‘What Is the Point of Labour Winning the Next General Election if It Governs as Reform-Lite?’

What will happen at the UK’s next general election? It feels insane to even guess.  Indeed, why bother when we are just nine months out from the last and seemingly decisive ballot. Normally a majority of 172 would have people thinking about the election after next just like after the last Labour landslide of 1997.  But these are not normal times.

I tried to second guess the outcome of 2024 after 2019 and got it horribly wrong.  Back then Boris Johnson looked impregnable not just in terms of his 80 parliamentary majority but a seemingly permanent post Brexit realignment of British electoral politics around the Red Wall.  Surely only a progressive alliance could combat the shift to the right and stop a second Johnson victory? But around the corner and out of sight lurked not just COVID but the wanton self-destruction of the Conservative party and the fall of the SNP.  Parliamentary majorities now just ensure the winning party stays in office – it doesn’t make them powerful as the flip leaders, merely try the survive the day and hope something turns up. Which it usually doesn’t. 

And so, the only question voters had to answer on the 4th July 2024 was not who had the best vision and policies to transform the country, but who could you vote for to kick the Conservatives out.  So successfully did the progressive parties focus their efforts, and so systematically and determinedly did the electorate place their tactical votes a record number of over 500 progressive MPs were returned to parliament. 

But you wouldn’t know it because not being the Conservatives was never going to be enough. To govern demands a vision and a plan to implement, and commentators as politically far apart as Rafael Behr and Michael Gove have, from different vantage points, begun to point out that Labour has neither.  Without any directional or operational guide, especially in a poly-crisis world, Government eventually and inevitably becomes a matter of surviving the day. Just nine months after an electoral landslide, Labour has lurched from pessimism to optimism and back again and enacted policies that were once deemed only fit for the Conservatives.

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The consequence is a dramatic drop in the polls, from the already historic low but winning mark of 34% at the election to about 24% today.  While the Conservatives show little sign of electoral recovery, Reform has jumped in the opposite direction to Labour adding at least another 10% to their 14% tally at the election.   Meanwhile both the Liberal Democrats and the Greens have seen some vote share uplift.  Polls regularly have five parties in double digits in a system designed for two.  The next election is not just impossible to predict but, if this trend continues, is likely to end up in electoral chaos as tiny shifts in votes from one party to another lead to massive changes in seat allocation.  

Add into that the possibility that Keir Starmer won’t survive a full term and Labour could very well flip its leadership, just like the Conservatives, in a desperate attempt to revive their fortunes. Also like the Conservatives there is little chance of a comprehensive or convincing vision and plan from any newcomer and so everything will soon spring back to surviving the day. 

In all this unprecedented unpredictability what do we know that can help us think about the shape of the next election?  The first and biggest point is that living standards is the only game in town and Labour looks nowhere near offering any kind of meaningful change on this account and given the madness of Trump, people could be even worse off. Here I’m reliably informed there is a rift between Number 10 and the Treasury, the former prioritising living standards, but the latter, who run economic policy, more focused on public service delivery as key driver of electoral success.  Both can’t be right and as the party and personal poll ratings of Starmer and Rachael Reeves drop to Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng levels,  watch this space for traditional tensions between the Downing St neighbours. 

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We can also rely on growing numbers of voters recognising that our democratic and economic systems are broken beyond repair.  As genuine insurgents this will mostly boost the Reform vote. Voters know Nigel Farage might well turn out like Donald Trump but will they care if they’re anti the system and believe the system needs to go.  But sections of the left could also benefit, as plans for different styles of new left parties swirl around – not least because the Greens are struggling to make the breakthrough the moment demands. But losses to Labour’s left, combined with the revival of the SNP point strongly to a hung parliament – with the only question being who is the largest party. 

Finally, we know that Morgan McSweeney does have a plan to win the next election, even if he doesn’t have a vision and a plan to transform the country in the meantime.  His plan is to relentlessly and remorselessly chase Reform and keep enough of the Red Wall vote to gain a second much slimmer majority for Labour.  We know the playbook, herald immigration and asylum deportations, kick down on benefit claimants and the disabled, keep as clear as possible of Europe, and deregulate everything possible.  Again, I’m reliably informed that Matthew Doyle, the chief spinner for Starmer was disposed of because of his lack of enthusiasm for this agenda and was replaced by James Lyons who is seen to be gung-ho for aping Reform. 

I apologise for anyone under 50 for this reference, but why anyone wants to listen to Freddy and the Dreamers when they can listen to The Beatles is beyond me. Labour shouldn’t try to imitate Reform, when all it will mean is that Farage wins whatever the election outcome. McSweeney will present a choice between Labour or Reform and bargain that enough people will once again hold their nose.  But the politics of the lesser evil will simply delay a bigger crisis of British politics. Whether voters will hold their nose again or vote with their hearts is the key issue that will decide the next election.

Somehow out of all of this we have to fashion a vision and a plan that feels economically and politically both desirable and feasible. We don’t know what’s around the corner, but a values-based politics with the agility and determination to build cross party alliances and roots deep in to civil society and local communities is the only game in town. But this is made so much harder when you hear again and again that Labour is no longer a progressive party.  It must be made so again around a vision of a good society and plan that is centred on economic radical and a deep sense of democratic pluralism. 

This will be the focus of the Change How event my organisation Compass is hosting on 31^st May,  which Byline Times is sponsoring  and running a session at on the critical issue of media reform to get fair intellectual and political contestation.  Come and join us to build a better future.