 "UK elections: Labour’s landslide victory doesn't promise a cake walk for PM Keir Starmer")
Ever since Rishi Sunak, the former British Prime Minister, in May, called snap general elections to be held on July 4, six months before they were due, the die was cast—the near certain demise of ‘Rishi Raj’ ending fourteen years of Conservative rule.
Unsurprisingly, in the formerly Brexiting, Eurosceptic UK, with the election results, the pendulum has swung back to the other side, with the centre-left Labour party getting a stunningly mammoth victory getting 412 seats in the House of Commons, at par with the historic win of Tony Blair in 1997 when he secured 418 seats.
Stunning Loss
Indubitably, the elections resulted in a stunning defeat of the Tories—the worst in the 200 years of history of the Conservative Party. Tories have been reduced to 121 seats—a staggering 251-seat loss since the 2019 elections—with their vote share nose-diving 20 percentage points since 2019 to a mere 24 per cent. Dozen ministers have lost the election, including Tory stalwarts. Tory stalwarts include former Prime Minister Liz Truss, the immediate predecessor of Sunak, Commons leader Penny Mordaunt, and former cabinet minister Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.
This tumultuous fourteen-year Conservative Party rule saw five prime ministers, including three in the last five years. Like recent elections in most European countries, anti-incumbency was at play in the UK too. But other problems compounded Tory woes as well, like Euroscepticism (culminating in the 2016 referendum to determine whether to stay in or leave the European Union), worsening emigration crisis and concerns, badly mishandled Covid-19 conundrums (in Europe, the UK accounted for the highest per capita Covid-19 death), a worsening cost-of-life crisis, soaring cost of living, high interest rates, stagnant wages and overwhelmed public services.
Change in the Calculus
In the 2019 general elections, Conservatives won 365 seats while Labour got 203 seats, a net change of (+49) and (-60), respectively, from the previous elections, while the Scottish National Party (SNP) gained 13 and Liberal Democrats 11 seats. The Greens maintained their only seat.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe change in calculus in the 2024 elections is bizarre.
Labour has romped home with 412 seats while Conservatives stand decimated and down to 121, their worst performance in two centuries. Liberal Democrats have arrived spectacularly with 71 seats, SNP almost held its ground with 9, but there is a resurgence of the Reform UP party with 4 seats, with a bonus of ending second in dozens of seats, and Greens have upped their seat to 4 from 1.
I will decode the results a bit later.
Kissing the Hand
Labour Leader Keir Starmer, after the landslide victory, became the first leader from the centre-left party to do so after Tony Blair in 1997. After a ceremonial “kissing the hands” ceremony with King Charles III (a ritual that happens without any kissing)on Friday, July 5, he became the Prime Minister and the new occupant of 10 Downing Street in an extraordiniraly smooth, swift and orderly change of power.
Starmer has promptly formed his government and gotten down to the arduous task of governance in a turbulent period in the UK. It will take a lot of jostling, hard work, smart work, and lots of luck for him to take the country out of the morass where it finds itself today. Otherwise, in the next election, the fickle memory electorate will penalise the victors by swinging the political pendulum again to the other side.
Left-Right-Centre
After the Labour landslide, Sir Keir Starmer, the 58th Prime Minister of the UK, becomes the third person to hold the responsibility since King Charles acceded to the throne less than two years ago upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth.
Indubitably, the ascendency of Starmer, representing the center-left, was a foregone conclusion in an otherwise unstable Europe and the world at large, where the unmistakable recent trend has been the fast ascendancy of populist-right and far-right parties.
Along with the spectacular success of far-right parties in recent EU elections, many nations in Western Europe, including the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and France, have seen a tectonic shift: the rise of nationalist, populist, and Eurosceptic far-right parties.
The reasons for the resurgence of the far right are multi-fold, many internal to the individual countries, but there are commonalities as well - economic hardship to citizens, the multitude of immigrants owing to the biggest war in Europe since World War II, high inflation, higher energy prices, and a Eurosceptic national frenzy, among the few.
Amid the above, the spectacular victory of centre-left in the UK looks stunning, but the devil is in the details.
Devil in the Detail
The details of the electoral verdict in the UK 2024 victory are sobering.
