After 14 years of Conservative rule, the UK Tories were decisively defeated on July 4. The past 14 years in Britain have been marked by a steep sense of national decline under the Conservative government, beginning with austerity in 2010 and progressing ever more rightwards with Brexit and regressive policies such as the Rwanda deportation scheme.
The attacks on workers, unions, the welfare state, public services, and protest, as well as the decline in living standard across the country, have been horrendous and the sense of disillusionment across the country is palpable. What this meant was that the Conservatives were almost certain to lose as soon as Rishi Sunak called an early election this May. People want a change and this election was a real chance to make that change. So what happened?
Labour’s support is wide, but shallow
The headline message is that Labour won a historic majority in the House of Commons, gaining 412 out of a possible 650 seats overall at the time of writing. This is just shy of Tony Blair’s massive victory in 1997, whilst the Conservatives got their worst result ever at just 121 seats. However, this result comes with some pretty big caveats and some concerning surprises for all of us.
Firstly, although Labour won a historic majority, they have recorded one of their lowest vote shares ever. This general election saw the lowest voter turnout since 2001 and in terms of raw votes Labour have received their lowest number of votes since the 1930s. Starmer’s Labour received a lower percentage of the popular vote than the left-wing then leader Jeremy Corbyn in 2017, and only increased Labour’s 2019 popular vote share by less than 2% (although we should note they got a lower number of raw votes than Corbyn in both the 2017 and 2019 elections). Furthermore, Labour vote share among 18-24s has plunged to its lowest since 2010, as young voters moved to Greens and independents.
From 2015-2019, Labour was headed by Jeremy Corbyn, a left-wing, pro-worker leader who came to power in the UK through a grassroots campaign based on an ideologically socialist and left agenda. He put workers first and promoted policies such as re-nationalization of public utilities and the reversal of austerity cuts to welfare and public services.
After coming within a whisker of winning in the 2017 general election, Corbyn was eventually brought down by a combination of reactionary attacks from the ruling class in Britain, focussed mainly on his position on Brexit and accusations of anti-semitism, which stemmed from his long-held beliefs about Israeli apartheid and occupation in Palestine (this was all during a time when his leadership actually saw a strengthening of disciplinary procedures concerning hate speech and racism!). This culminated in 2019 with a big defeat by the Conservatives (based on seats taken in parliament), after which Corbyn stepped down.
Keir Starmer was then elected by the membership, running on a left of centre Labour platform focused on nationalization, economic justice, and climate funding (link 10 pledges). Since then, Starmer has walked back nearly all of his key pledges, including to end the two-child cap on benefits for families, scrapping tuition fees for university students, increasing income tax on the top 5 percent of earners, nationalization of public services, a £28bn green prosperity plan, abolishing the universal credit system set up by Conservatives, and abolishing the unelected House of Lords.
On top of this, Starmer purged many left-wing candidates from the Labour, including Corbyn who is no longer allowed to stand as a Labour MP. It is clear from the popular vote in this election that, despite their election strategy delivering a large majority of seats, Labour’s shift rightwards does not have widespread support from the British population.
The Palestine penalty
Secondly, another reason support has been drawn away from Labour is the so-called Palestine penalty. Labour’s stance on Gaza under Corbyn was progressive whilst Starmer has not been. In an interview in 2023, Starmer said that Israel has the right to withhold power and water from Gazans during the siege of Gaza which has now resulted in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. The anger over this was compounded when Labour refused to back an SNP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza soon after. Labour eventually passed its own ceasefire motion in February 2024 after being pressured both internally and by the SNP.
On election night this resulted in is a victory for independent and pro-Palestine candidates in constituencies where Labour expected to win, including Islington North where Corbyn has won as an independent. The party has also suffered in urban areas with high muslim populations including Leicester south and Blackburn. In several other seats, high-profile Labour candidates were run close by independent candidates, including in Ilford, where the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, won by only 528 votes more than his closest rival, Leanne Mohammed. This shows that widespread dissent and pro-Palestinian voices against an ongoing gencoide cannot be silenced without consequences.
