Decisive UK election results leave many questions unanswered

Labour’s landslide victory in the UK general election on July 4 confirmed the most optimistic forecasts, and represented a sense of hope and trust in Sir Keir Starmer and his party to rejuvenate the country during the five-year term it has won.
It was a great night for Labour, as the party celebrated its first general election victory since 2005, and after being out of office since 2010. It was equally, if not more so, a complete rejection of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s premiership and his government, and of his chaotic and deeply divided Conservative Party.
The election campaign provided a vivid illustration of the huge differences between the two dominant parties in British politics. The Conservative Party had lost its way. Led by its third prime minister in the five years since the last election, it looked out of its depth and rudderless, and ran a truly shambolic election campaign.
Meanwhile, the cautious (some would say too cautious) Starmer proved that his way of quietly but ruthlessly transforming his party, and his belief that elections would be won by positioning Labour closer to the center of the political spectrum, was more than vindicated.
Winning 412 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons gives the new government a stable majority that should allow it to implement its agenda almost with a free hand. Furthermore, the margin of victory leaves Labour with the prospect of being able to consolidate its vision of change during not only one term but most likely two, if not more.
Its victory was astonishing, surpassing even that of Tony Blair in 1997, because at that time Labour was on an upward trajectory, while in the 2019 general election, under the stewardship of former leader Jeremy Corbyn, the party suffered its worst defeat since 1935.
One argument that tries to explain this turnaround, which I do not find convincing, is that there has been an increase in “voter volatility,” which could perhaps better be described as less-rigid voting patterns. This idea will have to be examined over the course of several elections to see whether there is indeed a sustained trend of diminishing party loyalty in favor of a more scrutinizing, less tribal, more tactical voting approach by the electorate in an attempt to maximize their interests, or whether what we witnessed on July 4 was the result of the special circumstances.
How much of the Conservatives’ failure, for instance, can be attributed to the Brexit debacle? Or to their inadequate response to the COVID-19 pandemic, during which both Boris Johnson, the first of the trio of Tory prime ministers during the five-year lifetime of the last Parliament, and Rishi Sunak, the last of them, broke the lockdown rules they had set for the rest of us and were fined by police. Or to Liz Truss, whose 45 days as prime minister in 2022 was the shortest term as premier in British history, and whose deluded “Trussonomics” ideology brought the UK economy to its knees and left many people still paying for it as a result of enormous hikes in mortgage interest rates.
Many Conservatives, as well as supporters of the populist, right-wing Reform UK party led by Nigel Farage, have pointed out that Labour did not significantly increase its share of the vote at the election and that the turnout, at 59.9 percent, was the lowest in more than 20 years.
They are clutching at straws here, although Labour certainly should not ignore either of those facts. Both could be a result of the timing of the election, during the summer, and/or the fact that given Labour’s huge, unchanging lead in the polls for nearly two years, victory seemed to be a foregone conclusion and so many people opted to vote tactically for a Liberal Democrat contender in seats where that party had a better chance of beating the Conservative candidate. 

If the Conservatives attempt to out-Farage Farage, they will fail and fall into Reform’s demagogical trap.

Yossi Mekelberg

This certainly helped the Lib Dems increase their representation in the House of Commons from 11 to 72 seats. Other smaller parties also benefited from the anti-Conservative vote, notably the Greens, who quadrupled their number of seats from one to four.
What is undeniable is the scale of the challenges the new government faces both at home and abroad: the dire state of the National Health Service, the education system, the housing situation, the immigration system, an understaffed police force, overflowing prisons and an overwhelmed justice system, and stormy labor relations, all of which are broken or close to breaking point and deprived of resources.
The public coffers are rather drained and so the forecast for economic growth is not very promising (it is expected to be 0.8 per cent this year) and the UK has long been experiencing significantly slower productivity growth than comparable economies.
In terms of foreign affairs, reviving strained relations with the EU, establishing post-Brexit trade agreements, and reestablishing the country’s leading position in the world will be hard work, and the UK’s counterparts will require much convincing.
For both the major parties in British politics there is the danger they might draw the wrong conclusions from their spectacular, entirely opposite, results in the election. For Starmer, electoral success through caution might lead to policies that are not sufficiently daring or visionary; although judging by the first week of his government, it has hit the ground running. It got off to an impressive start with a smooth transition, packed with new initiatives on a range of issues.
The Conservatives are faced with the mammoth task of clawing their way back to political relevance if they are at some point in the future to once again be viewed as a viable contender for power. Their ranks in Parliament have been greatly depleted. After losing, for better or for worse, some of their most prominent MPs, especially those with experience in government, there is a very small pool from which to select their next leader and shadow government.
The Conservatives run the risk of concluding from the relative success of the populist, anti-migrant Reform UK party that to counter their decline they should veer even further to the right. Farage and his lieutenants are a one-trick, xenophobic media machine. They are chancers who offer no real solutions, opportunists who found a niche that eventually helped them to gain five seats in Parliament and 14 percent of the popular vote.
Several Conservative politicians have suggested that their party hemorrhaged votes to Reform because it was “not conservative enough.” This could not be further from the truth; the opposite is the case. Whether through opportunism or ideology, while in government the Conservatives released the racist, anti-immigration genie from the bottle and, with it, their attacks on multiculturalism.
This played straight into the hands of Reform, which positioned itself as the “can-do-it-better” party. Its leaders know there are no boundaries to the claims and promises they can make as they will never be tested in practice.
If the Conservatives attempt to out-Farage Farage, they will fail and fall into Reform’s demagogical trap. They need to address the concerns of his voters with pragmatism and a moral compass. They need to propose ways to fix a failing immigration system and turn it into an effective one that can tell the difference between much-needed legal immigration and illegal immigration; recognize the UK’s obligations to asylum seekers; create opportunities for everyone in education; create well-paid jobs and affordable homes; develop programs to improve social tolerance and cohesion; and end the divide-and-rule approach of the far right. This would render Farage and his ilk irrelevant and both big parties should, in their own ways, concentrate on that, not on him.
In the meantime, the Starmer government has already made its first move in the right direction by scrapping Sunak’s scheme to deport immigrants to Rwanda. This was an expensive, cheap gimmick designed to appease the right wing of his party and his client media. Starmer has instead announced the creation of a Border Security Command as part of the effort to prevent people-smuggling. These are first signs of a mature approach to dealing with a complex issue head on, instead of embarking on a program of hollow politics.
All we can wish for ourselves is that after 14 chaotic and toxic years, the new government will deliver what Prime Minister Starmer promised the day he entered office: “A Britain once more in the service of working people. Country first, party second.”

• Yossi Mekelberg is a professor of international relations and an associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Program at international affairs think tank Chatham House.
X: @YMekelberg