One, the voter turnout of 60 per cent is the third lowest in UK electoral history, after 1918 and 2001. Despite the exhaustion and insipid performance of the Conservatives, the Labour Party simply failed to excite. Tory voters did not flock to Labour; they simply stayed home or moved elsewhere.
Two, labour’s share of the vote, at 34 per cent, is extremely low, for a party winning the election. It is lower than what most pollsters predicted. As regards the fall from grace of the Tories, no party in British electoral history has ever lost as many seats as the 251 the Conservatives lost in this election. Also, after a hundred years, a party that has stood third, the Liberal Democrats, has secured as many as 71 seats—the last time Liberals achieved this was in 1923.
Three, a dissection of the voter’s behaviour is revealing. Conservatives and Labour, the two main parties, failed to keep their flocks together; there was a visible revolt of the right-leaning voters against the Tories and the left-leaning voters against the Labour. The latter also suffered from the large-scale tilt away from it of the Muslim voters. Make no mistake, a large chunk of voters refused to be ruled by either of the two main parties.
Four, far right, is far from dead. It is winner takes all for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, which has won 412 seats—65 per cent of the total 650 in the House of Commons. But the right and far-right are not dead. Contrarily, thwy are alive and kicking. The following elucidates what happened:
Conservatives outperformed opinion polls: Notwithstanding dismal performance, the Conservative Party has outperformed all opinion polls (opinion polls in the UK, unlike those in India, are highly accurate). Pollsters had predicted a far worse rout—Survation poll had predicted 64 seats to Tories where as final YouPoll prediction was 102 out of 650 seats.
Astonishing redistribution of votes: Labour’s electoral success does not reflect overwhelming support for its policies. Its 34 per cent vote share, one of the worst for the winning party, has nothing to crow about. Labour stands where it stands due to the division of the right-wing votes between the Conservatives and Reform UK parties, an astonishing redistribution of support for votes, and a large chunk of voters sitting home.
Far right resurgence: Nigel Farage, the friend of Donald Trump and the long-term nemesis of the conservative party, has risen from the ashes. The Brexit hero has been elected to the House of Commons after seven failures. His party, Reform UK, has five seats (one more than the Greens), but more importantly, his party candidates turned second, next only to the victor in dozens of seats.
Unsurprisingly, Reform UK received 14 per cent of the total votes polled in a rate election where the rights were split between two parties, Tory and Reform UK.
Vote-share of two right parties: The combined vote share of the two right parties, Conservative (Right) (24 per cent) and Reform UK (Far-Right) (14 per cent), is 4 percent above that of Labour (34 per cent).
Checkmate
What has emerged as Labour’s landslide is a bizarre result largely aided by the failure of the right and far-right parties to unite, with their 38 per cent combined vote share outstripping 34 per cent of Labour. Politics is a game of possibilities. Sooner rather than later, Conservatives will need to find a new leader. And if that leader makes some type of pact with far-right Farage, it will be an interesting shift in British polity that may well change the complexion of the next House of Commons.
Obviously, it is wake up time for the justly anointed Prime Minister, and fast usher in the change he has promised.
Rishi Raj Ended Despite Sunak
Pundits have attributed the worst-ever defeat of Conservatives to a lack of political touch and the missteps of Rishi Sunak, including calling the snap poll six months ahead of schedule. But history shall be more charitable to Sunak. Out of 14 years of the Tory regime, Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister for less than two years. He inherited a fractured polity, a broken economy, Party Gate, and the disastrous 49-day rule of former Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Sunak could not exorcise ghosts, including the massive anti-incumbency wave sweeping across Western Europe, even though he managed the inflation and unemployment well, bringing the UK economy out of the recession. And Sunak was magnanimous in defeat as he said, “I have heard your anger, your disappointment, and I take responsibility for this loss.”
New Prime Minister Keir Starmer has promised not only to change the UK but also to be an inclusive, determined prime minister who will look after everyone in the country. These are lofty promises, and Starmer will do well to remember that if he falters on his lofty promises, the electorate will strike back. The beauty of democracy is that the electorate knows not only how to reject but also how to review, renew, and reverse.
Humongous and Gigantic
The task in hand is humongous, of gigantic proportions for Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer who also served as the head of the Crown Prosecution Services, and, to quote an analyst, has become Prime Minister in a “loveless landslide” with too few voting for the winning Labour Party.
