Seeing a Labour prime minister speak from the dispatch box in parliament sealed an electoral coup executed in the quiet of the country’s polling booths last week. The proceedings in the House of Commons on Tuesday revealed the scale of the revolution that Sir Keir Starmer led. Out of 650 parliamentarians elected, 335 have never been an MP before.
Parliament now looks more like Britain. The Commons is the most diverse ever in terms of race and gender. Black, Asian and ethnic minority lawmakers will make up about 13% of the total, up from 10% in 2019. There are a record 242 female MPs, 22 more than after the last election. The Labour leader pointed out that the Commons now has the “largest cohort” of LGBTQ+ MPs of any parliament in the world. It was heartening to see Sir Keir break with convention to praise the mother of the house, Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black woman MP, who was almost blocked from standing as a Labour candidate. It may be a trick of the light, but the nation feels a better place.
Sir Keir understands that Westminster has been losing authority because those who operate in it have been increasingly distrusted – for very good reasons. The last parliament contained egregious examples of venality, cronyism and rule-breaking. It had become commonplace for the conventions and assumptions of parliament not to be respected by its most prominent members. No wonder trust in politicians has dwindled. Labour must restore the public’s faith in the country’s governing institutions to provide adequate safeguards against the abuse of power.
To that end, the new government has made a series of very welcome policy statements. Unlike the last Conservative government, Labour is signalling that it will take on predatory elements in the economy, with Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, saying she would tackle “vested interests”. The new government pleasingly has egalitarian and environmental values at the heart of its agenda. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, speaks of helping to defuse the twin crises of “economic inequality that scars the country” and “the climate crisis that imperils our world”.
Perhaps most consequentially for the country’s governance is that Labour is ready to devolve power. Sir Keir convened a Downing Street meeting on Tuesday, attended by almost all of England’s metro mayors, including Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, to announce plans for a council for regions and nations. Andy Burnham, Manchester’s metro mayor, knows that this could be a gamechanger, posting on social media that the council “will change the way the UK is run – and give the north of England more say than ever before”. Under the Tories, power shared or divided was power lost or diminished. The Conservatives did push for devolution, but it was piecemeal in its implementation. Labour is communicating that it has a better notion of English federalism – with state power pushed to different tiers of government, each supreme in its own sphere.
Democratic politics does revolve around a competitive struggle for votes. The winners of that struggle may – not unreasonably – think they are entitled to use their parliamentary might as they see fit. But for a legitimate political order, power should be exercised cautiously and cooperatively. Labour cannot be tone-deaf to public concerns, nor seek to discipline opposition harshly. Otherwise, Sir Keir will not win consent for the deeper and necessary changes of attitude and custom required to modernise a backward political economy.