vinegarIR Keir Starmer Sir Keir becomes the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom today. He has led the Labour Party to a landslide victory in the general election after 14 years in opposition. Sir Keir asked voters for a major mandate to revive the UK economy, and he received it. Labour is expected to win 412 seats, giving them an overwhelming majority of at least 170 seats. This is the largest number of seats since Sir Tony Blair and more than the two most transformative prime ministers of the 20th century, Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher.
It was no wonder that the usually measured Sir Keir struck an uncharacteristically plaintive tone at a victory rally at the Tate Modern art gallery in central London in the early hours of July 5. “We can look forward again, and march towards the morning,” he whispered. “A ray of hope, faint at first, but growing stronger with each passing day, will once again light the country and give us a chance to reclaim our future.” (The rain began to fall shortly thereafter.)
Thursday’s election was one of the most successful public reorientations in the history of British politics. Sir Keir took control of a party defeated and shattered under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. He and his aides first defeated the dominance of the far left, then clothed Labour in lowercase “c” conservative values, running a campaign marked by discipline (and sometimes outright avoidance). Labour’s vote numbers were not very good overall, but Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s campaign manager, managed to distribute the vote very efficiently, pushing votes previously concentrated in cities to rural areas. With most of the seats counted, Labour had won 43 seats out of 1 million votes, up from 20 in 2019.
The result also represents a shocking political collapse. Our latest projections suggest the Conservatives will lose 122 seats, better than some had feared but still better than their worst ever result of 156 in 1906. Chancellor Rishi Sunak conceded defeat at 4:45am. He had congratulated Sir Keir by telephone. “The British people have given a harsh verdict tonight,” he said. “I take responsibility for the defeat.” Mr Sunak, the fifth Conservative chancellor in 14 years, has been unable to repair the damage done to the party by the upheavals of his four predecessors. A manifesto promising tax cuts for pensioners and national service for young people had little effect, as did increasingly sharp warnings in the final days of Labour’s “supermajority”.
The coalition government forged by Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2019 on a promise to “get Brexit done” has exploded. Labour has made inroads into Conservative territory, winning Hexham, a Conservative seat for a century, as well as the long-held Bury St Edmunds and Aldershot, often seen as home to the British Army. Apart from Labour, the main beneficiary was the Liberal Democrats, who increased their number of seats from 11 to 70, their best result ever. Liberal Democrat gains have been concentrated in the more affluent commuter towns that were once Conservative heartlands, including Johnson’s former seats of Henley, Tunbridge Wells and Wokingham.
A few days before the vote, Sir Keir had rallied his supporters for a “democratic reckoning” for the Conservatives’ wrongdoings and failures. “Don’t forget what they did!” he said. “Don’t forget the lies! Don’t forget the kickbacks!” Voters did not. Mr Sunak was re-elected in North Yorkshire, as was Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt in Surrey. But by daybreak, eleven of his ministers had lost their seats, including the justice secretary Alex Chalk, the defence secretary Grant Shapps and Penny Mordaunt, Speaker of the House of Commons and Sunak’s potential successor. They were not the only notable casualties. Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose disastrous tenure had ruined the Conservatives’ reputation for economic strength, was ignominiously booted from her seat in true Norfolk.
The blame game began before dark. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Brexit campaign leader who lost his seat, blamed his colleagues for ousting Sunak’s predecessor, Johnson. Mordaunt blamed the party’s failure on the soaring cost of living and access to health care. Robert Buckland, who lost to Labour in Swindon, lamented the disorganization of former home secretary Suella Braverman, who declared the Conservatives had lost before the polls had even begun. Instinctively driven by anger, Braverman spoke disturbingly quietly of the party becoming arrogant and failing to listen to its voters. This will go on for months.
In Scotland, sitting members of parliament were also punished.SNPThe party was expected to fall from 48 seats to just 10. Plagued by an internal scandal over its fundraising, the worsening prospects for the hated Conservatives also took away one of the party’s motivational tools. SNP They have argued that winning a majority of Scottish seats would give them a mandate for independence, but they have vigorously refuted this, pointing to opinion polls which show support for independence remains strong. SNPIts defeat was a victory for the Labour Party, which now holds 37 of Scotland’s 57 seats, with most of the results now in. Member of ParliamentThat’s up from just one in 2019.
The question is how Labour will govern. Immigration was the most important issue for Conservative voters, but it’s fifth for Labour voters. Labour voters are younger than Conservative voters, more likely to have a degree, and less likely to own their own home. But analyst Steve Akehurst points out that today’s Labour is more interventionist on the economy than the Labour party was when Sir Tony Blair came to power in 1997. For example, Labour is more likely to say that “big corporations are taking advantage of ordinary people.”
Top of Labour’s to-do list is reforming Britain’s town planning system. “For too long it has held back investment and building in Britain,” incoming UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said as the first results were in. The party also has grand ambitions to reindustrialize Britain with private investment, rebuild a battered National Health Service with new technologies and preventive care, and salvage a criminal justice system plagued by backlogs of cases and overstretched prison capacity. But to do so, Labour will have to overcome a tough fiscal legacy it inherited from the Conservatives.
Sir Keir’s grand promise was to bring stability to government and therefore investment to the UK. But signs of future instability are already clear. Since the 1960s, voters have become more likely to switch parties between elections, turning the floating vote from a minority into a majority. Combined with instability in Westminster, this has created a divided electorate.
One threat comes from the right: the collapse of the Conservative Party was accelerated by the Reformation. EnglandThe latest party to become the platform of Nigel Farage. Farage won in Clacton with 46% of the vote, finally winning his way into the House of Commons after seven attempts. Farage promised a “national populist movement” and, along with three other reformists, Member of ParliamentRepeated second-place finishes in old Labour strongholds such as Sunderland, Blyth and Hartlepool have changed the nature of the opposition to Sir Keir’s new government, and there is lively debate within the Labour party about how to deal with reforms. EnglandSome say this is a new threat that needs to be countered by an insurgent government. England This is not so different from the Conservatives exploiting culturally divisive issues, such as their plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda.
There is also a threat from left-wing insurgents. Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Devonaire lost her seat to the Greens, who secured four seats. Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s shadow Treasurer and the party’s attacking weapon, was defeated by an independent, showing how many Muslim voters reject the party’s stance on the Gaza war. Incoming Health Secretary Wes Streeting narrowly held on to his seat. Corbyn was re-elected as an independent in Islington North.
Sir Keir said the fight for control of the Labour Party was about restoring what it was founded to do for the working class. He said it would also define the agenda for the government going forward. “The battle for trust is the battle that will define our time,” he told a crowd in London. Sir Keir has won in a stunning way. The drive for stability in British politics continues. ■