Starmer has done what his predecessor, Labour veteran Jeremy Corbyn could not do, but his real work begins now.
Starmer has advocated for “stability and moderation” and promised to focus on public service. In his first address as Prime Minister, he said, “Politics can be a force for good, and we will show that. We changed the Labour Party, returned it to service, and that is how we will govern.”
Well said, Prime Minister. Now is the time to put action into your words.
Rebuilding Britain
Keir Starmer has assumed the mantle of UK Prime Minister with a pledge to restore belief in Britain, unite, and rebuild a nation bereft of hope. In the coming weeks and months, his performance will be measured against this promise to “Re-Build Britain.”
In tandem, he also must meet other key election manifesto promises, including but not limited to resuscitating the economy to give the nation economic stability, fixing the broken National Health Service and substantially reducing the NHS waiting list, ditching the Rwanda scheme in favour of a new plan to tackle illegal immigration, as well as reforming overflowing prisons and the junior doctor strikes, building 1.5 million houses, social care, the environment, easing the cost of living, ensuring fiscal prudence, and what not.
He faces tough choices on public finances, with forecasts suggesting major spending cuts, and in his first press conference, Sir Keir has told he would take “tough decisions” and face challenges with “raw honesty”. In his first cabinet meeting, he emphasised to his top ministers that he expects them to hold themselves and their departments to the “highest standards of integrity and honesty”.
Also, in his first press conference, PM Starmer said, “We’ve got too many prisoners, not enough prisons,” and vowed to reduce the number of people going to prison, though he has admitted that there would be no “overnight solution” to prison overcrowding.
With key issues facing Britain known and well-articulated, the government of Sir Keir has a truly lengthy list to tick. He has promised to unite and rebuild a nation bereft of hope. It is action time for him and his team, whose performance will be microscopically watched.
What is in Store for India
On Saturday, July 6, a day after the victory of the Labour Party, the Prime Ministers of India and the UK—Modi and Starmer—spoke to each other. Also, in a post on X, Prime Minister Modi said he had congratulated Starmer and remained committed to “deepening Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and robust economic ties…”
The last two years were special for the Indo-UK relationship with Rishi Sunak, the Indian-origin Prime Minister. Nonetheless, despite the turbulent relationship of India with the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, India has had a constructively positive relationship with the Labour Party. Starmer is on record saying that he would have a closer relationship with India, and it is expected that Indo-British social, political, and trade relations will flourish further with a greater focus on the UK-India Free Trade Agreement at a time when the two-way trade stands at close to 25 billion pound sterling.
Cultural and educational ties, deeply rooted in historical connections, are expected to strengthen further under Labour’s inclusive policies. The challenge will be to balance increased defence spending commitments with a strong focus on environmental sustainability and social equity, aligning with India’s goals in these areas. Starmer’s commitment to national security and a robust defence policy must also be managed alongside economic and diplomatic priorities, ensuring a comprehensive approach to bilateral relations.
Talking the Talk
In less than a week of romping home to office, Sir Keir will be in Washington for the 75th NATO Summit—his first decisive test at the international stage, where he must “walk the walk “and “talk the talk”. Make no mistake, while the new Labour buzz word in domestic governance may be one word “change”, in the relationship of the UK at the word stage it must get replaced with another single word “continuity”.
The prime minister has already committed his unflinching support to Ukraine in its war with Russia. National security and defence, in close coordination, shall have to remain the government’s key priorities. With significantly increasing its defence expenditures and the time when chances of Trump 2.0 being quite probable in America, the UK has a significant role to play in international affairs, including keeping the significance of NATO intact. There are other pressing agendas of climate control, adherence, and achieving net zero for the country where the polluting Industrial Revolution happened first.
The time for Sir Keir began on Friday, July 5, when he took the mantle of 58th Prime Minister of the UK. If Labour must have a chance of a second term, his margin of error is exceptionally low because what is at stake is his credibility amidst an epochal watershed moment victory. He must remember that his predecessor was a well-meaning, performing prime minister as well.
The author is a multi-disciplinary thought leader with Action Bias and an India based impact consultant. He is a keen watcher of changing international scenario. He works as President Advisory Services of Consulting Company BARSYL. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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