Thirdly, and on the other side of the political spectrum, the Conservatives have suffered a historic loss- the largest since the party was founded. Prominent Tory MPs were unseated by Labour candidates, including the former prime minister Liz Truss, and at the time of writing it appears that the Conservatives have lost 251 seats from the 2019 election. The most striking feature of this loss has been where their votes have shifted.
A number of the votes have been snapped by the Liberal Democrats, the centre-right party who won their highest number of seats (71) in the party’s history. However, the most troubling outcome has been the number of votes that the conservative party has lost to Reform UK. Although only winning five seats (their highest number ever), they came in third place in the popular vote. Reform UK have gained around 4 million votes (14.3 percent) compared to the Conservatives’ 6.5 million votes (26.3 percent).
Rise of UK Reform
Reform UK is a far-right party which was officially founded as the Brexit party in 2019 and is headed by Nigel Farage. Farage is the UK’s most prominent populist leader whose achievements include leading the Brexit campaign, putting an anti immigration agenda front and centre of UK politics, and working closely with Donald Trump. The success of the Reform UK party has been a real surprise in this election. In contrast to Sunak and Starmer, who have placed the economy and tax as their key topic of conversation during their election campaign, Farage aimed to make this the ‘immigration election’, with policies such as replacing net zero with net zero migration to the UK. Other Reform UK policies include increasing police numbers, reducing government spending, keeping “woke ideologies” out of the classroom, and various policies geared towards the privatization of healthcare.
This result presents a conundrum for the Conservative Party. Should they tack centre right or far right in order to reclaim the voters they have lost in this election? Signs point towards a potential further rightward shift. In two thirds of seats that the Conservatives lost, they would have won had the voters who backed Reform in those seats instead voted for the Conservatives. We are likely to see a leadership contest in the Conservative party soon, with right-wing candidates such as Kemy Badenoch arguing for the need to win back voters who have switched to Reform UK with more aggressive right-wing, anti-worker and anti-immigration policies. Interestingly, Farage has previously said he has been inspired by the success of the Reform party of Canada in the 1997 election and subsequent merging of the party with the Progressive Conservatives to create the current, more right wing, Conservative Party of Canada. What this all means is not so much a victory for Labour, but a splintering and further shift of the right in Britain towards the populist far right.
The defeat of the conservatives is undoubtedly a positive thing. But it is hard to see Labour’s large parliamentary majority, as a victory for the left or for workers.
Starmer campaigned on a platform of improving the lives of working people after 14 years of attacks from the Conservatives. However, few of the policies he has actually committed to will improve the lives of the working class. He has promised that he will not raise taxes at the top end to re-invest in public services, two of his five pledges involve hiring more police (including 13,000 new police officers and a counter-terrosism style UK border security command), and he has not committed to repealing anti-strike laws put in place by Conservatives.
Starmer’s overall strategy is to create a business friendly environment to stimulate economic growth. It is not likely he will be able to achieve this growth, just as the Conservatives were unable to with their business friendly policies. This is because of both structural issues with the British economy and because business friendly policies themselves come at the expense of funding public services, which support the very workers and their families that make up the British economy. Labour might enjoy a short honeymoon period in power, but without meaningful policies and investment in the country, they are unlikely to solve the issues facing Britain and which matter to voters, such as low wages, crumbling infrastructure, long hospital waiting times, and inequality.
The rise of Reform UK means the far-right will be emboldened. It is a real danger they will pull the whole political terrain to the right – including Starmer’s government. Labour’s inability to offer a real alternative is that they will create a fertile ground for the resurgent right to swoop in and capture the government once again.
Building a Left alternative
There is a real danger the far-right will solidify itself at the heart of UK politics. One glimmer of hope is that the Green party, who achieved their best result ever both in terms of popular votes and seats, and five independent candidates were able to defeat their contenders on a platform that is socially progressive, environment friendly, and pro-Palestine. This signals a demand for a real political alternative in the UK that is just, inclusive, and forward thinking.
The job of socialists will be to work with this broad base of support to build movements in the streets and workplaces that can provide a worker-led political alternative to both UK Reforms hard right politics and Labour’s stultifying centrism.
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