The British are not wild about politics. Despite the comparative shortness of the election campaign compared to other countries, most people just want the whole thing over.
Boredom isn’t the issue — though most of the party manifestos feel suspiciously similar. The campaign itself has been peppered with both crises including Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s abdication of D-Day ceremonies in France and public affairs catastrophes like “Gamblegate”, providing intermittent interest.
It’s more the sense of the inevitable in terms of Labour’s anticipated whopping win, combined with deep ennui that even a new government simply cannot effect the deep-seated changes needed to kick-start the country.
Large parts of the electorate are therefore, as argued in Politico: “detached from the political discourse and disenchanted — if not disgusted — with Westminster’s political class . . . [for them] this election has already failed.”
This does not foretell a populist deluge, as has happened just over the Channel in France. Polls show the Conservative party at around 20% and the populist right-wing party of Nigel Farage, Reform, at about 16%. While that is enough to badly damage the Conservative party, the UK electoral system means it would win very few seats. Instead Labour — polling on around 40% — would benefit, as its path to victory is eased in single-member constituencies.
How does the likely new government address the country’s problems? From Labour’s point of view, Britain’s systemic woes represent policy failures by the incumbent Conservative party and provide an opportunity to campaign actively on the promise of change.
The party’s manifesto is divided between pointing out what’s gone badly wrong thanks to Conservative mismanagement and identifying Labour solutions.
The seminal issues remain largely familiar, but the time-honored solution of more money and resources is widely acknowledged to be unavailable to a country up to its eyes in public debt and suffering low growth.
The UK is hobbled by crumbling and chaotic public services with the NHS, adult social care, and mental health services amongst the worst hit, coupled with ongoing cost of living pressures, worsening housing availability, and ambiguity over climate commitments. The icing on the cake is a widespread recognition that the UK’s armed forces are rusting after three decades of peace dividends and need modernization to face an increasingly dangerous world.
Can Labour live up to the opportunity, let alone the reality, of resolving the multiple problems in this inbox of infamy?
Everything rests on Labour’s delivery plan. Optimists point to Labour leader Kier Starmer’s authenticity in discussing future requirements in sensible rather than celebratory tones. Sensible, “fully costed” solutions to systemic and local issues alike are the order of the day, from the perennially rickety NHS to the more recent calamity over worrying levels of water pollution blamed on the privatized water companies.
The Labour leadership argues it can improve domestic growth through measures including a war on planning bureaucracy that hampers investment and by improving relations with the country’s main trading bloc, the European Union (EU.)
Critics have accused Labour (and the governing Conservatives) of misleading the country on the true seriousness of its problems. Institute for Fiscal Studies Director Paul Johnson for example argued that in both the main party manifestos “raw facts are largely ignored,” including key areas where a new government can actually exercise material control including “tax, welfare, [and] public spending”, leaving voters approaching the July 4 vote “in a knowledge vacuum.”
And while voters may (the polls show) be extremely angry with the Conservatives, this does not translate into enthusiasm for Labour. Starmer and his team have taken lessons from Tony Blair’s greatest election victory in 1997, but their arrival in office occurs more by default than some great tide of hope. And unlike Blair, Starmer has no stated intention to reform the public services. Public sector unions express no concern about his entry into office.
A new administration faces profound challenges urgently requiring attention, but a thoroughly disenchanted electorate. The Labour leader may enjoy a huge majority, but there’s a risk of misreading that as a national shift to the statist left. As a Financial Times columnist observed: “If the party misjudges the national mood, it can expect a very unpopular Labour government, very soon.”
What of the Tories? In a nutshell, the governing party has lost any semblance of ability to manage the structures of the British economy, its public services, its international policy, and the accountability of its own members. Collective mismanagement, coupled with individual incompetence have produced both policy incoherence and state-level instability (the name of the fleeting former premier Liz Truss has become a two-word shorthand for economic recklessness.)
Other anomalies will reduce their electoral fortunes still further: post-Covid living and working patterns have meant Labour supporters settling in traditional Tory areas, while recently redrawn constituency boundaries have forced Tory MPs to campaign in altered seats with communities unfamiliar with Tory voting traditions. The upshot is that in even the safest of Tory heartland seats, the sum total of issues from overwhelmed local GP surgeries to potholes in the roads have produced a “narrative which has taken hold” indicating that “the country’s falling apart”.
What the Tories appear to have lost most profoundly is a heritage of implicit local support, based on long-established local allegiance to small “c” conservativism that has underwritten the party for generations. Inland waterway pollution may prove to be the aquatic crucible of the 2024 general election: failing to spot early enough the depths of community outrage at the condition of local watercourses — particularly along the River Thames — and subsequently failing to hold to account the private water firms managing Britian’s sewage and water systems, to whom the Tories gave control in 1989.
Two points emerge. First, that the Tories are probably done for (there’s no poll showing them anywhere close to power and they may face an “extinction-level event” at the polls.) What happens to the party once the smoke clears to reveal the carnage is open to question. Some want a deal with Farage, which would mean a sharp turn to the right.
The second is that Labour’s honeymoon may be short with an electorate seeking swift change. That can be staved off if Starmer has a clear plan for the early weeks and months in office. He will need to be aware of discontented backbenchers — prime ministers with large majorities and limited patronage to satisfy MP’s ambitious can find party revolts a serious problem.
And meanwhile, the almost-completely undiscussed issue of the worsening security outlook threatens to upend the new prime minister’s domestic program. Foreign policy is rarely contentious in British elections (Labour and the Tories broadly agree on issues like Ukraine and the nuclear deterrent), but the global clouds are darkening and when it pours everyone gets drenched.
Professor Amelia Hadfield is Head of the Department of Politics, Founding Director of Centre for Britain and Europe (CBE), and Associate Vice President of External Engagement at the University of Surrey.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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