It was an election that began in pouring rain and ended in sunshine. Rishi Sunak announced it in a downpour; six weeks later, Sir Keir Starmer stood with his wife Victoria outside No 10 in a rare interlude between the July showers to become the country’s 58th prime minister since Sir Robert Walpole in 1725. He is the first titled new occupant of the post since Sir Alec Douglas-Home and, at 61, the oldest to take office since Harold Macmillan. He is just the seventh Labour prime minister and only the fifth elected by the country in the centenary year of the first, Ramsay MacDonald.

The result was much as the polls had predicted, with a spectacular win for Labour, albeit with a slightly smaller majority than in 1997. Sir Keir replicated his predecessor’s triumphalist walk up Downing Street, but demonstrated in his acceptance speech an understanding of how different the times now are. In 1997, Labour took over a booming economy; this time, the country is mired in debt, millions of working age are on benefits, the NHS is in permanent crisis, and the room for any manoeuvre is severely limited. Sir Keir said the country had “voted decisively for change” and it certainly rejected the Conservatives in emphatic fashion. 

But the truth is that this was an election lost by the Tories rather than won by Labour, whose vote declined during the campaign. Power was secured with only 34 per cent of the vote on a low turnout of around 60 per cent. Labour’s share of the vote was less than two per cent higher than in 2019, when the party was reduced to around 200 seats.

It has been dubbed the “loveless landslide” and Sir Keir acknowledged he has much to do. To restore trust in politics, he said, would need actions not words. Yet, throughout the campaign we have had plenty of criticism of the “chaos” of the Tory years but heard little in the way of detail of what a Labour government would do. Though set about immediately compiling his Cabinet, Sir Keir has hardly begun to define what he believes the country needs, let alone set out a prospectus for achieving it. The work of change begins now, he said. But what we still don’t know even after a six-week campaign is change to what? Such rhetoric may work in an election against an exhausted opponent but will soon crash into a wall of economic reality. 

Labour’s campaign was ruthlessly disciplined to avoid giving any hostages to fortune; but it means the country remains uncertain about what the future government will do. Sir Keir said he would stand for “stability and moderation”, another platitude unlikely to withstand a collision with events. But his emphasis on “public service” was a deliberate attempt to distinguish Labour from the recent upheavals in the Conservative Party, whose 121 seats are their lowest number in the Commons since 1832. 

The outgoing prime minister Rishi Sunak, in office for just one year and 254 days, said he had left the country in a better place than he found it, with inflation down, the economy stable and higher growth. But he lost because the party had failed to deliver on the promises it had made at successive general elections and had severed any connection with its core supporters. Mr Sunak proposes to remain to oversee the election of a new Tory leader, a process that promises to reopen the factionalism that cost them so dear on Thursday. They need to resolve this to form an effective opposition to Labour and the Lib Dems, who can be expected to support Sir Keir in much of what he does. Ironically for champions of PR, they ended up with more seats than their share of the vote would merit.

Reform UK, on the other hand, won just five seats with 600,000 more votes than the Lib Dems. The presence in Parliament of Nigel Farage will make the Tory attempts to rebuild much more problematic, as splits open between One Nationers and Right-wingers. One remarkable feature of the election was the rejection by much of the country of the two main parties. Together they polled just 58 per cent of the total votes cast. The greater pluralism of British politics has been apparent for some time, except in 2017 when the two parties combined accounted for 82 per cent of the total.

But the atomism now in evidence is a major change that reflects a trend seen in continental Europe. Reform UK is joined in parliament by four Greens and four independents who toppled Labour candidates in constituencies with a high proportion of Muslim voters where the Palestinian issue dominated. They exploited anger over Sir Keir’s refusal to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and were influential in at least two dozen seats. 

Among the casualties was Jonathan Ashworth in Leicester South, where he previously had a majority of more than 22,000, while other party luminaries such as Wes Streeting and Jess Phillips were almost ousted. Labour’s vote fell by 11 points on average in seats where more than 10 per cent of the population identify as Muslim. It is extraordinary that in British cities the politics of the Middle East should become the issue over which an election was fought.

But this may be a sign of things to come as politics becomes more polarised along the lines seen in Europe. Sir Keir may enjoy a brief honeymoon, with interest rates expected to fall. But he will soon be undone by events as all governments are eventually, and as the Tories have just found.